marko

Thing is though, no rider is ever judged from just one meeting, it’s normally down to a history of not being invested in certain meetings, pulling out of certain meetings etc Brady isn’t the first and won be the last, I would say KK is probably the go to rider when it comes to picking a choosing when he can be bothered. I try to put myself in the Belle Vue fan position, say back in the day, Lakeside were in a play off and AJ was contesting a GP final and only scored three points away prior to such final, I don’t think I would be angry, but I would be very disappointed, as even if he went onto win the series, how would that help Lakeside especially if the following season he decided to quit racing in the UK. I think what you have to remember is, winning the league is your clubs title, a rider winning the World Championship, isn’t your clubs title, the rider is representing his country, not one of the two or three clubs he rides for every week, although it is an added bonus to say your tracking the World Championship the following season if you retain him. If I was an Ipswich fan, Brady not wanting it, is Aces loss, and come the end of the season will be soon forgotten but I can still understand how they feel because such attitudes could easily be replicated on mass if the sport in this country doesn’t sort itself out, if clubs start to fall because riders have too much power, the whole deck of cards fall with it.

And so the biggest issue British Speedway is summed up, the league matches do not matter to the fans and sometimes not to the riders, the play offs do matter to the clubs who see it as possibly a break even pay day, but for whatever reason not all the riders are equally invested and some fans are smart to that, so if league matches don’t draw and the play offs by design or accident don’t draw, what is the point? I don’t have the answer, I think we will lose more clubs as the sport in the country will become a very small league setup with maybe only seven or eight home fixtures a season plus a koc match or two, or become similar to what Isle of Wight do or what grass track does, a few meetings a season. (That won’t be viable though if speedway is the only sport in said stadium)

Indeed if this weather in Essex hits Ipswich they are done.

I feel sorry for the fans but the track is rubbish because it’s prepared that way and the promoter shouldn’t be allowed to have anything to do with the sport ever again.

The thing is pro wrestling is scripted to provide a fixed outcome, speedway is fixed to try and provide a scripted outcome. A close match resulting in a draw is more entertaining than a one sided match (for the neutral) so why gimmick it up further, making one sided matches look even more inferior?

It’s a gimmick made for TV which is what speedway became many years ago. It might add something for the neutral but what about those at the track? You see your team battle to a draw or salvage a point only to then walk away feeling like you lost.

Chick Woodrolf was the guy who opened Arena Essex, he once pledged that so long as he is around there will always be racing at the venue, more I hear the more it sounds like his family completely went away from his wishes, they sold it off behind peoples back and shafted every fan of both two and four wheeled motorsport at Arena in the process. i hope that family rots in hell.

Vinnie actually made a good start but then they “shut the door” on him

Lots of mention of 1996 and how it was a failure and it was, not helped for me personally by the fact I was watching London Lions in that league and that was a disaster in itself. But let’s talk about the gaps in class between merging two divisions, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as bad as it was in 96 because so many riders in the prem still ride in the second division. At London you had Leigh Adam’s as the top rider and a very young David Mason as the number 7, David would have struggled to average 3 in a stand alone second division. From memory some clubs struggled to field a genuine number one, the Scottish Monarchs I think was one of them.

Everything else Birmingham is inept so why should the team planning be any different 😉

They say it can’t get any worse, with the current lot in charge, oh yes it can! Everytime a new promoter comes into the sport with fresh ideas like Stuart Douglas did, they get pushed back by the old guard who continue to drive it into the ground.

They can’t possibly claim they can’t run an extra meeting because of costs when the reason given for the club ending is down to the stadium? Does that mean had the stadium been available in 2026 Birmingham would have continued or is the stadium issue just a smokescreen for the fact Tolley can’t run a bath let alone a speedway club.

Nope because it doesn’t count as a proper ride, if he had been in heat 14 and done that, it would be three riders in the rerun which would have then counted as a third ride, hope that makes sense.

Remember Stuart Douglas saying that the difference between Lakeside running on a Wednesday instead of a Friday was like throwing a suitcase full of money off the top of the QE2 bridge.

Why should Ipswich be that bothered? They are going to finish in the play offs anyway, not point risking too much. Everyone know these meetings are largely unimportant, it’s all about the play offs, that is what the league has been designed to be now.

Post world war 2 there was a shortage of riders, they didn’t resort to doubling up, they just made sure there were plenty of training schools to make more riders. Do away with all this overpriced crap they have on bikes now, run them to a budget so costs come down. Make the sport semi pro, back in the NL days riders had other jobs, likes of Moggo rode speedway as a hobby and it didn’t do him any harm. The current setup doesn’t work and will never work, trying something else won’t kill the sport, it’s dying anyway.

There was a clip the other week about chirping and Kelvin had no idea what it was, even I know what chirping the clutch is.

They run when they want and then wonder why no one turns up when it’s wet and cold at the end of the season and matches have to be got on, it’s because the public have been trained that speedway can’t take place unless it’s been baking hot for three days before hand.

Any track could reopen if someone was prepared to throw money at it, problems only arise if you would be looking at it from a self sufficient business point of view. I would love Arena Essex (the venue) to come back but unless someone is willing to give Google 12 million plus for the land, it’s never going to happen. Thurrock Hammers could happen if land was found that was available for a few hundred thousand.

I like to think the stars of yesterday were better all round motorcyclists than those of today, (bar a few exceptions) certainly were more prepared to race tracks which were far from perfect, and still rode them to a high standard. I would have loved to have seen Darcy Ward on an upright though, I think that kid would have been even better.

Seen heat 13 on you tube, good race until Bomber went off the blue groove then it was all over, might as well have tracks be eight feet wide when it’s like that because going any further out and you just go backwards.

It goes to show just how good the NSS is that it’s so hard to them ride it effectively, some tracks you put two riders side by side and there is no room to pass no matter how fast you are, the NSS is a dream for real racers who can move the bike. Can you imagine how Mark Loram and Joe Screen would have done on this track.

At one point I’m sure the idea of having TV money was so that clubs could discount the prices and attract more to come, the benefit to them being it would look better on TV and attract new supporters but alas they got greedy and wanted both the TV money and keep gate prices high.

Thing is, I have seen quite a few clips online from Ipswich over the last few seasons, dust isn’t something that springs to mind like other tracks I could mention that are always dry as a bone.

I think it just really shows where British Speedway is now, riders can ride when they want and no one outside a few fans will question it. It doesn’t help the integrity but then I guess it doesn’t have much left anyway, this match is a dead rubber as are most matches in this league, the only ones which count are the play offs and each team being equal has a 68% chance of making it, and this season it’s nearer to 84%