marko

Still plenty of time before tapes up but the early signs do not look good, M25 is doing what it does best on a Friday, standing room only.

Firstly the positives = its a lovely day with zero chance of rain, On paper the Fen Tigers should give the Hammers a very close match. Negatives = The track could be on the dry and dusty side, its bank holiday so the traffic is expected to be heavy with the M25 in full on disruption mode, Hammers are decimated and guests are not going to attract fans.

Swindon are the top team this season but in the overall scheme of things i think even 2nd division Arena Essex from 1991 could take them over two legs, The Hammers sent both top flight Eastbourne and Coventry packing that season in the British League cup. But they don't need to be the best team ever to win the league this season, just being better than the rest will be enough, it still counts as a league title.

You will sleep just fine until it happens to you in a fixture that does matter, say a cup final or a league decider, then you might feel slightly different, challenge match or not, it's the thin edge of the wedge.

Would love to know how you can do that as we have all seen in the past riders being dragged into the tapes because of a slipping clutch. I guess he could be using a warming of the tyre technique? One thing is for sure though, if any ref's read this they will be looking out for it more, its not something you see very often at all. I do remember seeing it in the past at Arena where a rider done it in every heat he rode and the wheel rear spoiler was pattened in a way which made it easy to spot (not for the ref though) Don't ask me who it was, it was a long time ago, I am thinking early to mid 90's when i stood on the home straight more to left of the tapes, so i had a really clear view of the rear part of the bikes.

Taken from the BBC news site If your intending to go to Lakeside Friday better allow plenty of time for your journey. When will be busiest?According to the RAC, Friday afternoon from about 15:00 to 19:00 is likely to be the busiest as drivers heading off for the weekend mix with the normal commuting traffic.

This is what i said back in February "The key for this team will be the presence of Ben and Zach, the latter could have clashes when riding with Swindon and there was a rumour going around at the COS (celebration of speedway) yesterday that Ben is lined up to be a Rye House rider once the first set of averages are produced"

That's a massive miss for the Hammers, you simply cannot replace that sort of scoring power at home, will need the bottom three to really step up and I personally don't think the have the ability to do that. Could be an interesting meeting though if Boxall's clutch continues to effectively give him "rolling starts" and I believe Tom Bacon has a reputation for jumping too?

15.2.9 When the Green Start Light is illuminated, no movement of the motorcycle is permitted, nor any additional time allowance or outside assistance can be given.

Your happy to condone cheating then?

This clip is on youtube, shows quite blatently that Boxalls rear wheel was spinning (slipping clutch) prior to the tapes going up and should have been stopped as the bike was moving before the tapes went up and this gave him a clear advantage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81uwlzja3MQ

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Durno has always been a idiot of a ref, end of. As soon as Nige and Kevin said this should be all four back, i said yeah but this is Chris Durno!

How can promoters expect fans to turn up when they won't even turn up themselves?

Tonight could be the night where BT sport ask themselves what on earth are we doing covering this shambles that is British Speedway.

I know i joke about Cook not travelling further North than Watford but Mildenhall, really?

Heat 13 is on YouTube and no blue groove in sight so hopefully they are going in the right direction with the track. The Hammers tail end is killing them sometimes and from what I have heard I am pretty surprised there has not been a greater turnover of riders at the tail end, at this level giving different riders a chance to show what they could do can only be a good thing.

Lakeside to win by 2, track to have a huge blue groove on both bends by heat 3, any passing will go unseen due to the large plumes of dust.

British Speedway is the proverbial sinking ship and those that run it have no idea how to do damage control, yet alone save it. You only have to look at a random fixture and see how many guests and rider replacements are in use for riders who are not even injured to know the sport in this country has lost all CREDABILITY it is a JOKE! Forget about where we are on the world stage, it's pointless, the sport in this county needs to back to being amateur/part time like non league football, model it on the old National League of the late 80s, good number of clubs, variety of fixtures and nearly all of the riders were your own and only rode for your team and when they were not riding they had part time jobs to supplement their income. Ok that won't work for every club, but we need something like that for a few seasons as a solid base to build from. Further to that I would even consider breaking away from the FIM in order to bring some sort of standardised equipment in, not to make it fairer but to reduce costs, reduce that and the riders will earn more, the promoters will have less overheads and could then make the product cheaper or better still reinvest in it, something that has never been done.

Well I've never been to Poole for many years so I can't claim to witness this BUT there are Lakeside fans who have told me in recent seasons that they experienced some of this type of Poole behaviour and they also claimed they saw some Poole fans openly smoking illegal substances on the premises, no idea if that was true, I am merely quoting here.

Jason Edwards I think will be good but he is one for 2018 I expect. Any team who can unearth a Dan Bewley type will always be onto a winner at this level, it's about finding these gems that might not always be too obvisous.

Heat 15 is on YouTube, Aryes looked pretty uncomfortable and got passed by the Hammers pair quite easily. Sounds like it was a good meeting though, I thought Eastbourne might have been more of a threat given their form but DA scored more than I think Baseby would of as I recall someone telling me a couple of seasons back it's not a track he likes much. The Eagles certainly have a good mix of riders though as Jake Knight won't have many poor meetings like that an Brennan and Bates seem to be making great strides. Hammers have Bowtell coming on leaps too, they just need one reserve to light the place up.

Oh my goodness, yeah you think back to a time when the old National League has 16-18 teams, you would at least one koc match, one round of a fours qualifier, a spring or Autumn triangle involving local teams but normally Hackney and Rye House, a pairs meeting, the huge supernational marathon (before promoters butchered individuals) if you had less than 22/23 home meetings in a season, you felt hard done by.

"We fell on our sword and decided this was for the best" Same sword that was fallen upon last season in the play off against Belle Vue.

Now your being silly, everyone knows which Kennet he was on about, clearly it was Barney