marko

I agree whole so strongly with the letter in the star and discussed above i would like to copy it here Verbatim (I hope this is allowed because i feel that it is something all fans should see regardless of whether they subscribe to the Star or not) Having taken on the role of sponsor and manager of Niklas Porsing, this season has been an eye opener to me, seeing the sport from more than a fans point of view. I have looked after Niklas’ affairs in the UK and Europe this year and driven him to each Elite track and from this experience, my belief is that British speedway is attempting suicide. The debacle at Poole last week has only confirmed this belief further. Having arrived at Poole, myself, Niklas and Robert Lambert walked the track at 5pm Monday. Yes, rain had fallen throughout the day but at this time it was dry with no more rain forecast. The track was soaked and the track staff were attempting to blade off some water and some shale or, at this time, liquid slurry. It was on the first bend that Niklas, as all riders do, toed the track for grip. The track immediately broke up creating a four inch deep hole, down to a base of loose gravel. As other riders inspected the hole, it was obvious this hole would continue opening up and so would other areas leading into bend two. The whole area of loose track could have been repaired by filling the holes with fresh shale and compacting it. The rest of the track was not perfect due to the rain, but would have been made satisfactory to race. Sadly, it was found that Poole do not have a supply of shale, so the holes were filled with unsuitable gravel. Track staff then attempted to pack it with a small van running over the area, I’m sorry, but i thought speedway was a professional sport? This was so amateurish. It is meant to be the ‘Elite’ League. As we know, all the riders deemed the track unsafe and the meeting was postponed until Wednesday. The forecast for the week including Wednesday, was dreadful. However, Niklas and I set off for Poole at 11am from Norfolk and drove through torrential rain on the M25 and M3 with dark clouds ahead of us towards Poole. The weather radar was showing heavy rain at Poole at this time and continuing into the afternoon. We drove on, expecting a call to say the meeting was off, but none came. We arrived at the track at 3pm, where we was told all was in order and the track would be fit. Then we saw the track, with the inside of the third bend flooded. Even without more expected rain, it was obvious the track would not be ready. To have it ready (without further rain), all the track surface, down to the base, would have had to have been bladed off and then new, dry shale laid and prepared. One saviour may well have been track covers, but you also need good drainage to enable the water to flow off. As a fan, having seen the forecast, I would not have travelled. But Niklas does not have that choice. In my view, the Poole management, knowing the situation of the track and the weather forecast, and with riders and fans from kings Lynn having a 200 mile journey, should have made the call off decision before lunch, not at 4pm. Some say Sky TV are to blame but what influence Sky have, I do not know. But whether it is Sky or the tracks management, decisions have to be made earlier going on the known facts. British Speedway is dying! And i think I know why. If you re-call a couple of decades back, the Bradford football disaster, Hillsborough, Heysel and hooliganism. Football was dying then, fans didn’t want to go to be poorly entertained, possibly attacked and stand in run down stadiums. But football woke up and business people invested in the sport. Facilities were improved and football knew it had to entertain. Look at where football is now, It’s not perfect, but the facilities for fans are excellent and speedway would love even a tenth of the money thrown at it. Without fans, either paying to attend a meeting, buying TV subscriptions, buying food/drink/merchandise at stadiums, you don’t have a sport. I could go through my thoughts on each Elite track I have visited but here are just a few comments which spring to mind. Swindon hasn’t had a coat of paint since electricity was connected to replace the gas lamps; Coventry, I have never seen such disgusting toilets and changing rooms; Belle Vue, track preparation was a man standing on the back of an old harrow to weigh it down. I could go on. Promoters wonder why crowds are so low but perhaps they are because of poor racing as no effort is put into creating fair, safe, race tracks for good, exciting and competitive racing and offering fans run down, poor facilities. Set race nights would help, so fans can plan in advance. Get rid of the ridiculous guest rider system and have squads. I want to see the best, not the also-rans. It would be easy to go on and on. Speedway needs to be marketed to bring in the fans, kids love it. It used to be a great family sport but you cannot market the dross we have at the moment. Take someone new to a speedway meeting and they will probably enjoy the racing but won’t come back! Why? They don’t want to go to a dump! The sport needs to look forward. With insight and investment, we could have some stadiums like Poland and fill these with 5,000 plus fans each week. But sadly promoters and management will only look after their own interests, seeing no further than the end of their noses. I’m sorry but in a few years time, without change, people will be saying, “do you remember that motorcycle sport, what was it called?”

I fully agree with the OP and in fact suggested something similar only a week or two ago. Poole have finished top so the challenge is there for Pirates fans! regardless of whether you win the play offs, will you be clubbing together to give the club something to honor their top of the table finish? You claim to be the biggest club with the biggest fan base, well lets see you set an example then! Please do not come back and say it does not matter because you will win the play offs anyway, this is not about the play offs! its about recognizing that a team has over the course of a season has out performed their competition. The BSPA wont ever do anything officially for fear that it might take some of the gloss of the play offs which might then put the sky deal in jeopardy?

Any news on the future of Iwade? Not been down there for a couple of years but always great fun and Graham and Co were always so very welcoming and helpful, it would be a travesty if this establishment had to close.

Doubling up is a bitter sweet scenario, we all want to see less guest riders and teams to be formed with as many regulars as possible but for the younger brigade the only way they will get better is to ride, there have been British riders in the Elite who choose not to double up and it clearly affected them because they simply were not able to ride enough to maintain race fitness or sharpness. Some sort of squad system might help but even going back to the shared doubling positions would help, so if rider "A" was not available maybe rider "B" would be, either way they are both riders who the fans can align with as their own. Also with the fast track system i would like it to be scaled down to one rider per team who's position would also be shared or maybe go back to the 8 man 18 heat heat format where riders 7 & 8 were always protected but the remainder in the main rode against each other quite equally. The problem with that format though would be it would cost more as you have eight riders to pay out on both in terms of travelling and points money. Regardless of the amount of fixtures, a squad system of some sort really needs to be looked at because currently within the EL you have some riders riding in three or four countries and others who maybe only riding here on a semi regular basis.

Oh don't get me started on proggys! they are nearly all as bad as each other but to use my local track as an example, Lakeside charge £3 for theirs and you get 32 odd pages, my local non league football team produce a proggy that is twice the size and content but only costs £2.50 and their crowds are often less than Lakesides so its not like they are getting revenue elsewhere. Speedway always marks itself up to be needlessly expensive.

The best thing that can happen to the sport in general is for everyone to stop attending, the promoters work out they can no longer keep their little toy going without the fans and either start listening too them or give it up in which case the fans on mass can club together and run the operation themselves similar to what was done on the Isle of Wright, and what has also been repeated at some clubs in non league football, it does not have to have the top expensive riders, speedway is speedway, credibility and legitimacy is far more important and frankly this is what the sport has had driven out of it by the current crop of idiots who run it, yes i called you idiots, what you going to do? ban me from attending your track? i could not give a watsit, i stopped attending months ago but i am buggered if i am going sit back, keep quiet and let you ruin something i once loved to the point i eat, drank and slept speedway and would drive my car in all weathers in the faintest of hopes i might see some racing. The clubs don't belong to the promoters, they belong to us the fans, and we as fans deserve a whole lot better! Some promoters were indeed once fans themselves or at least claimed to be but they seemed to have forgotten about that and now treat people once their equals with utter contempt. People will say how can this work? well every track has at least 500 really really skin deep hardcore fans, if 500 can donate £100 as a sort of shareholding stake per year then that's 50k a season, surely enough to run something no matter how basic.

Great rider but they need to make an example of him and ban him from all racing for the rest of 2014, it won't affect Poole because i am sure they could get KK or Holder back in his place.

Naturally this will be seen as anti Leicester but their bloke is pretty bad, i will also say though one of my pet hates any presenter who talks over races or the finish of races, Let the riders do the talking on the track then you can chat about it afterwards, by talking over the action you are taking some of the attention away from the riders and its them people pay to see, no one goes to hear a presenter talk! On the flip side can only agree with others regarding Kevin Long, very charismatic and intelligent and another worth a mention is Craig Saul, some complain he speaks to fast but i never have a problem hearing what he says.

Track was not great but scoreline kept things more than interesting, i think it was probably the hot weather on the day baking the track plus with practice earlier it would have been near impossible to work a track you would normally see, it can only take so much punishment plus you keep on top of the watering whilst practice is on. Never expected Australia to come third although i did find it amusing because they are such bad losers and we always seem to take extra pride as a nation when getting one over them. Keep tactical sub but lose the joker, you don't need both especially with teams of only four riders and it should also be for when your eight behind the leaders not six.

Leigh Adams & Josh Larsen 1993 for Arena Essex, those two were paired together at least three times a night under the 18 heat format and team rode to countless maximum 5-1's that season, best pairing i have ever seen in a Hammers race jacket from 1988 to present.

All i am saying is a little bit of common sense would not have gone amiss, its a one off event and you want to encourage people to come and watch, the pricing structure should be realistic, i have researched what other clubs charge and if you add in the standard £3 for a program that would make it the most expensive entry cost for a meeting of this standard and in some cases it would be up to £3 more than what other NL clubs charge all in and this is only a challenge match! I know they have costs to cover etc and i am sure this will be well attended and good luck to them but i can't help feel they are taking the loyal fans for granted a little by charging what they are. If you feel its a fair price then fair play to you, we all have the freedom to choose how we spend our money.

So not content with already being the joint most expensive Elite League track to attend (adult with program) they have now set their stool out to be the most expensive National League track in the country and this is not even a proper official fixture, just a challenge match. Even more so unjustified when so many of the support likely to be attracted to this meeting will be South of the river and therefore having to pay toll charges before they even get in the stadium.

For a few short hours we can forget about the broken Elite League, poor stadia, poor presentation and enjoy Speedway how it should be.

Gustrow track and place it on the Essex county showground

As i was there throughout back in 1991 aged just 18 i have many fond memories of that season and that team was pretty awesome, imo yes it was better than the Edinburgh team this season, Karger and Petersen in particular both subsequently raced back in a higher division with the club and were heat leader performers in what was then a much harder first division. Backed by Galvin, Moggo, Pratt, Hurry and White it was a very formidable side in the end but it was not the same 1-7 from start to finish. I am also aware of the legend that is the Newcastle team of 1982 but i don't know enough to make a judgment call on that side in comparison to Arena 1991.

Back in the day when i was a child and long before team suits were invented i used to get my copy of the star and get a family member to show me a picture of a rider in action whilst covering the name underneath and i would tell which rider it was, not against team suits, they look very smart but it did make every rider unique, you can still tell them apart a little thanks to most keeping their bikes individual.

I love this track, i wish we had one like that in our leagues, i think Mildenhall used to be like this or very similar?

A good example of something personal to a rider was when we (Lakeside) had Christian Hefonbrock and they used Wunderbar by temple tudor as his theme. PK has when at Wolves i think they used to play super trooper by Abba, again it works well. All i am saying is it would not hurt meeting presentation if a bit of thought went into things like this because it seems bar the odd exception clubs have just taken the exact same seven songs and given them to their riders at random instead of thinking what would be a apt song for this guy. I like the old school way of doing things where different clubs had a different way of doing presentation, do Rye House for example still come out to "those magnificent men"? i know its not a great song but its an association, Hackney always used to come out to the "magnificent seven". I will take my hat off to Kings Lynn because they come out to "Written in the Stars" which is not only a good song but also very appropriate.

Having now experienced various speedway tracks via the likes of sky and bet365 Why is it that all the tracks all seem to play the same stuff? I don't mean the music in between the heats but the music chosen for riders when they win a race or music for when a team gets a 5-1 or the music before the first race. Did the bspa simply say to all clubs here is a load of different songs, you must use these? Why cant clubs be more unique, the only exception i found is Davey Watt's heat winning theme ("David Watts" by the Kinks) How many riders for example have or have had Blink 182 "Girl at the rock show" as their theme? Everyone plays the same thing, no uniqueness, no imagination.

We have a lot of well meaning hardcore fans on here but unfortunately and this is not going to be a popular comment but thanks to a lack of order and moderation by those that run the site it has fallen to a level where arguments and abuse are the things which people outside the BSF associate it with, multiple aliases etc etc its no wonder that the BSF has become a dirty word especially to those who run the sport. There is so much wrong with British Speedway but the trouble is because the BSF is associated with a negative slant, promoters assume that any negative comment made on here is being made for the sake of continuing that negativity, i am sure most if not all people involved in running the sport don't read it anyway. The BSF is really the daily sport equivalent of a news paper stand and it might be too far gone for it to be turned around into a creditable voice of the people.

Kelvin said he has a look a track, hmmm sounds like they are in a studio though and probably not even in that country.

Excellent thread as its so easy to miss bits of action with so many sports channels around not too mention everything else, i have 12 sports channels and that does not even include sky sports F1 or or any of the horse racing channels etc

Here are some that spring instantly to mind. Sean Wilson Andre Compton Martin Dugard Richard Hall Andrew Silver Bjarne Pedersen Nicki Pedersen Josh Auty Cam Woodward

Wrestling is very much like speedway on sky tv in that results are predetermined before hand, all in the interests of whats best for business of course.

Can only see the situation we had last season getting worse with now the potential to have both reserves and maybe two out of the five main team riders being absent to ride for other clubs, record season for guests and rider replacement?