IainB

He'll be challenging Mick Horton at this rate!

Thanks... Blummin wild cards! Don't get me started lol... I really can't be bothered

Nope... I'm still none the wiser

Any ideas on how he got selected? As it could have been any number of riders.

Who's negotiated their TV contract Frotte Russellski?

And there go all of our "rising stars"!

It can't be that promising either when you've seen your promoter clear off to another club

With Eurosport taking over the operation of the GP's it makes me wonder if we've seen the last GP at Cardiff and other venues similar. Don't know if the Cardiff contract has expired or if it's been null and voided by the circumstances of the last 2 years?

I think in reality racing doesn't have that much to do with attracting a crowd. BV can't even get close to filling their place for anything other than a SoN event. While people, including myself, turn up every week to watch the cr@p served up at Leicester. It's all about credibility, the SoN is a credible event, held on the best track in the country, with the best facilities, with credible pairs/teams racing against each other.

You could almost substitute the word Rugby for Speedway. Didn't they re-brand to Super League around 25 years ago? Time moves on you need to keep re-inventing yourself to gain new interest. I doubt many RFL punters stopped going when the Super League was introduced and it probably attracted a few more in.

A bit rude and uncalled for... the fact was they were praising him on the pa system during the interval as the rest of the crowd were washing there eyes out with water!

Strange as they were blowing smoke up his bottom over the pa last week. Not surprised though

Who do you fill the top league 2nd strings with then? The only way out of the mess they've got themselves in is to reduce team sizes and fast track the kids

I don't really know what happened to the Speedway Podcasts, we used to be quite well looked after in that respect but a lot of them seem to have stopped producing content at the end of last season and just before this season started. I've stumbled across a couple of new ones: The Five-1 Speedway Show has some excellent guests on and there are around 36 episodes to listen to and The Speedway Tavern, which I haven't listened to yet. I seem to remember this already existing but it's only just appeared on Google Podcasts. Is the Speed Freaks show available on any Podcast providers as audio, or is it video only? If not are there any plans to make the audio available as a podcast?

Blimey, even my YouTube channel has over 600 subscriptions and I've only ever marketed it on here... I've just looked at the Speedway Great Britain channel, they're subscribed to some, erm, strange channels!!! Rob Godfrey must be a Sophie Ellis Bexter fan! You're right, Speedway is good for people with a short attention span... the trouble is those 15 minutes are often crammed into 120 minutes with little else going on in the mean time.

You can add to that list: Steve Worrall Ritchie Worrall Danny King Richard Lawson Lewis Kerr Nick Morris Kyle Howarth Ulrich Ostergaard Michael Palm Toft Jake Allen Charles Wright

Was he "Flash"?

https://shop.gbspeedwayteam.com/

The question is, what is the NDL for? Is it to develop riders as the name suggests or is it to allow clubs that want to, to run at an affordable level? It should/could be both... it is clearly not a development league though as the higher leagues don't allow for that to happen

I have followed speedway for over 40 years and 20% back in the day from 2nd half's and the odd junior meeting may have been acceptable but from a league that has been designed and setup to develop new riding talent 20% to even just make it to an average level is a total disaster. You can't run a successful NDL without team spots being available in the higher leagues for those riders to progress into. And all these team spots are being taken by riders doubling down.

I've added to my original post I think since you replied... your 50% is actually nearer to 20% look at the riders lost to the sport! Those that went on to make any kind of career out of the sport: Kyle Howarth Jason Garrity* Steve Worrall Paul Starke Stefan Nielsen Tom Perry Ashley Morris Adam Roynon Lewis Kerr Todd Kurtz I've not done a deep analysis, just looked at who was riding in the 1st match of the season for each NDL home team. But as a DEVELOPMENT league that return is a disaster!

form is temporary, class is permanent, well perhaps that's not the correct phrase to use in this situation , but the Josh's were injured at the time of being dropped, these types of rider are the life blood of the sport in this country. Just look at the riders competing in the NDL 10 years ago and look at where they are now. Most of them are lost to the sport, where they should be solid 2nd strings in the sport instead we're relying on doubling up riders. Byron Bekker Scott Richardson Karl Mason Adam Mckinna Chris Widman Jack Hargreaves Mark Baseby Lewis Blackbird Ben Taylor Rob Branford Adam Allott Ryan Blacklock John MacPhail Barrie Evans Richard Franklin Darryl Ritchings Luke Chessell David Mason Ben Hopwood Marc Owen Brandon Freemantle Shane Hazelden Rob Smith Lee Smethills Brendan Johnson Tom Hill John Resch Darren Mallett Oliver Rayson Adam Lowe James Cockle Tom Stokes James Brundle Aaron Baseby Joe Jacobs Daniel Halsey Danny Stoneman Jay Herne Tom Young Jamie-White Williams Matt Bates David Gough Richard Andrews Paul Cooper Adam Wrathall Greg Blair Ashley Birks Oliver Greenwood Jaimie Pickard Gareth Isherwood Tim Webster Ben Reade National DEVELOPMENT League

Yes... was replaced with an Australian wasn't he? Doubling up countries

I'm 100% in the same situation as you, except I live in Leicester. I went to the Redcar re-opening match and the Leicester match, both times the track was unacceptably dusty, I may have gone along to this to support the sport in the city had the basics been done in either of these matches, as the basics weren't done, I'm sorry to say I shall stay at home and watch a movie.

Even in sports awash with money cost caps have been introduced, Messi has just left Barca, because of this, there's financial fair play in football, F1 has a cost cap (except for driver contracts) and have limitations on parts that can be used. I know in a lot of cases some of these aren't perfect and some people will say "ah but so and so did this and so and so did that"... but Speedway has nothing at all in place to try and control costs, the best thing they could introduce in recent years was the bond for when a poorly club inevitably goes bust. For me cost caps and running through a BSPL umbrella, with the best will in the world, ain't going to work. What has seemed to work fairly well in F1 (whether you agree with sporting penalties (grid penalties) or not) is the restriction on the parts that can be used. I was watching Talking Dirt the other day and AshTech is working with Mercedes F1 on a new part for a Speedway bike, won't make any difference to the racing yet when it's been developed ALL riders are going to need one. Technological advancement is part of the appeal of F1, for Speedway it shouldn't even be in the equation. I can't see how not running on a Saturday night in the Summer in favour of postponing the meeting to possibly a money losing double header in the Autumn helps the club... it very much looks like the writing is on the wall. Will they also be fining Eastbourne for what happened at Leicester on Saturday night if they do survive? It seems like the BSPL have stepped in too late, what happened on Saturday night should never have been allowed to happen. Maybe the BSPL should be running the club in the meantime on regular race nights, using their pay scales until the situation can be resolved, just postponing the matches helps nobody if there is a serious chance of the club being saved. I do worry that the Play-Off system, especially in the lower leagues, where it is not demanded by TV, has a detrimental effect on the financial viability of the sport. All for what? A bumper crowd at the end of the season for the successful clubs while the unsuccessful ones have shut up shop with 6 weeks of the season left. Clubs making changes left, right and centre mid season in a scramble to make the play offs for a possible season extension. In a traditional league campaign, you make your team at the beginning of the year according to your budget and you see where you finish at the end of the year with that budget, only replacing riders due to injury. When is the transfer deadline? I was once told on here that if you want to know how much a rider gets paid, ask them and if you want to know a clubs attendance, ask the turnstile operator. The trouble is the riders jobs aren't disappearing, not the top riders anyway, it's the lesser riders that are forced out, the journeymen that the sport relies on, even this season what's happened to Josh Auty, Josh Bates, Ty Proctor, Paul Hurry and probably others I can't think of right now.