IainB

It's still better than anything served up at Leicester

And to be honest it's got nothing to do with "Tai / Rosco - Team GB 2020"

How many ambulances do they have at Birmingham?

I also go to Peterborough quite often, for a fix of proper Speedway, and this year their meetings have always run at the same pace and from a 7:30 start, I've usually been away by 9pm. Has that just been co-incidence that all the different refs have kept to the same time scheduling, putting the 2 minute warning on as soon as the riders from the previous race have cleared the track... or maybe it's just been the same ref at all of the meetings? ... And it was a different ref for the 2nd meeting at Leicester on Saturday evening

To get back on topic, I thought it was interesting that on the BT GP coverage Rosco never really mentioned Woffy... it seemed to be a bit of a Jason Doyle love in with him. I don't know if he said anything after the meeting as I stopped watching after the final. I always thought that Rosco was a bit of a happy go lucky kind of character, from reports of him during his riding days but the more and more I see of him on the TV now he's managing he seems to always be very defensive of criticism, always turning a conversation around to defend his position on what he thinks people might be saying

flagrag- Thanks for the info, you're a lot more informative than the club sometimes. If that is the case about clearing the pits and warming the bikes up, why did it still take nigh on 45 minutes? There should have only been 8 riders in the pits by heat 15 anyway, the 4 that were in it and 2 reserves for each team. This means that for Leicester to run a double header, at the pace they run meetings, it's going to take around 4 and a quarter hours, as I've already said a lot of fans only have a 3 and a half hour window with the parking. At least I now know that a double header is not feasible for me to attend. As for the inadequate medical cover, again, treatment for a fallen rider on the track is of course acceptable and expected, what is not acceptable is for there to be inadequate medical cover once the rider has been removed from the track for the meeting to continue. Anyway, do we know how the lad is? I can't find any news on him anywhere

Well, it's certainly going to be a consideration, i.e. if the weather looks dodgy or there's loads of juniors in a team. I'll allow a track 1 fiasco a year... this is Leicester's 3rd. Honestly there's been 2 stand out, memorable, for the right reasons, matches this year, Eastbourne and Glasgow... the rest have been instantly forgettable

Yes, at least 1... me

I've seen a number of promoters at various tracks and a lot of the time they don't even seem to be interested in the actual racing. I've seen Bates and DH wandering around the terraces at Leicester and not even stop to watch the racing... you've got to wonder why they do it

why on earth it took them nearly 45 minutes to get the 2nd match on is beyond belief

Nope, do you have any idea how many more people won't return to Speedway while this continues to happen?

I wonder why they need to be in the pit bays to warm the bikes up and this couldn't have been done outside in the paddock area. But like you say 2 matches (30 minutes racing, 90 mins with 2 minute warnings) can't be done in 4 hours, it's been attempted twice, failed both times... at least I'll know in future

I don't know, you tell me, how ever many it takes to keep the meeting running... keeps happening at Leicester doesn't it. I've never run a Speedway track, I'm just the bloody mug that keeps turning up every week expecting things to be better!

it doesn't matter if it's serious (back, head etc) or not (wrist, collarbone etc), any trip to hospital at Leicester, even for a member of the (dwindling) crowd is going to hold a meeting up for an hour, and at the pace Leicester run their meetings, possibly force an abandonment because of the curfew. Like you say, Speedway is a dangerous sport, bikes no brakes at high speed, it's not rugby, football or other sports, it's barely a sport at all. If you're expecting punters to turn up at £20 a pop on the pretence of putting on a professionally run event this can't be allowed to continue.

yes £4 more, £20

I think it was nearer 9pm

- Real name (first name only if you wish) Iain - Age 48 - Location Leicester - What do you do for a living Self Employed Database Developer - Club you support Coventry - what got you into speedway The noise, the smell - best speedway moment Chris Harris British GP win - worst speedway moment Erik Gundersen crash Bradford 1989 - Favourite speedway rider and why Hans Nielsen, he had it all, could make a start, when he missed it you could always guarantee a good race and pulled a mean wheelie - most disliked speedway rider and why any rider that starts playing up about racing conditions when there's nothing wrong - what do you enjoy other than speedway F1, Films - social media links (if you wish to connect with other members). there's nothing social about social media

So Leicester continue to run with inadequate medical cover as another meeting is abandoned and another healthy crowd is sent home short changed and another proportion of fans will not return...

Well this was an evening of 2 halfs... or should I say 1 half and 2 fifteenths. Oh how I wish I'd left after the first match as so many others did, which was pretty good, the result was in doubt until the very end, lions put on a fighting come back, Scott Nicholls is a joy to watch around BP and Glasgow pretty much threw it away on the last bend of the last lap in heat 14. So after the first match I was quite looking forward to watching the cubs in action, I've never seen NL racing before so was quite intrigued as to what the standard would be and Cradley, as a long established NL team, I thought was quite a draw. The Lions promotion had started an hour earlier, and again for the 2nd double header this season ran the first meeting at normal (a snails) pace, with no seeming urgency to get the match completed, no flexibility to do the track grades when there's a natural break, some heats not even being put on 2 minutes and a couple of long gaps between races even when there were no riders having 2 races on the trot. Then we were told that the 2nd meeting would start after a short break... 45 minutes later after a swarm of tractors had tried to polish the turd that is the BP track, and was down to the base again in places, the 2nd meeting started. Well if that is the standard of NL racing, you can keep it. Admittedly I only saw 2 races, but if CL racing is riders following the leader 20 yards apart you can double it for NL. The quality of it didn't seem as good as the old 6 heat style second half's clubs used to run back in the 80's/90's And then the final nail in the coffin, again for the 2nd time this season, at Leicester inadequate medical cover. I say the 2nd time but it's probably more as the promotion still clearly have learnt nothing from the Redcar match in terms of medical cover and it looks like they're still running with 1 ambulance. They've also learnt nothing from the Sheffield/Stoke double header in terms of the pace of a meeting. No doubt the usual people will be on here again saying, nothing could be done, the first match was run as fast as possible and that the medical cover is adequate. Does the person that actually runs the meeting live in the same time dimension as the rest of us? Do they not realise that a lot of people use the Tesco BL car park and there is a 4 hour limit? factor in a 15 minute walk to and from the arena, then a double header HAS to be run in under 3 and a half hours Max. It became quite clear after the snails pace first match and then the 45 minute interval that the 2nd meeting was never going to finish as soon as it eventually started, especially with the Cubs running R/R and as soon as I saw the ambulance come onto the track after the heat 3 crash I decided to leave. It was quite a sad thing to see fans again streaming out of the stadium during a meeting and it's not the first time I've seen this at Leicester. As far as double headers are concerned I will not be attending any more. For the second time this season the Lions fans have been forced to subsidise the cubs and both times the cubs match has not taken place and both times there were quite healthy crowds, many of whom will not return.

I noticed that again... I'm amazed nobody kicked off about it... cue Cook and Schlein at the same meeting

And I'd build a housing estate on the land of the promoter that sold Leicester's Blackbird Road site to developers... Oh, hang on a minute

Great sentiments and 10 years ago maybe, but the Rugby have moved out because they can't afford it so there's no way Speedway will be able to afford it. I think the ideal use for Odsal will probably be landfill... it's the right shape

A lot of tracks struggle to run an actual meeting properly... there's no way they're going to be able to handle all this new fangled streaming stuff!

He does seem to have some beef with Tatum and hardly a commentary goes by without him having a snipe... but I agree, I thought English maybe his second language

Perhaps they should draft Havvy in as he can usually be found during a GP making bitter and twisted comments on Twitter about how he should be commentating instead of Kelvin Tatum