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Speedway Farce - Play Off


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7 hours ago, DBP said:

Don't have a problem with the play offs but it should be a separate tournament called league shield as an example sure someone could come up with a better title

The team that finishes top of the league should be crowned league champions

Rugby league also has play offs but at least the team finishing top gets a trophy 

Basketball takes the same sensible approach.

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I have always called them the P.Offs  (and you can guess what my P means. Totally ridiculous driven only by the TV folks who want to televise the two meetings that decide who is the " top team" in the season.

Decided on wet tracks in early winter, teams patched up with gusts due to injuries, all decided on a one off (or two off) set of meetings. Fine if its the KO Cup thats a knock out meeting, but teams performances over the season count for nought. With postponements and racing on off nights the meetings are a nightmare to organise. Rule fiddling to get fixtures P.Offs meetings agreed before the league fixtures are completed,  Leicester's boglands track always seems to feature, Poole demanding that they have the second leg at home ...all causing fixture planning havoc and frankly devaluing the entire season jsut to win the P.Offs. 

If your are unlucky enough not to qualify for the P. Offs (its not easy with only 7 teams starting out in the race) then you season finishes some time in August .

 

They'll never go cos' the TV people demand that they have a P.Off to make good viewing .. but why not still have League Champions, and the P.FFs could be renamed the TV Trophy or summat similar??

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Unfortunately Britain has gone Totally North American now.......Yep, they started this.....Baseball, Hockey, Basketball you name it, all have P.offs (yes I like that).....

While they do have Trophy's etc for the winners of the leagues, if you ask anyone, who won the league last year, I'll guarantee you very few would remember. But if you ask, for example, who won the "Stanley Cup" (Hockey) last year most would know.

And that is through all junior leagues also.......

Personally, I prefer winner of the league.....over and done with....However, the p.offs are here to stay, brings in good money!   AND, if p.offs were just another trophy, it would have no meaning and therefore NOT a money maker.

Edited by andout
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9 hours ago, Daniel Smith said:

If they need the hoo-ha finale, why not just have it as a one off Grand Final with 1st vs 2nd at a neutral stadium??

3rd vs 4th home & away for something like the Craven Shield??

5th - 7th have a creative 3 team tournament, once at each track??

They were gonna try that with the jubilee league, but changed their mind, probably because they thought they wouldn't get a good crowd for a neutral venue.

I don't think 1st & 2nd would be happy that everyone gets an extra home match except them!

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The problem without the play offs is the season can be done really early for several teams or a dominant team can limp over the line with little to no fan fare.

september is often a wet month so it almost needs a mini play off to decide the title end of August.

UK speedway in the top flight would be virtually redundant without TV so for me I’m happy to go along with the play offs like other sports do.

Works for me. 

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4 hours ago, stevebrum said:

The problem without the play offs is the season can be done really early for several teams or a dominant team can limp over the line with little to no fan fare.

september is often a wet month so it almost needs a mini play off to decide the title end of August.

UK speedway in the top flight would be virtually redundant without TV so for me I’m happy to go along with the play offs like other sports do.

Works for me. 

The first paragraph is exactly what happened this year anyway, the top four were basically confirmed after two months of the season. This year is a great example of how the league system would have worked with it going down to the last meeting of the season to determine the champions 

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3 hours ago, SpeedwayTShirts said:

Simple to fix, either just have a champion based on league position or if we must have the farce of the play off's simply call them the Play Off Champions and the real champions the League Champions.

Call them what you want most fans  just want to see regular speedway at their home track.It doesn’t really matter who are top or bottom of the  “guest” leagues.

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Without the play offs, the season would just "fizzle out"..

The "winners" of a league that has no real financial reward, nor any publicity outside its own bubble, will make their money (hopefully), by running a semi and a final that attracts maybe a couple of thousand more combined than they would have got for two "run of the mill" meetings at the end of the season...

Sheffield won the league (or was it Leicester?):D, but I would say that more attended their play off than would have attended their league winning meeting (in fact I don't think they even had one as Leicester losing gave them top spot didn't it?) . 

The Aces were pretty much guaranteed a play off place and, around the SON time, their crowds dipped noticeably, (probably due to the cost of the SON tickets), therefore the play offs brought in much needed revenue...

Not many speedway meetings (in the UK), look as if they "mean something" therefore the play offs at least give the sport some kind of purpose, and drama...

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15 hours ago, mikebv said:

Without the play offs, the season would just "fizzle out"..

Not many speedway meetings (in the UK), look as if they "mean something" therefore the play offs at least give the sport some kind of purpose, and drama...

These lines are not true, this year the season would not have 'fizzled out' at all as it would have gone down to the last meeting of the season. 

Your second line is because of the play offs! The reason the regular league meetings don't mean anything is because everyone is waiting until the end of the season. Why do we have a full regular season that means nothing for the sake of a handful of meetings that do mean something at the end of the season?

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On 10/2/2024 at 12:21 AM, andout said:

Unfortunately Britain has gone Totally North American now.......Yep, they started this.....Baseball, Hockey, Basketball you name it, all have P.offs (yes I like that).....

While they do have Trophy's etc for the winners of the leagues, if you ask anyone, who won the league last year, I'll guarantee you very few would remember. But if you ask, for example, who won the "Stanley Cup" (Hockey) last year most would know.

And that is through all junior leagues also.......

Personally, I prefer winner of the league.....over and done with....However, the p.offs are here to stay, brings in good money!   AND, if p.offs were just another trophy, it would have no meaning and therefore NOT a money maker.

I know it's not North American but the sport that I think has the most similarities to Speedway, although not immediately obvious, Cricket has resisted the need for pay offs. Their league competition the County Championship is decided in the good old fashioned way, they don't get bogged down with re-staging weather effected matches either... but, who cares, other than those playing, who wins? The rest of the season is made up of more high profile, media friendly competitions, The Hundred, Blast, Internationals etc. The County Championship is almost used as a feeder system and is still there for the Cricket die hard to attend.

It's going to need somebody to stump up the money (a TV broadcaster) to radically change the operating model of British Speedway, to have a month long festival of franchise Speedway attracting all of the worlds top stars. This particular horse has probably now bolted though when Sky dropped the Sport, instead of innovating the sport while all other sports were doing the same thing, Speedway just plodded along with the same old league system becoming less and less fit for purpose as each season went on.

Edited by IainB
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Strange, isn't it. Back in the times when I started going to Speedway (1965) we would go to Coventry (and away tracks) to watch a Speedway meeting, because we loved the sport. Whether Coventry were fighting for the League Title or fighting to avoid the wooden spoon, we still went to see a Speedway meeting, because we loved the sport.

We went to season opening (and closing) challenge matches to see a Speedway meeting because we loved the sport.

Nowadays it seems that others only want to see 'meaningful' meetings. To me, all Speedway meetings are meaningful, the result is just secondary.

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3 minutes ago, Gambo said:

Strange, isn't it. Back in the times when I started going to Speedway (1965) we would go to Coventry (and away tracks) to watch a Speedway meeting, because we loved the sport. Whether Coventry were fighting for the League Title or fighting to avoid the wooden spoon, we still went to see a Speedway meeting, because we loved the sport.

We went to season opening (and closing) challenge matches to see a Speedway meeting because we loved the sport.

Nowadays it seems that others only want to see 'meaningful' meetings. To me, all Speedway meetings are meaningful, the result is just secondary.

Echo this through and through.

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1 hour ago, therefused said:

These lines are not true, this year the season would not have 'fizzled out' at all as it would have gone down to the last meeting of the season. 

Your second line is because of the play offs! The reason the regular league meetings don't mean anything is because everyone is waiting until the end of the season. Why do we have a full regular season that means nothing for the sake of a handful of meetings that do mean something at the end of the season?

The season fizzles out for the teams that have no chance of success..

The play offs at least keep them interested as fourth could end up champions..

And many meetings mean "nothing" not because of the play offs, as, if we didn't have them, they would still mean nothing as 7th v 6th won't have any major bearing on the the league..

"Dead Rubbers" are ten a penny when a league has no play offs..

The sport has very minimal coverage so a defined conclusion with "big" crowds, makes it look like it has relevance, and, therefore, may prick up some interest..

Sheffield winning the league when not riding wouldn't do that. Nor would Sheffield winning the league with only their fans in attendance.. 

Tonight, hopefully, there will be 100 or so Aces fans there to add that so important missing ingredient to a domestic speedway meeting...

Atmosphere...

I will see the rest of them on the first bend later....  

 

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