Is It Finally Time For One League?

[The White Knight]

13 minutes ago, cowboy cookie returns? said:

However with all the cost cutting & watering down of the product has done nothing to improve the sport.

The fundamentals are broken & until the foundations on which the sport are changed nothing will work.

In fairness some of the best racing I’ve seen at Foxhall was in the old NL days 80/90 With out the super stars of the day.

There is so much wrong doubling up, guests, poorly prepared tracks, lack of investment, self interest, rocket ship equipment. All this detracts from the product & the credibility. 

How right you are. 1928 tracks with 2025 rocket ship bikes racing on them will not end well.

There are more and more injuries these days.

Is it any wonder?

 

[Diamonds85]

1 hour ago, cowboy cookie returns? said:

However with all the cost cutting & watering down of the product has done nothing to improve the sport.

The fundamentals are broken & until the foundations on which the sport are changed nothing will work.

In fairness some of the best racing I’ve seen at Foxhall was in the old NL days 80/90 With out the super stars of the day.

There is so much wrong doubling up, guests, poorly prepared tracks, lack of investment, self interest, rocket ship equipment. All this detracts from the product & the credibility. 

Too right. The whole make up of the sport needs a complete overhaul.

[1 valve]

On 7/12/2025 at 5:59 PM, PhilTheAce said:

Steachman said on BSN last night that it looks like it will be going 1 league next season. But 2 clubs are refusing that. 

Two clubs may not want one league for what ever their reasons, but if one league did come to pass (it wont) there will be more than two clubs required to drop out of the concept simply because of an insufficient number of riders available to make up teams for the current existing clubs.
That is of course unless the sport is absolutely dumbed down beyond all recognition to have teams of 5 riders, with no English, Australian, Swedish, Danish & Polish riders from the Ekstraliga and final numbers topped up by riders from NDL level and similar. 

[singy13]

28 minutes ago, 1 valve said:

unless the sport is absolutely dumbed down beyond all recognition to have teams of 5 riders,

That would work.......and have enough heats to allow all riders 5 rides each (instead of 4 as now)to make extra cash.

[ouch]

Maybe we could adopt the same thinking the health service used during Covid and entice retirees back. 

Heat 15

Morton

Lyons

Dugard

Loram

I’m sure there is dafter ideas circulating around Rugby. 

[Eagle77]

3 hours ago, singy13 said:

That would work.......and have enough heats to allow all riders 5 rides each (instead of 4 as now)to make extra cash.

I would have thought that with 5 rider teams each rider would need to have 6 rides each to make up a 15 heat match... 5 riders x 6 rides = 30 rides divided by 2 = 15 heats...

[singy13]

1 hour ago, Eagle77 said:

I would have thought that with 5 rider teams each rider would need to have 6 rides each to make up a 15 heat match... 5 riders x 6 rides = 30 rides divided by 2 = 15 heats...

Better at maths than me marra.

[marko]

Lots of mention of 1996 and how it was a failure and it was, not helped for me personally by the fact I was watching London Lions in that league and that was a disaster in itself.

But let’s talk about the gaps in class between merging two divisions, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as bad as it was in 96 because so many riders in the prem still ride in the second division.

At London you had Leigh Adam’s as the top rider and a very young David Mason as the number 7, David would have struggled to average 3 in a stand alone second division.

From memory some clubs struggled to field a genuine number one, the Scottish Monarchs I think was one of them.