PANDERING TO POLAND

[adonis]

Since the british leagues are pandering to Poland , exactly how many riders  are there riding here ,who wouldn't be if we went back to 7 days a week speedway . and and not being dictated to who can and cannot  ride on any given date ? 

 

Edited 9 hours ago by adonis

[cowboy cookie returns?]

Possibly 18 to 22 depending one way or another.

The British league really has no option but to go along with what Poland wants.

We have run our league structure into the ground while the Poles have made theirs something that people want to invest in.

I am hopeful that Mayfield might be the ones to stop the rot & turn the fortunes of uk speedway around but it’s a long road. 

[THE DEAN MACHINE]

The ultimate answer is stop complaining about what other countries/businesses are doing and focus on what you are doing wrong and strive be the best at the job and then that problem goes away 

[mikebv]

31 minutes ago, THE DEAN MACHINE said:

The ultimate answer is stop complaining about what other countries/businesses are doing and focus on what you are doing wrong and strive be the best at the job and then that problem goes away 

Should have gone it alone at least a decade ago...

I was bored the other day, (retirement can do this to you), and found myself looking at the British U21 Final Results from around a decade ago, as I was curious to see how many riders are left in the sport...

As "there not enough riders to have one league", obviously...

Very, very few from around 2014 - 2018 (I didn't check any further), are still riding..

Some of the names, quite high up in the scoring, were unknown to me, and had beaten some of the riders still riding, and doing "OK" today...

These lads would now be 28 - 33 ...

Surely a fair % of them would have developed to the required level (they definitely weren't " wobblers"), if they had been given team places, rather than giving those places to journeyman foreigner after journeyman foreigner, who have ridden over here using a "revolving door" system...

The GP lads are great to watch, but even that can get boring, and certainly are not cost neutral over a season when you measure the revenue they bring in..

UK Speedway should simply have cut its cloth accordingly and opened their businesses on days that their potential highest amount of punters would come through the doors..

Probably too late to sort it now, ssdly...

[enotian]

Interesting bit of research. of course there's lots of variables like injuries but I reckon a fair few will just not have been able to make it pay and so you get into this ever decreasing circle where a small pool of riders can only make it pay only by taking all of the opportunities to make it pay. i.e. riding in multiple leagues.

I reckon you could do a similar analysis on the Polish U21 riders and lots of them will have disappeared from the sport. Probably more to do with how competitive it is over there though, in terms of how many U21 riders they have. I've said on here before if you want to get rid of doubling up in Britain there seems to be a load of Polish kids who are left without Polish clubs each season. Short term fix and probably not possible after Brexit?

whilst I don't disagree about British speedway sorting itself out I do think the world governing body need to do more to both protect the existing territories and expand into new territories. ultimately if everything becomes focussed on Poland that's what the sport will become...    a Polish sport that nobody else is bothered about.

easier said than done of course but I do think FIM need to look at how they assist the current pyramid and develop new ones. for a start stop dragging all sorts of riders all over Europe for all sorts of qualifiers that conflict with domestic leagues and appear to be costly for the riders. 

look at the cricket franchise system where those competitors often play of a number of franchises because the competitions are staggered to allow it. Have a month long event with 8 franchises with the top international riders supplemented by local riders. Have the UK one in June after the GP's. Have a Scandinavian one in July and a Polish one in August.  Take it to the USA and Australia over the winter. Like a travelling circus just without the clowns....    ....hopefully.  Then eventually look to expand it into new territories. Spain, Asia, South America.  There's loads of kids into motorbikes in those regions. They can't all make it to MotoGP but some could make a decent career as Speedway rider if the infrastructure and opportunity is there. The raw materials are out there but at the minute the flagship SGP series is reliant on the Poles developing talent which is more and more likely to be Polish...    ....and so the ever decreasing circle continues. It's basically a business with zero product development. 

[IainB]

8 minutes ago, enotian said:

Interesting bit of research. of course there's lots of variables like injuries but I reckon a fair few will just not have been able to make it pay and so you get into this ever decreasing circle where a small pool of riders can only make it pay only by taking all of the opportunities to make it pay. i.e. riding in multiple leagues.

I reckon you could do a similar analysis on the Polish U21 riders and lots of them will have disappeared from the sport. Probably more to do with how competitive it is over there though, in terms of how many U21 riders they have. I've said on here before if you want to get rid of doubling up in Britain there seems to be a load of Polish kids who are left without Polish clubs each season. Short term fix and probably not possible after Brexit?

whilst I don't disagree about British speedway sorting itself out I do think the world governing body need to do more to both protect the existing territories and expand into new territories. ultimately if everything becomes focussed on Poland that's what the sport will become...    a Polish sport that nobody else is bothered about.

easier said than done of course but I do think FIM need to look at how they assist the current pyramid and develop new ones. for a start stop dragging all sorts of riders all over Europe for all sorts of qualifiers that conflict with domestic leagues and appear to be costly for the riders. 

look at the cricket franchise system where those competitors often play of a number of franchises because the competitions are staggered to allow it. Have a month long event with 8 franchises with the top international riders supplemented by local riders. Have the UK one in June after the GP's. Have a Scandinavian one in July and a Polish one in August.  Take it to the USA and Australia over the winter. Like a travelling circus just without the clowns....    ....hopefully.  Then eventually look to expand it into new territories. Spain, Asia, South America.  There's loads of kids into motorbikes in those regions. They can't all make it to MotoGP but some could make a decent career as Speedway rider if the infrastructure and opportunity is there. The raw materials are out there but at the minute the flagship SGP series is reliant on the Poles developing talent which is more and more likely to be Polish...    ....and so the ever decreasing circle continues. It's basically a business with zero product development. 

... or carry on as we are 👉🙄👈