Sheffield V Northampton 11/06/26

[Bald Bloke]

Another one off.. New date Sept 10th.

Edited yesterday at 05:28 PM by Bald Bloke

[Youhave2minutes]

Roll on next season

[Youhave2minutes]

16 minutes ago, Bald Bloke said:

Another one off.. New date Sept 10th.

Soon be xmas

[psycho3a]

Speedway is definitely dead...

No effort to run meetings,  no tv coverage,  ive actually stopped looking at results regularly now.. only today checked if sheffield rode monday to find this meeting already off.. Sheffield only ridden 2 home league matches and next planned in 2 weeks , they last rode 25th May

No wonder there is no interest 

Edited yesterday at 08:48 PM by psycho3a

[mikebv]

13 hours ago, Youhave2minutes said:

Roll on next season

Roll on THIS season...

[IainB]

52 minutes ago, mikebv said:

Roll on THIS season...

Up to 25th of June 4 home matches!

[The Third Man]

Loads of rain yesterday and some heavy showers on Tuesday

Raining for the last couple of hours and more forecast for most of the day, this looks like being the correct decision

 

[GeneralMelchett]

19 minutes ago, The Third Man said:

Loads of rain yesterday and some heavy showers on Tuesday

Raining for the last couple of hours and more forecast for most of the day, this looks like being the correct decision

 

Despite all the chuntering the pre-emptive rain offs usually are the right call!

[paulnolan]

1 hour ago, GeneralMelchett said:

Despite all the chuntering the pre-emptive rain offs usually are the right call!

They are but there are usually racenights when there are no matches scheduled and the weather is fine. This is why clubs should endeavour to run at home at least three weeks out of every four. I know a league of six makes that difficult but that's just another reason to amalgamate the leagues.

[1 valve]

4 hours ago, paulnolan said:

This is why clubs should endeavour to run at home at least three weeks out of every four. I know a league of six makes that difficult but that's just another reason to amalgamate the leagues.

And have a league of eight teams who would still only have Monday & Thursdays as race nights. 

[paulnolan]

35 minutes ago, 1 valve said:

And have a league of eight teams who would still only have Monday & Thursdays as race nights. 

But if you're going to have Mondays and Thursdays as race nights, have Mondays and Thursdays as racenights, not just the odd one here and there.

Let's take Sheffield as an example, who race on Thursdays. They opened their season on April 2nd, and were back the next week. Away on the 16th, but nothing on the 23rd or 30th of April. Home again on May 7th and May 14th, but nothing on May 21st or May 28th, although they did run on Bank Holiday Monday (25th) to cover one of those.  That's potentially four lost meetings. June, July, and August look much better, perhaps because of the imbalance between Monday and Thursday tracks, but even then July 2nd is empty. A total of 5 missing Thursdays.

For a Monday track like Belle Vue, it's a bit more stark. They opened on March 16th and skipped a week before league racing began, running 2 weeks before taking a week off. They raced on April 20th, then took another week off, had a home meeting and an away meeting on the next 2 Mondays, then another week off, another week on, another 2 weeks off. June picks up well after that but that first date in July is missing again, followed by a home and an away and another blank week. August has 2 home meetings and then 2 weeks off, before coming back for the Bank Holiday. So that's 9 Mondays off! 

[1 valve]

16 minutes ago, paulnolan said:

But if you're going to have Mondays and Thursdays as race nights, have Mondays and Thursdays as racenights, not just the odd one here and there.

Let's take Sheffield as an example, who race on Thursdays. They opened their season on April 2nd, and were back the next week. Away on the 16th, but nothing on the 23rd or 30th of April. Home again on May 7th and May 14th, but nothing on May 21st or May 28th, although they did run on Bank Holiday Monday (25th) to cover one of those.  That's potentially four lost meetings. June, July, and August look much better, perhaps because of the imbalance between Monday and Thursday tracks, but even then July 2nd is empty. A total of 5 missing Thursdays.

For a Monday track like Belle Vue, it's a bit more stark. They opened on March 16th and skipped a week before league racing began, running 2 weeks before taking a week off. They raced on April 20th, then took another week off, had a home meeting and an away meeting on the next 2 Mondays, then another week off, another week on, another 2 weeks off. June picks up well after that but that first date in July is missing again, followed by a home and an away and another blank week. August has 2 home meetings and then 2 weeks off, before coming back for the Bank Holiday. So that's 9 Mondays off! 

You’re absolutely right about the number of missing weeks. But also consider that other teams also had fixtures on the race nights you have quoted (although not all) which impacts the ability to run fixtures. 
Clearly, an increase of teams would help (even if only two) to provide more regular fixtures in both league and cup competitions as well as the possibility of each club running one individual event per season. 
Unfortunately at present, there continues to be an impasse between the (minority) professional promotions who would go with one full time league and the (majority) hobbyist promoters whos intransigence continues to hold back any chance of UK speedway moving forward. 

[Youhave2minutes]

19 hours ago, psycho3a said:

Speedway is definitely dead...

No effort to run meetings,  no tv coverage,  ive actually stopped looking at results regularly now.. only today checked if sheffield rode monday to find this meeting already off.. Sheffield only ridden 2 home league matches and next planned in 2 weeks , they last rode 25th May

No wonder there is no interest 

I walked away years ago. It’s nothing but a joke.

Edited 4 hours ago by Youhave2minutes

[RS50]

As an example. By June 24th this year, Sheffield will have ridden four home matches. At the same date in 2008, they had completed fourteen home matches.

I think this helps to understand why some fans get out of the habit, and why riders want/need more than one league.

[Andrew]

Well it is raining in Sheffield right now,so it was the right call.

[IainB]

10 minutes ago, Andrew said:

Well it is raining in Sheffield right now,so it was the right call.

Undoubtedly the correct decision, that was not in question, what is questionable is why Sheffield have only ridden at home 4 times this year... Leicester also 4 by the end of June! In a spring that has had 23% less rain than usual. 

[Andrew]

If the two N'hampton meetings had gone ahead (tonights was to have been r2 in the original fixtures) we'd have had half of our home fixtures for the season.Two home meetings a month is workable until the weather hits or there is no other team free to come.

[Hawk127]

11 minutes ago, IainB said:

Undoubtedly the correct decision, that was not in question, what is questionable is why Sheffield have only ridden at home 4 times this year... Leicester also 4 by the end of June! In a spring that has had 23% less rain than usual. 

Apart from the supporters of many years including those lapsed followers It is doubtful that anyone else cares about the facts and now the sport at its highest level in the UK is of little interest and is unlikely to survive many more seasons in its current form.
It needs to gamble on starting again with one league and riders who commit to the British league without fear or favour of overseas leagues. Poland pays top dollar and can dictate what the clubs riders do and that is understandable but in the UK that luxury does not exist so stop pretending and stop paying for the service of the European league riders who cannot/ will not commit 100% to UK speedway. That is fine and clubs in the UK just need to build teams without these guys. If the sport wants to have these riders grace tracks in the UK then hold an individual open tournament.
For the domestic scene build from the ground up, use a different business model, appeal to a new generation of supporters and make it more accessible to prospective riders by standardising the equipment and embrace modern technology and new formats. Make a meeting more than just a league meet of x number of heats. Have scratch races, the fastest one lap competition, head to head for golden helmet and handicap races. It needs something different and it can be so good but it does not always need the worlds best riders to produce good racing or exciting racing.
Can it happen, possibly, will it happen, unlikely given the management of the sport and the fickle supporters who believe the world revolves solely around league racing and then complain about the lack of a pipeline of new talent. Riders of all levels need track time and back in the day they got it with the second half of a meeting, now they are largely ignored by the mainstream clubs.

[Rob B]

On 6/10/2026 at 6:24 PM, Bald Bloke said:

Another one off.. New date Sept 10th.

When is the cut off? Last year playoffs had started that week. 
Ridiculous with so few teams

[IainB]

6 minutes ago, Rob B said:

When is the cut off?

31st of December?