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Dead right and that is what sticks in my craw more than anything else. We can all debate the rules that apply to speedway but, however controversial they might be, they can at least be applied consistently by an unbiased, impartial adjudicator. Simple truth is, though, all too often they are not. They are subject to inconsistent, arbitrary, incompetent and illegal rulings by interested parties - parties whose identities are hidden and whose reasons are rarely disclosed. That is almost totally contrary to our system of law and breeds frustration and anger amongst not just fans but officials of clubs as well. Isle of Wight asked for average reduction for Harland Cook last season, a rider who had been out of the sport for years,. They were refused, despite the precedent set for David Wallinger and Luke Clifton the previous season. Later in 2017 Paul Hurry was given an average reduction of almost 3 points, two clubs having been quoted an average in excess of 10.50 during the close season. Matt Marson, who has never ridden in Britain and has a British passport, was at one point graded at a 5.00 - which doesn't even exist in the NL rulebook. You can only believe that such rulings are motivated by spite, jealousy, backscratching and one-upmanship. People can complain about the rulebook and individual rules as much as they like but until its contents are applied consistently, fairly and openly by an independent arbitrator we might as well not have one.

Well I for one will be at the MPA whatever kind of season we have. The wooden spoon years, the exciting last season, I'm a Bears fan, they are my team. Thick or thin seasons, I love watching them, obviously, I want a decent season, who wouldn't . I'm not as au fait with averages rules I'm afraid as established members are. I'm learning a lot on here.

ke I just don't see the point of it anyway - Porky at Wolverhampton does it during every race but because of the excessively loud PA and the noise of the bikes, it is impossible to make out what he is shouting - and why should he think that people in the crowd can't see for themselves what is happening?

DEPENDS what your definition of contradiction is in this case. Mind is obviously different to many here but, no matter, we all have own own opinions. As far as I am concerned rules should encourage progress, to make the sport, in this case speedway, as good and simple as possible, to encourage those involved to aspire to the highest levels. The opposite is currently the case which as far as I'm concerned is a contradiction. But it's hardly worth an argument about semantics and if my interpretation doesn't align with yours that's fine. Mine is that the current regulations do more harm than good, starting with the one eight point rider per team fiasco.

That's a fundamental misunderstanding of how social media marketing works. It's not voodoo, it's a tried and tested formula that will grow the sport. A speedway themed coffee shop in Poole will only attract the old codgers that are already attending every week, whilst the young hip market you're trying to reach is sat in the Starbucks down the road scrolling through Facebook on their mobile phone. Before you get started... this is a long post. But for those who aren't aware of how exactly social media works, it should prove an interesting read for you. So the question... How do you get the message outside of speedway regulars who are likely going to be the only people who follow Poole on Twitter/Facebook? Every time you interact with something on Facebook, whether it be a like, comment or share, those items are then also shown to your friends. Say you have 200 friends on Facebook, and you click the like button on a cat video, your one like therefore has the potential to reach your 200 friends. Say 2 of those friends also like that video, and they have 200 friends each, there is now another 400 people who have seen your post. In the industry we call this "reach". Now say all the clubs start promoting the Speedway GB Facebook page. It is being printed in every programme, it's being shown on every electronic display board and the announcers at every single club are telling you at each meeting to visit the Speedway GB Facebook page and hit that like button. Maybe you encourage them by saying that every month one lucky follower will win a family ticket? Merchandise? Etc. Now say you've managed to build that page up to 50,000 followers. They've already got 16,000 followers so it's more than doable. You then create a short (professional, none of this amateur tosh) 60 second clip packed full of all the best bits of speedway. Some epic passes, some fighting between the riders, some scenes of packed grandstands, a few big crashes, and you share that to your Facebook page. Now your 50,000 followers interact with the video by hitting the like button, commenting or sharing. That video is then likely to be displayed to many thousands more people. That's how a Facebook page with 50,000 followers can reach 250,000 people or more with one post. A chunk of those people will also like the page. Rinse and repeat. And the best part? You can now advertise to each and every one of these followers, every single day of the year and it won't cost a PENNY. Not only can you advertise to each and every one of them, but you can also segment your posts so that they are only seen by people living in certain regions. You can therefore plug every single meeting in advance and only local people will see the post. Social media works. And that's just one Facebook page. You get every club doing this, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and you start giving away free passes, free merchandise, sharing epic clips and generally interacting with the fans and before you know it you have a marketing powerhouse at your fingertips and it's not cost you more than the annual wage of 1 or 2 staff members split between all the clubs. This coffee shop nonsense, although a nice idea, is just another step backwards. It will be another waste of money with little to no return, that will only further convince the dinosaurs in this industry that advertising and marketing doesn't work.

Presumably you mean scared? Or maybe you don’t!

A huge part of social media is things get shared/retweeted and people see it even if theyre not following them, people seem to be forgetting that. I always shared Coventry Bees information in the past and it got others popping along or at least asking me about it. I alone retweeting goes to 1000 people that follow me and a huge % of that is local.

Zagar spoken to. But won' be coming. Costs to much. Cook is 100% nailed on.

Social media is nothing to do with preaching to the converted. If you spend a little bit of time and money on the right material you can reach 1 million+ people on social media. This isn't guess work, it's based on me being CTO for a company with a £10m+ turnover generated almost entirely from social media. A cafe will do nothing. A sustained and committed social media strategy involving each and every club could save the entire sport.

The point is value for money, if i am expected to buy a programme then a programme with loads of adverts and a team sheet is not value for money.

No, it's about having teams of relatively equal strength so that you don't have a race to financial extinction for those who cannot compete economically. It's a case of not having the insanity of paying highly expensive 'star' riders blasting round half a lap in front and taking home more than the total attendance money. Sadly too many fans hide behind the "watered down" mantra that totally fails to realise that the sport in Britain is a brown ale sport trying to live off champagne. Yes, there was a day when we could afford the top talent but those costs have been disastrously escalated by the money being paid in Poland and riders' expectations soaring as a result. The bubble will burst but for now Britain has to find a way to survive until then and if it does not then find a way to survive. Having fans that see that the quality of racing is vastly more important that the quality of names in a sport like ours might help. At this level it's all about putting on meetings that will attract and entertain new crowds, not provide them with uncompetitive meetings but telling them,"Who cares, that's Tai Woffinden half a lap ahead of Jason Doyle". Most would say "Who the hell are they and why is there no action?". British speedway's situation cannot be simplistically laid entirely at the BSPA's door. The competition of Poland and the Grand Prixs have battered British speedway which never stood a chance. When the sport here tries to do something to survive it would be useful if these posturing 'supporters' actually demonstrated that support by dropping this damaging "watered down" rubbish, but then that would ask for a view of the bigger picture that too many cannot or will not even begin to try. This will be my 47th season in the sport and in those years I have watched speedway and often worked in it all levels from World Finals to training tracks. Thankfully I've learned that I was just as likely to see a decent speedway race at Iwade as I would be at Cardiff of Wembley. I would have missed so much joy if I had stupidly stuck to the "I don't DO second division" or "It's watered down" approach. In most sports the greater the talent the greater the entertainment, but that doesn't work in racing unless you have the enormous hype budget of F1. I adore the sight of a match being won by a rider bravely taking the outside line to win on the line and I don't care what his name or reputation is....

I very much doubt you could write the rules of most sports on a sheet of paper (unless it was a very large sheet and writing was very small), especially a sport that caters for multiple formats. 'Tear up the rulebook' is just one of those silly mantras that gets bandied about by speedway people, and you of all people should know better than to repeat that. Whether or not there should be points limits, guests, averages and the like is one debate, but whilst they're deemed to be necessary by the sport, then there's always going to need to be a degree of complexity in the regulations. If there was nothing written down about these things, it would be total chaos and even more open to ad-hoc and biased decision-making. 'Four riders doing four laps' would frankly get pretty boring pretty quickly if there wasn't any structure to it. That's why the sport quickly evolved from ad-hoc scratch races to team events. And in reality, it's really only the team building stuff and certain technical elements that are highly contentious. The rest of the rulebook, whilst it might be better written, isn't controversial.

Rubbish comment!

He could REFUSE to do that!

Dunno. I live a pretty dull life! Just want to know!!!!

BT Sport have 537,000 followers and regularly tweet speedway highlights. Why does this not translate into followers for SpeedwayGB, let alone fans on the terrace?

I did this for Poole Speedway every Tuesday Bike Night for seven years. I would take my van, logo-ed for Poole Speedway, sponsored by Rias & Castle Cover. I would take four bikes, such as 1952 JAP, and current ones of Adams, Lindback & Rickardsson (or others that may have been of interest). I showed action DVD's on a flat screen, (powered by a Honda generator), under a gazebo. I had leaflets with map and other relevant details, again sponsored, plus an "A" board with the following nights fixture, and admission charges. It was great, because there were always holiday makers there, looking to spend money, and I saw many the following evening at the Stadium over the years. I also used to visit many schools in the area, as well as various fetes etc, not only locally, but further afield at times. I also had many displays in the Dolphin Centre over the years. I'm sure it helped speedway in general, and Poole Speedway in particular. C:\Users\Tim\Pictures\2007_07_10\IMG_1562.JPG

I have spoken to Matt in the past but it fell on deaf ears. I have spoken with Keith Chapman recently and he was interested but I haven't had chance to explore it any further yet. I am however working on a very exciting project with Wayne at Go Speed but I cannot say much about it at the moment. Hopefully I'll have a lot more to talk about soon.

You clearly know what you are talking about with social media. But if attracting new fans to attend a meeting was so simple, why is it not being exploited to the hilt and the grandstands packed out with 6 deep on the bends? Clearly what is currently being done on Facebook and twitter isn’t working. Seriously, why don’t you give Matt Ford a call and arrange a meeting with him to demonstrate what you can do to pack out Wimborne Road next season? If you can bring in hundreds of new fans, I am sure Matt Ford would reward you very well.

You might think you do, but it's very unlikely that you do. At very least you're in the minority. The only control you have is to unfollow a page or person. Just take a look at any Facebook page and it will clearly show you how many people like the page and how many people follow it. For example, take a look at SpeedwayGB. They currently have 16,323 likes, of which 16,065 of those are following them. That means that less than 1.6% of their followers actually elect to filter out their posts. So even if you do filter 99% of it, you're in the under 2% who do, and social media marketers aren't trying to target the likes of you anyway.

Yes his family have moved with him to sweden

What about doing something at the bike night, which I presume still happens on the Quay every Tuesday from about April? I have attended it a few times and never even seen a poster advertising the speedway! Surely it would be possible to have a bike on display at least, maybe hand some promotional leaflets out. There are always hundreds of people there who obviously have an interest in motorcycles.

and yet another clever forum member or should i put a mistake or typo in just to make you feel clever again

We have interviewed Jim Airey for the next issue of both Backtrack and Classic Speedway magazine.

Cupitt on a 4.00 looks one of the cheap averaged riders this season and if Brum don't haven't got him signed up i would be very surprised. Roberts is a possibility but don't waste the time or points on Govier there are far too many issues there for the Masons to be dealing with. Im surprised Connor Locke hasn't been signed (or announced anywhere yet) and with the Lakeside connection could see him feature along with another new 3 pointer like Dan Gilkes to complete the side. Sadly as pointed out its a very long tail and will see Flint move into the side very quickly which nullifies his scoring powers but as Birmingham are coming to the tapes this season thats the important factor.

Get in touch with the Lakeside promotion as they, even though it is their first year in the Championship, seem to know or adapt the rules better than other teams to get riders on their lowest averages(from 2016) even though they have a 2017 average. Still, nobody knows how though.

S.I.S i believe stands for Satellite Information Systems - it's the company that supply horse racing/dog racing pictures and commentary to the betting shops BAGS stands for Bookmakers Afternoon Greyhound Service So therefore STR is saying that live pictures from the Abbey are supplied to bookmakers for afternoon racing and Swindon get a nice fee for it i knew those years as a betting shop manager would come in use .....

It's not going to get any bigger until we make the sport credible. Unless it's run independently that's not likely to happen.

A pirate themed coffee shop on the coast? Never gonna work.

Simple. get a database or several from other sources. Firstly try data from other sports -Poole have good relationships with other sports clubs - use the local print/audio/ local and regional tv media as well. Start an official (or support an unofficial) fan podcast. If you want a younger audience then target the college and University populations with special offers via twitter, facebook etc etc. Of course you have to provide the correctly packaged product once you've got them to attend............in the hope that they'll want to return on a regular basis!!

I think he had practiced in 1973 and he was going to try a comeback in a one off four team tournament to see how he went.That meeting fell foul to the weather so nothing ever materialised.

Because attracting 3, 4, 5 or even 20 people from a local cafe to attend an event that they are unlikely to ever attend again is not a good approach to marketing. It won't grow the sport in the slightest.

Workington have tweeted that their completed team will be announced this week, so you would presume that we will know where Kyle will be riding by week’s end too

ill never be 1 of the puppet masters puppets so ill just get my info from the contacts ive got or when its made public

But you clearly said “hope he gets as mush stick as CH did” you knew CH got a lot of stick, so you are hoping CC gets the same treatment. If you didn’t mean that you should word you posts more clear. I for one didn’t know the history behind your comment.

He don’t exist palmdawwwggg odsal boys a twit

You are a disgrace and an insult to the multitudes of great Speedway fans that I have met in over 50 years of watching Speedway. Any rider who makes efforts to obtain sponsorship from whatever source is more than welcome as far as I am concerned

Neither should get stick, people have a choice of either getting involved or not, moaning about it shouldn't need to be an option. Good luck to Cook for 2018. And Bomber for that matter.

1. Doyle 2. Holder 3. Allen 4 Wright 5 Lawson 6 Bwd 7 Jeppesen That way a heat leader will be out in heat 14.

If Thursday's had been approved, why change it? Sheffield and Ipswich should have had two choices if they wanted Thursdays. Ride top league or ride Thursday's but top league sides get priority on riders. Ipswich, in particular, seem to have been holding the top flight to ransom for years. I'm just fed up with speedway seeing the best way forward being to make the good clubs as crap as the poor ones.

Gardening should be cut back too

Why not both? Fashionable clothing branded with Pirates would sell. Thousands of holiday makers walk aimlessly around town on any given summer day. Social media won’t bring in these holiday makers. But watching exciting video clips and the chance to buy tickets for that weeks meeting might bring extra people through the gate. ”that’s two decafs, two toasted bagels. 10.40 please. Oh and have you purchased your tickets for this weeks big meeting at the stadium? Its going to be a real thriller.”

Actually, thousands, in fact tens of thousands enjoy 4 guys racing, it's called the Grand Prix. No arbitrary rules, points limits, "assessments", just pure racing. Unfortunately, for many reasons, league racing needs to have some element of restrictions in order to cater for clubs with a wide variance of incomes and support levels. My grip is that this is not done in a transparent way so that all fans feel their are competing on a level playing field.

And a rather pathetic attention seeker.

If I was still running a speedway I would have kicked your arse for you. Fans can speculate with their wishes or what they know. Riders and especially a hired hand like a mechanic, should leave the business to the promoters who's business it is. I would remind other readers of theses post, that this poster is the same poster who published what was going on at Newcastle in October, when Alan Hedley was about to quit the Diamonds. That was internal business, his post wasn't banter, but more attempt to get himself known as a part privileged knob with some information but wanted to big up what he knew. in any business, you don't want an internal mouth blabbing to the forum, to make himself look big and informed. I said at the time it was a mechanic who was blabbing and it didn't take long for me to find out who it was. Beware Kevin and all at Redcar, some will love it, but he will do no good to your business.

it wasn't banter though - he claimed authority for a statement which he knew to be false. He could have caused problems - they may have appeared available to other promoters for example. If i was promoter or manager he'd be in trouble. Needs to keep it shut if he's in a trusted position. Well the management know he's not trustworthy now. Yes fans come on here and speculate - they do not claim authority and thats the difference

From the guest appearances Shanes made last year he was producing 5 point plus performances With more regular racing doubling up I would expect he will kick on further He certainly could be challenging for a spot in the 1-5 and possibly most likely to be the biggest improver of 2018

infantile behaviour, proved wrong and then 'it was just a joke' . Pathetic actually

Christmas Statement from the Save Coventry Speedway group. WE would like to extend our Season’s Greetings to all supporters of Speedway and Stock Car Racing at Coventry. Our thanks to all who have supported the Campaign Group efforts over the course of the year, and also to everyone who helped organise and supported the Challenge matches run in 2017 with Coventry Bees not running as part of the official league structure. It has been the worst year imaginable for everyone with a love for the sports at Brandon; from the shattering news that ‘agreements’ for future racing were not to be fulfilled, to the eventual omission of Coventry from the 2017 Premiership, to the deterioration in condition of the stadium throughout the year arising from the lack of security on-site by the owners. Brandon Estates bought the stadium for their own purposes, but in doing so they have shown zero regard for the 89-year history and heritage of the iconic venue, nor the fact that regular visits to Brandon to watch these family sports remained a way of life for many thousands of people throughout the season, right up until the end of 2016. In addition, the intransigence of the owners to engage in reasonable communication is a further indication of their motives, along with the material included within their official representations and public exhibition material – much of which is open to serious question. At the Exhibition in October, comments from the public were invited by planning consultants Framptons. We have seen a number of these responses, and the local reaction is clear - but as with the 2014 Exhibition arising from the initial plans, they appear to be a closely-guarded secret at this time. The display boards also indicated that an outline planning application would be submitted in Autumn 2017. At the time of writing, this has not taken place. We do not know the reason for that, but we can assure Brandon Estates – and their front-man, Monaco-based businessman John Downer – that as soon as their planning application is submitted, we will be ready with strong opposition. They must understand that they cannot simply take two major sports away from the region – sports which were both perfectly viable running in tandem at the stadium – merely on an outrageous speculative bid for development on land which had not been earmarked for that purpose, and expect everyone to sit back and let it happen. Our Campaign Group came together in its present form in the immediate aftermath of Coventry’s exclusion from the 2017 SGB Premiership, and our primary aim was to bring about a return to racing at the stadium for 2018 as well as establishing plans for the long-term continuation of both sports in the area. In those respects, we have regrettably been unsuccessful. The sheer depth of issues to be considered and resolved arising from the activities of recent years has been eye-opening in the extreme, and we have to respect the fact that the timescales of official business are sometimes longer than we would wish for. We believe there is tremendous momentum behind our campaign and overwhelming opposition to Brandon Estates' proposals. So our work will go on into 2018, and there are various events and hearings in the early part of the New Year which will play a vital part in matters going forward. Finally, we must emphasise to all who pass comment on the situation, often on social media, that the status of Brandon Stadium remains absolutely fundamental to the entire argument, and an acceptance that it has been lost to sport permanently is simply not an option. We wish every supporter of Speedway and Stock Car Racing a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and we hope 2018 provides some encouragement to everyone who wishes to see our two famous sports restored to their rightful place.

Search the forum as this topic has been raised a number of times.But I did put this on one thread before and there is more stuff if you google