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Middlo will have a very worth legendary status, they are a team who have worked very well together over a very long period of time and deserve all the credit they get.

Like Alex Ferguson, Middlo will retire at the top with nothing to prove imo ...

If every team was as well and professionally run as Poole the sport would not be in the mess it has got itself in to. Matt Ford would have made the perfect long term supremo of British speedway about a decade ago, build a 10 year plan, sadly won't happen now. The question is - who and where are the guys with a vision and a plan to take British Speedway forwards with the Business head and Speedway heart Ford has.??

Hi there Janet. 1949 was also my first time watching speedway. I went with my dad to Blackbird Road so it's 70 seasons for me as well.

I did and he was good. Very good. But not great. Have a look at his 84 World Champs record...2nd to Crump in Aus Final, 4th in Overseas, 11th (and final qualifier) from Intercontinental, 11th and 5pts in the final. Also in the World Pairs, 8 pts in the semi and 6 in the final from six rides. Was this a rider on the up and set to beat Nielsen, Gundersen and the rest at Bradford 85? Katowice 86? Amsterdam 87? Vojens 88? Not on your nelly.

He will go because there working relationship has been so good over a long period it will never be quite the same with another party.Ford/ Middleditch have been great for Poole speedway and it will be a hard act to follow.

IF!!! IF!!! I think Penhall would have won more, but we will never know because he didn't hang around. How do we know he would have kept Lee motivated? Yes, it's fun to speculate, but opinions mean absolutely nothing. Particularly with this era, there are more "if's" than ever, and for every "if" leading to one possible conclusion, there is at least one countering any argument. Think about it. If Penhall... If Carter... If Lee... If Sigalos... Even throw in : If Collins... If Sanders... Steve

Two weeks until the new season and the anticipation should be building, but for me, with the Witches in the wrong league, now owned by Chapman, (a remarkable man really who took over the running of a sport on it's knees and has dragged it even lower, a man who I wouldn't trust to run a school lollipop crossing during half term) with a mediocre, uninspiring side, I have zero enthusiasm for the new season. Will I be going? About as likely as the likelihood of the town's embarrassment of a football team avoiding relegation.

1st live TV of the new season is the Nice League North v South match on Sunday March 24th from Lodz programme on Polsat Sport programme starts at 1.45pm UK time teams North Rafał OkoniewskiHans AndersenDawid WawrzyniakKrystian PieszczekKarol ŻupińskiTimo LahtiAdrian Gała South Kacper Woryna, Troy Batchelor, Robert Chmiel , Peter Ljung, Mateusz Cierniak, Grzegorz Walasek, Tomasz Gapiński

Be nice if Middlo went and managed another club and see if he can be successful without firstly Fords money and without changing large numbers of riders throughout the season. If he can do it at another club then maybe he can be mentioned in the same breath as Rosco and Adams.....until then he will only ever be seen as a good manager rather than a great one

They are clearly shortening the track. Whether this will be ready for 11 April, I don't know. It looks like a huge amount of work to complete in a month. In terms of the new stadium, all this track work does is allow them room to fit the planned housing on the current speedway car park.

Steve Worrall, Matty Wethers, Lasse Bjerre, Simon Lambert, Thomas Jorgensen, Max Clegg & Danny Phillips

Poolebolton doesnt have a clue as usual. Just continue to ignore him.

Closely followed on the BSF by "Tia"...

I think that's the greyhound kerb in the picture, so speedway track will be in further than that

....or Knutson

Correct. Billy's best chance was in 1984, around his beloved Gothenburg, and he was nowhere near. Sentiment makes you want to believe he could have won a title, but for his tragic demise. Logic suggests otherwise.

They have been fitting the 2 units behind where the catering wagon was. One as a catering unit the other as track shop

quite agree as long as you got a track to go to and watch motor bikes that's the main thing

I’m really not sure where this comes from. Was Lee unmotivated in 1983? Also Sanders has really started to believe in himself? It’s just imaginary thinking and not grounded in any evidence from the individuals concerned or those around them. Or certainly none that I’ve ever read or seen. Sanders was a world class rider and to my mind, he did really really well to get on the World Final rostrum twice. But even then, I think the vast majority of people would not rank him as one of the top three in the world. Was he winning major events like the BLRC, Intercontinental Final? Was he topping the averages? Yes, he did very well to get on the rostrum, but it doesn’t mean he was in the same elite as the Penhalls, Nielsens and Gundersens of the world.

Always reckoned that if Billy (and everyone else that day) had not met Muller at Norden in 1983 he'd prob have been Champ that year, he was 2nd with Lee 3rd. And I also wish Penhall had stuck around a few more years to hopefully give Gundersen & Nielsen a run for their money. It's fun to compare rider & eras, but conditions are always different (bikes, tracks, competitions WF v GPs) so one ends up with 'if only's' & 'maybes'....

Not sure about the kerb stones as it was stated that the track was being shortened by about 10 mtrs and that is only a couple. They are possibly for the lighting cables or drainage between the speedway and dog track.

Weymouth are certainly actively looking for a site.

Diggers are removing the shale banking on bends 1 and 2

I hope this goes ahead OK after all the recent rain and lack of warm weather to dry the ground. Probably better with it being scheduled for afternoon. On a separate tack, I wonder if Sam Ermolenko will be having a beer with his old bosum buddy David Hemsley, now the Beaumont Park landlord, and having a good chuckle about old times??

Sheffield Speedway are urging speedway fans everywhere to back brave young Jack Lacey to give the terminally ill toddler the send-off he deserves. Jack, three, has a rare type of brain tumour called a Diffuse Pontine Glioma and has been given six months to a year to live. The aim of raising money is so Jack can enjoy day trips, holidays, meals out, his first trip to the cinema a new dog and - hopefully - his first trip to speedway. According to The Brain Tumour Charity, DIPG affects between 20 to 30 children in the UK every year and there is no effective treatment. So come on, dig deep and donate to a worthwhile non-speedway cause.To donate to Jack’s GoFundMe page visit: https://tinyurl.com/y56tt56y

I absolutely do make that curry for our specials... we have a team of us... I do the Curry, Jane does the sausage casserole and Chilli, and Sandra will be adding thick soups to our non summer time menu Really glad you like it - thank you.

Its difficult to cut the people involved with this project much slack when all we have heard from them for the last 3 years is, failed promises, unmet deadlines, deafening silence, misleading stories and downright lies.

In all likelihood Edinburgh and the majority of other clubs ran at a loss last season and have nothing to give. The gifting of 30k or whatever it was, to Edinburgh was entremely generous but naive. Believing that it would generate goodwill that would be returned in future or a time of need, even moreso. The money has gone, it didnt buy anything that benefitted Workington speedway.

There's only one way to get kids interested in Speedway. Every club should send their team manager and club captain to secondary schools around their local areas. Bikes on show and clips of the racing, crashes and also embrace the subject of injuries and death within the sport. Students will fully embrace the rough side of the sport as this is what will get them interested with their youthful, fearless mentality. Then also every student should be given a full, in depth letter and usb stick with the same presentation that can be shown to the parents. Within this, a free training school voucher so any brave parent can allow their adolescent to experience just how tough this sport really is. Only this way will the sport get back to the full stadium days and keep Speedway alive for decades to come. It's the only way to get the young to understand and appreciate just how tough and exciting this sport can be. Taking a student to a meeting where there's no racing, no crashes etc will put them off for life. They need to understand the hard side of the sport, it'll gets their juices flowing.

You mean standing at Blunsdon on a wet and windy October night isn't glamorous??? Seriously though, I agree about the perception... Non-speedway folks always perceived it as being "blokes riding around in circles:, and "first out of the gate always wins". Oh yeah, we are are so quick to dismiss them as idiots. However, us speedway folks cannot be absolved from blame, particularly looking at some of the stuff on here these days. Perception, eh? "It's not as good as good as it used to be!" Why not? Or the ridiculous statement that 90% of riders in the 60's were better than the world's best today? You think you can really quantify that? I am one of those who believe that the racing WASN'T noticeably better back in the good ol' days. There were aspects pf the sport - quite a few in fact - that were better, but when it comes down to it, it is justa case of us looking through rose-tinted specs. As a young lad, I was enthralled by the sight of strapping he-men and gladiators called Norman, Jack, and Harry, wrestling these powerful steeds through waist=high cinders! As a 56-year-old, I see little tattooed kids riding around on bikes that sound like lawnmowers on helium... Yes, tracks have changed. Machinery has changed. PEOPLE have changed.The reality is that speedway was - and still is - a case of four men racing 500cc bikes (with no brakes and no gears) on shale ovals. Despite the change in sounds and smells, that's exactly what it is. What we have to do is be realistic, and accept that WE are just as much at fault. It's not just speedway either, but when we convince ourselves that our biased - and inevitably negative - views of everything (based on how it USED to be), there is always going to be a problem, Of course, the administration of the sport (particularly in Britain) has been questionable for a number of years, but speedway racing is still speedway racing. Steve

My "tone is not good"? Look at some of the stuff YOU have said here, and I haven't twisted anything. You said my post was "one of the craziest" because I didn't rate Sanders alongside a handful of legendary riders. You said I stated that Sanders as an "also-ran", which I didn't. You asked if I had even seen Sanders in that time period, because if I had, I would "know"... Nice tone there, eh? You said that Sanders was "obviously improving" - which he wasn't... Is that twisting things around to make you "look the villain"??? Please, let's back to the script... Steve