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Morning all, I’m happy to report that the track is absolutely fine after last night. We had no rain on Wednesday which left the track dry yesterday. The track was packed hard yesterday afternoon so it would take the rain forecast overnight. We have some rain forecast this afternoon, but this evening should be dry and we don’t anticipate any problems with our meeting going ahead. Racing conditions should be excellent and will make for a superb Semi-Final. We have opened up the back straight for additional viewing facilities and we have a 2nd paramedic booked, so the meeting should run smoothly. Hope to see plenty of you there this evening! Jitendra Duffill

Klindt could well move to Foxhall.........bit like football where a player shows form for a smaller club before moving on to a bigger club

Good idea. Take all the teams still remaining in the play offs and go with the team that finished highest in the league. Excellent idea.

Really cant wait for this. 2 really good teams giving there all. Set to be a cracker Kent won the last match here but that was in heavy rain. Good luck colts. Let's hope theres lots of people there. They deserve a big crowd.

They were quality unbiased updates best unbiased updates i have seen. They were much appreciated.

Let's do it on the basis of the most liked club. You'd be bottom by a mile !

Sorry you are asking the impossible now. Any old memory cells have long been pushed out to accommodate new information like why did I just go out to the garage or upstairs. The only match that has stuck in my memory is the Middlesbrough one (spelt correctly this time) when they refused to ride and Long Eaton won 75-zero. Oh...and another one when Ove Fundin and his wife were guests of honour. Beautiful sunny June evening but the track had been over watered and the match cancelled. Can't remember who the opponents were.

I wonder how much the fine is compared to a small attendance lets be honest not giving much away for this one .as i said earlier we are away on holiday no decision to make for us

Fair point. Again, I have no issue when people use reason and facts to substantiate their views...

A case could be made that he did win the 1946 British Riders Championship. Did qualify for a World Final before the war and was one of those that lost some of his peak years due to the war

When will the BSPA learn, playoffs should start at beginning of September, and finished by end of September. Fixture scheduling is terrible, there is not that many fixtures and some teams go weeks without a home meeting. Also if a meeting is rained off earlier in season it should be re-arranged within 2 weeks not just sticking it on the end of the fixtures.

Because the Extraleague do what they want to !!

Come on you know Josh G wanted to ride for Ipswich this season judging by his kevlars.

Cost of reasonable industrial strength tarpaulin with eyelets and fastening clips in suffient volume (say 80000m2) to fully cover a track would be circa £17500. Putting aside the length of time it would take for a team (of volunteers?) to erect and then take down and where such a large and weighty mass would be stored, it is questionable if such cost is justifiable v value of saving meetings from being rained off particularly since the cover would need to be fully removed a good number of hours before the meeting to allow for track preperation which would leave it open to the elements anyway.

Currently blue skies over the track. Just been down and it's looking in top shape, still quite firm! If the forecast is correct and we get no more rain then it should be a terrific meeting!

Fantastic effort to get this meeting on , travelling over from Workington later to hopefully see the Redcar Bears take a decent lead and progress to the Grand Final

Surely this has to add fire to the case that league fixtures and play offs should be done first, then KO cup etc to be run at the end of the season? The risks that a league champion isn't decided is just daft. That said all the best to two strong sides, i hope the score is close over both legs and its won by the best team and not a contentious decision.

I think He was one of the few that didn't choke. Agree with the rest.

True - Holder will reduce his average enough by himself if he comes back anytime soon anyway.

The standard of riders in the PL has dropped year on year for many years. Generally, the average of riders returning after being absent for a number of years should be increased, not reduced because their average was attained when the standard was higher. However, as I have said many times, the most sensible way is to give them an average based on their average in whichever foreign league(s) they have most recently ridden. It would be easy to devise a formula to convert averages for each foreign league to an assessed PL average. That would, overnight, do away with those who come here when relatively inexperienced, don't ride here for a few years, improve significantly and then return on their original low average and cater for those who have not ridden here for a few years but are on a downward spiral in the twilight of their careers and realistically, wouldn't achieve their past PL average.

I can safely predict that this will be the most important AGM for years and that major changes are needed to ensure speedways survival..... Then on the Monday we'll find out nothing has changed and that the same crap will continue and be allowed to ruin this sport further still. That's until the AGM of 2020 which will again be the most important one ever.

Some Poole fans are getting desperate to still be involved. Not gonna happen, you got beat by the cannon fodder.

Masters & Pickering signed for next season.

Tie is still alive for the second leg , can't ask anymore than that , don't forget Leicester were 14 points above us in the table , Leicester are a top team I'm over the moon with that result and for a bit of bad fortune we could easily be 12 to 14 points up

It is also the case that Tommy Price was at the top longer than Freddie Williams. As iris says he qualified for the 1939 World Final and it was only the period between 1951 and 1954 that Fred Williams topped Tommy Price in the League averages. Even in 1950, when Williams won the World Final, he only came 13th in the League averages with an average of 8.75 to Price's 9.83 and 3rd place. In 1955 and 1956, Price again outscored Williams in the League. It is true that in that 1950-1953 period, Williams had a far superior World Final record, but he really only had five years at the top while Price was at the top in 1939 and then from 1946 - 1956, and again, as iris point out, missed out what would probably have been his very best years.. Which brings us back to the question of do we count the best as the rider who was at the top the longest or the rider who had a shorter period at the top but was probably better in that short period? Which is part of the problem when comparing Lee with Craven or Collins for example.

If they rode this meeting in my back garden I’d pull the curtains.

I remember Bert Harkins wearing stripey pajamas over his leathers at Old meadowbank in Edinburgh

Absolutely. The likes of West Ham were flattened immediately, yet it will probably take years to build on the Arena Essex site. Why not leave these stadiums active until planning permission is obtained.

It's not simply about the wet weather though is it? It's also much colder in the evenings in October which affects crowd levels and track preparation, clubs are always moaning about the precarious state of their finances so surely it makes sense to run the meetings during the optimum months for the sport? As for those that don't like their season finishing in August.....is the sport as a whole supposed to suffer to accommodate their wants? given the average attendance at most clubs, how many people genuinely feel like that? a dozen at each club? I attend every match at Swindon and whilst i'd be disappointed if our season finished at the end of August, I'd gladly take that to see the sport run in a more professional manner where the greater good of the sport is the main concern and not the wants of a few hundred people up and down the country, too often this sport has pandered to the few over the years and look at the state it is in. There were 12 home league matches in the PL and even less in the CL, do people really want that strung out over 7 months? are people really going to complain about the season being 5 months instead? surely people can find other entertainment in the off season? for those that want to watch more speedway how about attending fixtures at other clubs or attending the away matches featuring your own club? There's bound to be a few that do that already and attend 60+ matches a season but I can't believe a majority favour Speedway in October.

Would that committee be composed of Buster, Rob Godfrey and Matt Ford? They always work in the best interests of the sport!

Jk`s racecard for tonight`s World U21 3rd and final round in Pardubice https://www.speedwayservice.at/images/racecards/2019/U212019-03.pdf

Average track area of a 300m track 10m wide is just under 3500 sqm. A heavy duty tarpaulin (the type they use to cover a cricket square) will cost approx. £5000 for that amount. The fundamental problem with them is fixing them in place, and getting a team of people and you need at least 10 to drop everything, go to the track, put them out, take them away, get covered in dirt doing it, and to do it on top of everything else they do for the speedway club for F##k all already. Sure covers would save some meetings, maybe half if you are lucky. Oh and by the way, if you've ever tried laying a 10m x 10m groundsheet in the wind and the rain and to do that 30 times and secure them, then take them back up without damaging them and dragging them across a shale surface covered in muck. If you'd all like to form an orderly queue to volunteer to do it for free, that would be great, answers on a postcard...………...thought not.

No, his average is higher than MPT and only fits at home by virtue of the 5% uplift. http://www.speedwaygb.co.uk/files/downloads/c19_issue_33.pdf

Anyone else losing interest? The rain offs are dampening my enthusiasm as well as the tracks

Shock horror.....not rain and cold in October!

Indeed Keith and crowds pretty similar and income level. A lot rent their stadia as well with volunteering a must to survive at that level. All depends on the ‘rider demands’ and who is prepared to ride in the UK. Sweden now looks like its heading the same way so there could be more riders available. A budget blown on one rider because he is GP level isn’t going to be very popular (with riders) but on the other hand might get a few hundred more through the gate. Improve the racing and stadia experience is more important imo than who is riding and the promotion have to make a profit otherwise it’s bye bye.

Which is exactly why Berwick still get rain offs even with covers available

Planning meeting on Tuesday with planning officer recommendation to go ahead with stadium plans. (Swindon Advertiser!)

His bike choked, and his steel shoe choked, he didn't. You clearly never watched it.

My recollection is that at the 2009 conference they reassessed the gravitational constant at 6.00 as the 9.81 figure was out of date

Can't disagree about any of this Sam and yes Peter was a brilliant rider and none of what i said was meant to be a slur on P.C.Yes i am bias about Lee and most people's opinion's can be blinkerd by there personal experiences.Going back to Peter forget all he achieved for me his biggest accomplishment was that he was such a fine embassador for British speedway. A fine example for younger riders ,Michael on the other hand never quite achieved that accolade.

Never did the fish and chips, but I went up there a few times when I had a Wednesday off. One particular year, there were a large group of us flying over to compete in the Canadian Open. Everybody else flew out on the Wednesday, but I went up to watch the Dons and flew out the next day! Now, that's dedication! Steve

Ridiculous if considered. If so we demand reassessments for Freddie, Tai and Piotr Pawlicki.

Now that's good enough reason for me. I would start my team with these, Allen, Covatti, and build from there,,, one must though is at least one good gater, yeah they are boring, but it's needed.

Dead right, only the losers should start one. Now where's that Poole 2020 thread...........................

Well done to Glasgow and good luck in the final. Another couple of good meetings for Rowe. Interesting that you often get riders who spend a month or two at reserve hitting big scores and then seem to struggle when they move up whereas in his case he was doing a solid job, forced to move up because of the team changes and has responded really well. Looks like a good sign for his future that he's able to adapt to that challenge quickly.

The National League in the 80s reached 21 teams at one point. Goodness knows how we coped! (Well, we enjoyed every minute.....20 league matches plus KO Cup ties, 4TT qualifiers and a load of support meetings now cynically dismissed as 'meaningless') We were far too busy enjoying what we had. Tracks like Hackney used to stage over 30 meetings a season. Goodness knows how today's "Less is more" snowflakes would cope ;-)

The difference between building from scratch and simply improving the stadium is simple. In one case you are literally having to build from nothing but in the case of Brafield you have a long- established and respected venue with a track already in place and basic stadium facilities. BriSCA hold their European Championship there and while it's a while since I regularly worked there it had facilities that were perfectly adequate for higher stock car crowds with plenty of scope for improvement. It's been around for decades, albeit without speedway since the sixties. There are tracks in the CL and NDL with sparser facilities. As a new Northampton Speedway, yes, despite its fairly isolated location. I doubt whether we'll be seeing a revival of Brafield Badgers, but not a replacement for Coventry and should not be used as an excuse to prevent a Brandon revival. Congratulations to the team carrying on the fight and thank you for your efforts. Both speedway and stock cars desperately need a thriving Brandon.

http://wwosbackup.proboards.com/thread/1917/les-mcgillivray

Poor side??? Ummmm, we finished top, did we not? So how are we poor? We just had some bad form at the wrong time. But table shows we are the best over the season.