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Side-tracking a bit the long gone Walthamstow Avenue ground was definitely my favourite of all time. A very sad loss. All very complicated so I apologise for any minor errors (hopefully none). The straight answer to your query is, "NO". Avenue are actually now part of Dagenham and Redbridge FC. Two other historic sides, Ilford and Leytonstone (I am sadly too young to have done their grounds) ultimately merged to form Leytonstone and Ilford FC after the former sold their ground, which I believe was literally next door to the tube station. When Ilford also sold their ground, the merged team moved in at WA in a ground share. My own opinion, based on watching a L/I game there was that they actually became the dominant force in the stadium and ultimately the 3 sides merged under the Redbridge Forest FC banner. Finally RF were integrated with Dagenham to become Dagenham and Redbridge FC who actually got as high as the third tier in the professional game, although now back in National League. The current Walthamstow team have links with another historic London team, Leyton, whose original ground is still standing, albeit in a desolate condition, a stone's throw from the Lea Bridge speedway track. They were originally called Pennant but added the Walthamstow tag (becoming Walthamstow Pennant) when Avenue went through their merger, effectively stopping the loss of the Walthamstow name from senior football. Leyton have gone through numerous incarnations/reformations, including a period as Leyton Wingate, when the latter lost their ground, but are now integrated within Wingate and Finchley FC at step 3 in the pyramid. Another offshoot of Wingate played under their generic name for a while in Barnet at a stadium currently owned by Hadley FC. Ultimately Leyton and WP merged becoming Leyton Pennant FC. However during a period of instability, much of it not football related, the then owner changed the club name to Waltham Forest and initially started playing at Wadham Lodge stadium, but to continue the above links. later entered a ground share with the reformed Ilford FC at their current Cricklefields stadium. From memory it was around 4 years ago they however returned to Wadham Lodge stadium and reclaimed the Walthamstow name to reflect their "homecoming" . Currently they share the ground with Clapton Community FC, a phenomenally successful group who have had 4 figure crowds playing on "park pitches" and who, to the chagrin of some, have bought the fun side back to the game and actually encourage putting donations into the local food bank in lieu of admission to their games. They have recently acquired the freehold of the old Clapton FC Old Spotted Dog ground and are already improving the pitch and ground for their return to another traditional old London venue. The original Clapton currently play behind closed doors at Terrence MacMillan stadium, which was considered as a possible venue for West Ham speedway when Custom House closed. Finally (Thank God) during the Waltham Forest "exile" from Wadham Lodge a breakaway team formed by some of the former management , called Wadham Lodge FC moved in ensuring continued use of the ground. When Walthamstow FC "returned" they changed their name to Leyton Athletic to reflect the original history of Waltham Forest FC. Following a year's sabbatical they were to return this season with a high profile manager and quality players but clearly "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" and a sweary departure days after he signed saw the manager resign and nothing further being heard of a return. .

52 years experience and the system still takes time to work through. Plus you understand the system to begin with. Scoring should be instant as fans in the stadium must know what is happening. Which must mean keeping it simple. This system to new or irregular fans is not simple.

Been a good couple of nights on the Swedish Speedway. Well done all.

I was lucky enough to do Ilford, Romford, Leytonstone and Walthamstow Avenue. One of my School mates old man was something to do with the Surrey FA. He was also a fan of Wimbledon and Tooting and Mitcham. I cut my football teeth visiting those famous old non league London grounds. A very similar path to my speedway roots.

its like donald trump if he wins the election, FOUR more years of heartache and ruin . speedway is/will be a forgotten sport. poss never to return. but at least ruff and pie man are keeping the newcactle thread alive !

Hmm Mike Sampson, Les Rumsey, Tom Owen, Steve Finch, Kelvin Mullarkey, Dave Trownson.... Young boys on the terraces, shale in your hair, Oxo and Pie, watching over the fence Hmm proper Speedway

Here are details of Ron Johnston's World Final appearances. Impressive! 1955 - London, Wembley Stadium - 12th - 6pts 1957 - London, Wembley Stadium - 6th - 9pts 1958 - London, Wembley Stadium - 8th - 8pts 1960 - London, Wembley Stadium - 5th - 10pts

Exactly why the system is rubbish. How would any fan know this when watching live.

If Doyle had beaten Laguta in the second semi final, Lindgren would've been world number two! It's stupid that a race between two riders not involved in the podium (Doyle & Laguta) can decide who finishes higher between two riders on the podium (Woffinden & Lindgren)!

TV director wants shooting.

Interesting that the new system stretched out the field, particularly the top three from the rest. Last night, it meant the championship wasn't decided until the first semi-final instead of earlier in the meeting. But it could very easily go the other way. If you look at this year's European Championship, it went down to the last race. Had points been awarded on finishing positions, it would have been over as a contest after three rounds and Madsen would have won easily. I still prefer the old system. Had Bart finished on 8 rather than 9 points last night, then Woffy and Lindgren (both already qualified on 10 and 9 respectively) would have been looking at ways on how they could have eliminated Bart from the semis. Under a system where every point counts, that kind of manipulation was much harder. But we were one point away from it happening last night.

For me it is not relevant as long as we pick racers rather than riders.... we will see good racing The track is brilliant and The promotion deserve it to be a success

I don't get posts like this, "I don't do twitter" you don't have to have an account to view anything they post, it's all available for free without signing into anything - https://twitter.com/TheAces Infact all of their Twitter posts are even embedded onto their Website homepage! Is it working? Absolutely, the website viewing figures alone won't be 1% of what the same post on Twitter reaches in terms of audience. Belle Vue have 15k followers alone, and the Twitter post from 2 hours ago has already been retweeted by Multiple (10+) accounts with over 10k plus followers of their own, mostly 15k+, including the official SpeedwayGB one, around 28k followers. The reach of Twitter will be hundreds of thousands just for that one post, this is before you factor in the same news posted on Facebook and Instagram, the reach of social media is massive, traditional websites are becoming obsolete because of hosting fees etc. No one is sitting around pressing F5 on the Belle Vue website waiting for news to come through...

Well done the Russian! Cracking nights work that!

Thats the full house boys

4 finals would give TV and paying fans a scoring system that is easy to follow. Every heat would be meaningful. 24 heats instead of 23.

it was 8p behind for equal after heat 10.

Lambert rides for Wittstock

Nilsson doing his best to ruin it for us, and although he’s scored well Pawlicki never fills me with confidence either

Handicap after heat 8 success

Just did a few quid under the max that they would offer me.

With Jenga haunting everywhere else on the Forum...

Yep 47-43 preferably for the big return. The handicap after heat 8 seems a no brainer at +2 too

Profit is a profit mate. Well done. If tonight goes belly up then Masarna would've blown the best chance they'll ever have of winning the Swedish league imo. They have been the whipping boys for a couple of years now and with the Polish fixtures and the weather issues everything has fallen into place for Masarna imo. Say Ludvig & Andersson get 10 between them which is a bit of a stretch tbh then Bjerre, Aspgren & Jeppesen would still have to put up more than 34 between them for our bet to lose.

Horrible crash. Both riders so fortunate to break only one bone and nothing really major that would take 3 to 6 months to heal.

I'm no big gambler and have only been betting on Speedway this year for abit of extra interest in meeting. I've made about £200 profit so far this year which certainly isn't big time at all, but I've just lumped £50 on the same bets as you. I've also backed Masarna on +2 after Heat 8, that should be the easiest bet of the lot!

I hope this will finally put to bed the" Woffinden will ride " stupid theories. https://gbspeedwayteam.com/news/gb-heartbreak-for-woffinden?fbclid=IwAR2fpP9W1LtgQ0vm2dc46TsaAj973pZMnts7RjCBLF8mVLlzG5JcJVyJD5M

But the team (ie pairing) wouldn’t be ‘dreadfully weak’ if Tai rode, you could argue they’d have a decent chance of winning with him.

500/1 from what I remember.

You are not upsetting me - this time at least no way will he risk it - he will earn as much being an additional studio guest for BT as he would in Lublin

Just for completeness, here are the rest of the top averages in Peter Jackson's post-War stats: 1946: Eric Langton 11.13 1947: Vic Duggan 11.75 1948: Vic Duggan 11.47 1949: Vic Duggan 10.65 1950: Graham Warren 10.45 1951: Aub Lawson 10.31 1952: Ronnie Moore 11.36 1953: Jack Young 10.61 1954: Ronnie Moore 10.59 1955: Ronnie Moore 10.86 1956: Barry Briggs 10.53 1957: Peter Craven 11.14

I'm going to upset you R&R, which is not my intention.... Tai has not said clearly that he's not riding. "That's a wrap" could easily refer to his Polish league season. Tai has damaged (badly, I admit) his clutch hand. I'm sure I remember occasions in past, when riders have switched their clutch lever to the right and had both the clutch and throttle on the same side. Not ideal, but doable. So I haven't given up hope just yet.

As R&R has already said, they need two Poles and one rider under-24. There was an article within the last couple of weeks that predicted Doyle would be leaving Czestochowa and it mentioned about Torun weighing up whether to keep Chris Holder or bring back Jason Doyle was loaned out this season. Due to the new under-24 rule bought in, Torun would only be able to track two out of Jason Doyle, Chris Holder and Jack Holder. Torun have also been heavily linked with Robert Lambert (like just about everyone else I think) to fill the under-24 role and also Shamek Pawlicki for one of the Polish team positions, presumably to replace Musliek or Miedzinski.

Sportspages closed its doors in London about 15 years ago. The one in Manchester, I believe closed following the Arndale bomb. Pretty sure the shop owner John Gaustad passed away a couple of years ago. I spent many an hour browsing away in the shop in London. Edit. Just checked my copy of "Speedway in London", which was purchased from Sportspages, and indeed it is autographed by Mark Loram.

If Sayfudtinov leads Leszno to another league title and he wins the SON with Artem, you could argue that he's had a better season than Zmarzlik.

I had not even heard of it....

It is a worry as we are now 6 month down the line & it looks as tho covid is going to get back to if not worse than the springtime high & with the winter looming it may take longer to get some sort of control on it !! So we will just have to keep everything crossed for a healthy 2021 & hope the powers that be can get some sort of vaccine to keep it at bay as I reckon it's here to stay

Track staff done excellent job tonight. Bit of a contrast with the problems at Częstochowa this year Some of the camera work been a bit odd though

in 2019 NL Palin averaged 8.82, Rowe averaged 8.37.

Fair play to Premier for putting them on Freesports.

You couldn't make this up. Premier Sports are showing both 3rd/4th legs live but the finals delayed. Worse still, on Sunday there is no other live sport beyond 7.25pm on channel 1 but they are repeating the 1st leg (for the third time!) at 8pm followed by the final leg at 10pm.

The second one of Tai or Lambert is ruled out we have no chance of winning. Glad we’ve given riders who can use the experience a chance rather than Cook or Bomber who will be outclassed anyway.

Lublin 2nd day- another impressive performance https://sportowefakty.wp.pl/zuzel/relacja/112668/zaplecze-kadry-juniorow-w-lublinie

AUSTRALIA: 1. Jason Doyle 2. Max Fricke 3. Rohan Tungate 4. Jaimon Lidsey (U21) 5. Keynan Rew (U21) Team Manager: Mark Lemon CZECH REPUBLIC: 1. Eduard Krcmar 2. Vaclav Milik 3. Josef Franc 4. Jan Kvech (U21) 5. Petr Chlupac (U21) Team Manager: Filip Sitera DENMARK: 1. Leon Madsen 2. Anders Thomsen 3. Mikkel Michelsen 4. Marcus Birkemose (U21) 5. Mads Hansen (U21) Team Manager: Hans Nielsen GREAT BRITAIN: 1. Tai Woffinden 2. Robert Lambert 3. Jordan Palin 4. Daniel Bewley (U21) 5. Drew Kemp (U21) Team Manager: Simon Stead POLAND: 1. Bartosz Zmarzlik 2. Szymon Wozniak 3. Bartosz Smektala 4. Dominik Kubera (U21) 5. Jakub Miskowiak (U21) Team Manager: Marek Cieslak RUSSIA: 1. Emil Sayfutdinov 2. Artem Laguta 3. No rider 4. Evgenii Saidullin (U21) 5. No rider Team Manager: Oleg Kurguskin SWEDEN: 1. Fredrik Lindgren 2. Oliver Berntzon 3. Pontus Aspgren 4. Alexander Woentin (U21) 5. Philip Hellstrom-Bangs (U21) Team Manager: Morgan Andersson

Got to go for Cook and see if he wants the gig. A big ask though given hardly any prep or testing time and would you want to risk your (still brand new) kit for just one meeting? Failing that then I would ask the 'best gater' the UK has, whoever that is?, who has ridden already, and hope for some fast starts.. Passing is always a premium at the highest level so trying not to run too many lasts will be the objective.. Lambert will win enough I would think for us to remain there or thereabouts so his partner will need to avoid being fourth too often to make those victories count..

On a slightly different note, I was surprised Freddie performed so well at weekend knowing his wife had gone into labour on Friday in a foreign country on her own.

Maybe your next username could be DaveJessupfan?

So, if you had eight riders on eight points, you would have to have two semi-finals and a final to decide the winner. That sounds like a really ridiculous way of deciding the winner of an individual meeting....oh, hang on a minute....

Speedway, Flat Track and Side Cars

Still think four finals is the way forward.. Meaning going into the last round of races riders could jump, or drop, several positions given what final they end up in... It would also reward the top four qualifiers on the night with the biggest points scoring final and not allow riders in eighth on the night to win.. I would also allow the top eight into the following year with the other seven having to race off in the GP challenge against nine riders from the the various qualification meetings.. The top six qualifying to the GP's to be joined by the SEC winner and the local wild card.. This will mean to earn the GP position you must beat those who currently have it and those that have it get the chance to defend their hard earned ranking.. No need then for conjecture or political appointments, each permanent rider on view will have earned their place..