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Hi all, I hope this is okay to post as a comment in here. I know many of you may have known my father as Jenga / j20hh. He sadly passed away recently after battling with various illnesses the last couple of months, but I know he was fairly active on here, and I thought it would be fitting to log into this account to announce it. I'm aware he was a bit of a marmite character on these forums, but he was on here exactly how he was in real life, a windup merchant with bad grammar. It's been fascinating to look back through his posts and comments, and more so the replies from other people. I can only apologise if he aggravated any of you with his comments, but know that they've brought a grieving son a great deal of joy, to have an online archive of my Dad just trying his best to wind people up over a sport he loved. Speedway and Workington Comets were a huge part of my Dad's life, and a huge part of my childhood, I'm sure I'll have to get down to Northside to honour his memory soon. If any of you happened to know him in real life, I'd be more than happy to pass on funeral details over a PM. Thanks

The ultimate answer is stop complaining about what other countries/businesses are doing and focus on what you are doing wrong and strive be the best at the job and then that problem goes away

Does anyone else think it's crazy that Northampton are not being granted a full facility for the missing NKI...? It's not their fault that he's injured and it's not their fault that he's being advised not to fly because of his injury... Surely this is a perfect example of where the infamous "In the best interests of the Sport" rule should be applied... We have a new track starting from scratch, trying to attract and retain new fans... but in a sport that prides itself on having No Brakes...they are being asked to operate with an artificial hand brake applied... Seems ridiculous!!!!

What, for the reform or tory clowns? 14 years of their rule has left the country in tatters, and well done Nigel for brexit, what a disaster.

Take your kings Lynn hat off mate I for one am not castigating Cooper … I believe he meant to go a bit left and when he did coupled with the looking behind him he went further over than he thought My youngest daughter now 17 did roller speed skating and was a multi british champion …. One of her very first outdoor races at the age of 6 she was coming down the final straight and looked behind to see her fast finishing rival … the looking made her veer to the left … her skill set at that stage meant she drifted …. She was pulled in front of the officials and given a warning and rightly so although her mum thought the officials harsh I believed they were correct … age is not a factor and should not be taken into account Cooper got this wrong and I don’t believe maliciously …. The fact he is the best youngster we have and is showing outstanding form doesn’t come into it … I’m sure those around him will have had a word and I expect cooper himself will see the reaction (some of which is way over the top) and learn from it Many many ex riders have all said Cooper was at fault ranging from Steachmann, Silver , Stonehewer .. down to the likes of James Brundle…… I’m inclined to go with ex riders opinion rather than a fan who can be biased to his or her club Cooper clearly at fault … not malicious or dirty and hopefully he has took it all on board

But he is going to look, he made an error off the bend so checked everyone else's position, it's normal with every rider who makes an error. Absolutely normal to do. At the point of Rushen looking back, Harrison was far enough behind to see Rushen's corrective manoeuvres. For me, the incident only arises because Harrison isn’t aware of his surroundings. Rushen doesn't & never did turn left down the straight. The only decision the referee had on offer was excluding Harrison.

Watching the incident over & over & for me (unpopular opinion clearly) the referee made the right call. Rushen overshooting the corner a little & just tries to get his wheels in line quicker to regain speed to hold position. At no point through the whole move is he moving left down the straight. The view from behind is very very clear on that. For me, Harrison had enough time & room to see what was happening in front of him but failed to adjust to the situation.

A couple defeats in the grand scheme of things is nothing,the win is having speedway to watch and enjoy if you make the playoffs great if not at least you got your team to support and follow. Keep the crowd levels up and enjoy it while you got it.

Not all changes are that good. Remember Matic Ivacic and before him MB Andersen?

Speedway fans know if they turn up late the meeting will be delayed. It makes it harder for me as I rely on trains to get to meetings. One late start has already cost me £185 for a unexpected hotel room. But the issue is a professional sport should start at the time stated. 19:30 start for me means ready to start heat 1, which also means 2 minutes goes on at 19:28 and a parade should start at 19:23. Not start time at 19:30 and first race gets underway at 19:45 or later.

I think they should start at the official start time

I don't think Scunthorpe could ever be accused of a lack of loyalty towards Sumon Lambert, too much if anything. FWIW I don't think Poole have done anything wrong here, you can't drop a rider scoring as well as Newman has been.

Funny how it’s only Poole that show zero loyalty…..No mention of Scunthorpes zero loyalty to Simon Lambert…but of course he didn’t ride for Poole!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know it would be a bit of a faff but couldn't NKI use the train, its a couple of hours from Brussels to St Pancras, walk to Euston approx 10 minutes, train to Northampton takes just over an hour. Get him a railcard to save some money.

Whilst I take your point on Klindt, Batchelor's scores have been 7+1, 3+1, 5+1, and 9, all away from home, and 5 at home. I'm wondering what you're expecting from a 4.73 averaged rider?

Lads been out best part of 12 months, steps right back in to Premier League with a few practise spins. Show some respect!

Poor Cooper signed for the wrong East Anglian team.

Interesting bit of research. of course there's lots of variables like injuries but I reckon a fair few will just not have been able to make it pay and so you get into this ever decreasing circle where a small pool of riders can only make it pay only by taking all of the opportunities to make it pay. i.e. riding in multiple leagues. I reckon you could do a similar analysis on the Polish U21 riders and lots of them will have disappeared from the sport. Probably more to do with how competitive it is over there though, in terms of how many U21 riders they have. I've said on here before if you want to get rid of doubling up in Britain there seems to be a load of Polish kids who are left without Polish clubs each season. Short term fix and probably not possible after Brexit? whilst I don't disagree about British speedway sorting itself out I do think the world governing body need to do more to both protect the existing territories and expand into new territories. ultimately if everything becomes focussed on Poland that's what the sport will become... a Polish sport that nobody else is bothered about. easier said than done of course but I do think FIM need to look at how they assist the current pyramid and develop new ones. for a start stop dragging all sorts of riders all over Europe for all sorts of qualifiers that conflict with domestic leagues and appear to be costly for the riders. look at the cricket franchise system where those competitors often play of a number of franchises because the competitions are staggered to allow it. Have a month long event with 8 franchises with the top international riders supplemented by local riders. Have the UK one in June after the GP's. Have a Scandinavian one in July and a Polish one in August. Take it to the USA and Australia over the winter. Like a travelling circus just without the clowns.... ....hopefully. Then eventually look to expand it into new territories. Spain, Asia, South America. There's loads of kids into motorbikes in those regions. They can't all make it to MotoGP but some could make a decent career as Speedway rider if the infrastructure and opportunity is there. The raw materials are out there but at the minute the flagship SGP series is reliant on the Poles developing talent which is more and more likely to be Polish... ....and so the ever decreasing circle continues. It's basically a business with zero product development.

Should have gone it alone at least a decade ago... I was bored the other day, (retirement can do this to you), and found myself looking at the British U21 Final Results from around a decade ago, as I was curious to see how many riders are left in the sport... As "there are not enough riders to have one league".... Very, very few from around 2014 - 2018 (I didn't check any further), are still riding.. Some of the names, quite high up in the scoring, were unknown to me, and had beaten some of the riders still riding, and doing "OK" today... These lads would now be 28 - 33 ... Surely a fair % of them would have developed to the required level (they definitely weren't " wobblers"), if they had been given team places, rather than giving those places to journeyman foreigner after journeyman foreigner, who have ridden over here using a "revolving door" system... The GP lads are great to watch, but even that can get boring, and certainly are not cost neutral over a season when you measure the revenue they bring in.. UK Speedway should simply have cut its cloth accordingly and opened their businesses on days that their potential highest amount of punters would come through the doors.. Probably too late to sort it now, ssdly...

Thursday May 7th - everyone's chance to make the change.....

Guess you’ve never been to Ipswich in recent times 🙄 unless you wanna vape or get your haircut in a Turkish fuc*ing barber then don’t even bother going in to “town”. Sh!thole. well done Labour.

Ian he was 16 with 1 years experience in the sport! What about the 15 point maximum at Redcar? 13 points Glasgow? It’s people like YOU that completely ruins our sport for the young guns. He’s beat Jason Doyle while Jason was leading the GP if I remember rightly!? Chris holder, bomber, majic , Lawson and plenty more!!! he was 16/17 with no previous experience in speedway but still people like you didn’t give him a proper chance other than pick on his bad days and kept quite on his good! I really hope he doesn’t return to speedway as I’ve followed him from a young age and the talent he has on two wheels is outstanding. Speedway is 50% bike set up and 50% rider ability and with his lack of experience I am sure his bike was set up incorrectly a lot of the time. He was one of the best mx riders in the world for his age where his talent on a bike was shown by his ability. He can now do the same with flattrack as it’s not the bike set up that wins races it’s the rider riding it.

The problem of course with that is that there is a significant lag of the tapes in front of riders in gates 2 and 3 vs the magnets themselves. So doing this would essentially guarantee they’re at a disadvantage. There’s no easy solution to this unfortunately, since not excluding the tapes offender, as has been suggested, would result in more gambling (or going deliberately when they see any movement). Personally I think keeping the starting rules simple (exclusions for tape touching, anything else is allowed) is the way to go.

You are joking! As Jan Staechmann pointed out, there aren't any brakes. You can see Harrison trying to pull back/away, but he was accelerating out of the bend taking a natural line, while Rushen (who took one long look, and then a second glance), had moved across from the natural line. I doubt any rider would have expected him to be there. Harrison had no chance - neither did Scott - or do you think he should have navigated his way past?!

That’s cause the ref is clearly and idiot and doesn’t know what he’s doing. 16 or not he would know you shouldn’t be pulling lefts like that down a straight, he even looks twice before doing it.

If Jye is doubtful i would get Lambert to guest

Was an interesting match. KT has started the season very well. Rushen’s move was horrible, do that to the wrong person and he will get hurt either on or off track. Lidsey looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there. Batch and Klindt are passengers that wake up every now and again. Half decent performance from any of the aforementioned 3 and Foxes win.

My instant thought was "is Christina Turnbull the ref" and it's becoming pathetic how that's a common question in my head now.

They should stick to the advertised start, if people miss the start then maybe they will turn up earlier next time, if not then the late starts will continue.

Ford last seen chasing klindt to van with pen and paper and big brown paper bag

the failures at Northampton began long before a wheel was turned ,, it was almost a secret except to speedway fans ,that Northampton were opening . lots of potential fans not even aware there was going to be speedway ,,it was a massive investment to get Northampton up and running , and IMHO some of that money would have been better placed elsewhere , bribing a current championship team to step up . and investing in Northampton to start in accordance with the bspa rules and run in the championship , A championship season would give newbies a good few new teams to watch ,not the same 5 over and over , and championship fans a new venue to see , seems like a winner to me , a successful first season ,building and retaining their own fanbase ,and revenue from away team supporters while a home fanbase built up ,,season 2 a step up a league allowing the bribed team to step back down

I refuse to ignore this subject. It’s one of the more interesting topics on this forum

Was there last Thursday. Not giving up after one home meeting. Already have tickets for Thursday meet. Sure one or two riders not coming up with the goods, but lets give them a chance. Took my daughter & granddaughter last week. Though my daughter had been with me before (to MK), my granddaughter was completely new to this. she thoroughly enjoyed it and is looking forward to this week. Speedway can hardly afford for such a facility to fail, especially with people giving up so soon!!

batch rode better than i thought he `would at bellevue

To me the heat races now seem like they are just qualifying races before the proper final race, whereas formerly when every point scored counted for the championship, it felt much more like every heat already was a true world championship race.

Can't believe people are still talking about Gilkes replacing Newman, Bowes is the obvious rider to drop if they want Gilkes back.

Well said. Reform either don't bother with facts or just lie (some of the things they claim they can do at Council level simply are not true) - they've made no difference in Councils that they've taken over. In Kent, they've lost 10 of their elected councillors within a year, and it's an absolute mess there. Tories have faded away. Suffolk County Council is full of Tory old boys who look after their own interests. It needs a shake-up, but with people who have a genuine concept of what can actually be done at County level. No change for Ipswich, because 7 May is not a Borough/District election. Some people have no idea of the difference.

Stars wait a few years for a proper No.1 only for him to have his worst season in a while lol. Ipswich 2 passengers but won with a bit to spare again, Witches really are 1 team change away from potentially retaining the PREM title imo. The Brennan, Musielak, Lawson & King core with Edwards as the Rising Star is strong enough to compete for silverware when you look at the amount of points they put up as a unit.

With how Thomsen has stepped it up this year Edinburgh are just a Rushden or Scott away at reserve from having a really good side even allowing for Sedgeman being the Aussie version of Klindt.

I prefer PUMPED. Also thanks to Leon and Sam for their efforts last night in knocking their own team out the cup. 😂

... oh and Kyle Howarth who got home 15 minutes earlier 😂

yes, and it was even worse for Brady Kurtz, the last place in the LCQ ruined his results completety. I am convinced that the riders do no longer give it all during the heat races, since those points scored do not count for the World championship anyway now. The old system when every point won on the track actually counted was much better. Zmarzlik just took it easy last night. He took no unneccessary risks, won only one race, but still ended up on the rostrum in the end, right behind Bewley, who rode so much better and had won all five of his heats. I just don't think this system is fair.

The GP points system is a farce especially when Dan bewley scores 15 points in the heats,only to come 2nd at the end

He’s changed his user name to Trackrat and just trolls for what he thinks are laughs

The Holders whinging - I can't believe that for a second Never before have I known a more chilled pair that simply smile and get on with it than them You must be mistaken

@IainB arrived at 7.15 and there were no queues. So we are talking about late arrivals, not staff training. The sport is enough of a joke already in this country without this sort of stuff. It's not just Northampton either, tapes up at 7.30 should mean exactly that unless there are genuine problems due to an RTA or simialr.

Long term future secured, as is a new deal with Unipart. And the icing on the cake is the impending return of Riss. Mega news!

Cant Bowes move to 8!!

Fair play too Edinburgh well deserved win today and being honest it has been coming with the inconsistency in this team. if you are being out gated all afternoon this is what the outcome is. On a side note there can’t be any other team in both leagues that have as many mechanical issues than us very frustrating. but well done Edinburgh best team today by a distance.

It’s £1 more than the Monarchs charge, and the same price Berwick and Poole charge. Yes, last week was a trial, and that’s why it was cheaper. This is the normal price.