Speedy swindon pete

Another meeting. Another shambles at the starts. This is just embarrassing. People new to the sport stood wondering what the hell is going on.

Shame the pirates put up such a pathetic fight tonight as the racing was as good as it’s ever been at Blunsdon. If it was a tighter score line or something riding on the last heat, it would have gone down as an all time classic. Heat 15 looked more like a demonstration race than anything else, lost count of the number of passes during the 4 laps. Over the 15 heats there was barely a tapes to flag result as far as I recall. Credit to the track team, they got it pretty much spot on tonight. After the first couple of matches where the track was quite slick but making some good racing, they went too far the other way and put too much dirt on it, making it a bit choppy and unpredictable, but crucially making the dirt line once it built up, the only fast line on the track. Generally you could stick your back wheel in it and not worry too much about being passed. It’s been getting better since, but tonight was perfect. Enough dirt for a decent dirt line to build up, but not so much that it makes the inside of the track redundant. There was a line on the white line (the 1st bend dive bomb should be something our riders should be perfecting), round the fence, mid track cut backs, the lot. Bloody great. People go on about track curating being a real art, but these days, a relatively smooth and predictable surface and the right ratio of dirt allowed to build up out wide relative to the inside, and you can’t be far off. I don’t understand why tracks over here make such a meal of it in general. Credit to Vissing tonight, he deserved to score in each of his rides, even against the middle order Poole riders, not just the reserves. If he can pop out the start more often or be a bit smarter in the first bend, he’ll be doing fine. Like I said about the match on Monday, All the bleating mid meeting about us being useless without decent reserves is ridiculous. Anything can and usually does happen in the playoffs, but we’ve as good a chance of winning them as anyone, really we should be favourites at this point. Just worry we’re peaking too early.

Glug Glug Glug.

as stupid as someone belittling an experienced manager’s decision even before we’ve seen the consequences of their choice?

I was giving Poole a compliment! It’s all relative. Glad you’re enjoying the new billiard-table smooth track, Steve!

Just shows how bad the poole track used to be when fans and riders are giving that surface tonight some praise. Crikey. Ford’s potato harvest might be down come the end of this season, but still might have enough to fund some tin-pot race jackets for his lucky septet next season, though.

Classic.

Can’t believe some of the comments I’m reading (well, CR getting the razor blades out after going a few points down isn’t that much of a surprise actually). 2 point loss away from home to the league leaders, with only a point from reserve and the middle order losing their gating gloves mid meeting, yet some are going on as if we’ve been hammered by 20 points! Madness. Why anyone bothers talking about a defeat with the last 5 heats to come, specifically where this team is designed to excel, is beyond me. If the ref had let Doyle’s perfectly decent start go on his tactical ride (shock, another referee making a meal of movement / non movement at the start), we’d probably be looking at a draw. Just need to give Perks some gating lessons and we’ll be laughing. If anything I worry that we’re peaking a bit too early.

Wallop

Away for the weekend so missed this. Probably a good thing as I think i’d have exploded with rage if I’d seen Ellis excluded for rolling again in person. Have a word for Christ sake. Thanks to Doyle and Museli for rescuing that one.

Appalling reffing. You’d think they’d be reviewed on that in most other sports and have the book thrown at them. Can’t see that happening here though.

The management need to start fining riders who get excluded for moving at the start twice. Can barely remember a meeting at home where we haven’t had a rider excluded for moving at the tapes or touching them. the most brain dead way of gifting the oppo points and getting them back in the meeting.

The camera work is vomit inducing. Just zoom out far enough to be able to follow the main battles in the same shot instead of trying to zoom right in using a Sony handicap on a 5 quid tripod. It’s not that hard.

Batch didn’t get the praise he deserved for his max in the last home match. He was absolutely electric, and he’s doing exactly the same again tonight. Very impressive.

Track got better later in the evening and after some further attention, there was even a couple of good races. Still not good enough though. All it boils down to is whether that was worth nearly 20 quid (plus a cuppa and a choccy bar) of my hard earned? Answer is no. Sort it out, please. All the more annoying that the track has shown signs of being good (the first two meetings when it was slicker were much better than the last couple with more dirt on) and it probably cost us a win tonight as a couple of the lads were clearly spooked by the state of the track mid meeting.

And your point is?

1st bend very hard work. At least they’re trying to do something about it. No guarantees it’ll do much though. And the racing and product suffer again. hopefully blading some dirt out wide will make a wider line to avoid the bumps.

I say it all the time, but what is the point in having referees if they can’t administer the most basic of rules? The only excuse the ref would have for missing that start is because they are completely blind or they simply weren’t watching and paying attention. How bloody hard is it? It wouldn’t be so bad if the ref hadn’t pulled a couple of identical starts to that back earlier in the meeting. If you can’t be right, at least be consistent...but seemingly even that is too difficult for some refs these days. I’d like to think the videos of meetings are used to review a referee’s performance to check they are fit for purpose? Or is it more a case of once you’ve got the job, you’re in no matter how senile you get? Trouble for the SCB, having performance reviews would likely mean that we’d suddenly have barely any refs left to run the leagues!

So after all the hand-wringing and gleeful doom-mongering from people only taking a passing interest in what has been going on with the Abbey Stadium saga, believe it or not the opening night on the modified track went pretty well. Not that that would be of much interest to some of the idiots on here. Firts half of the meeting might as well have been on the old track it was so dull, but in the 2nd half the racing got better and better. Crucially, there were no signs of it cutting up or becoming tricky to ride at all. Credit to Ron Russell and everyone else for putting in the hours to get it ready, especially as it sounds like Tuesday’s test didn’t quite go to plan. Particularly pleasing to see it go well in front of a huge crowd. Proof that there are still plenty of people out there who want to come out and pay to watch speedway. Hopefully some of the more casual attendees last night were sent home happy after watching a great few last heats racing, a tight score line and a tense finish, and are planning to come again soon based on the evenings entertainment. Thankfully this forum barely represents 1% of most speedway crowds. Reading some comments on here you’d think everyone would be avoiding the meeting for fear that the track would be unridable, and those that did attend would have been sent home disappointed after watching another National Stadium disaster unfold. Thankfully most attendees don’t think like that, they just want to turn up and watch some blokes bang handlebars for 4 laps at a time with a close score line and hopefully a home win. It’s not that complicated. The big crowd did create its own problems with getting in which the promotion really need to sort out. The car park was full by 10 past 7 (not a lot they can do about that admittedly), but the queues for the turnstiles were huge, with only two of them open, and there was no signage (that I could see) saying where people should go. I assumed as with previous years, pre booked tickets should go through the cabin at the top, but that apparently wasn’t the case, and it was being used as a normal turnstile, which I assume everyone queuing up for the main turnstiles didn’t realise. They were also telling everyone in the queues that they would be delaying the meeting by a few minutes to get everyone in, only for the tapes to go up 30 seconds later. Thankfully it sounds like Lampart got a late memo about the situation and decided to lay the bike down to buy everyone another 5 minutes. That aside though it was a decent evening. It shows that with some decent weather, the crowds are still there and not everyone has been put off by the daft rules or politics of the sport, we just need to try and make them come back as often as possible. Again, it backs up my theory that as long as the club is running with healthy attendances, it’s much harder for Osbourne to come up with excuses for not sorting the stadium out and trying to get rid of us completely. Well done to the club for getting the meeting on with their hands effectively tied behind their back until the very last minute.

Glug Glug Glug

Welcome to the internet.

The existing lighting posts around the old parts of the track are exactly the same distance from the fence and have been there for decades. The fence is about 7 foot high also. believe it or not, people who have run a track for years and years are perfectly capable of making modifications to a track without having to consult with a bloke on the Internet first.

I’m convinced someone was employed by Osbourne to keep topping up that puddle in the car park that was there whilst that story was being peddled.

This is what I’d assumed about these track changes, the club needed to push on with things and change the track layout to try and rejuvenate the project a bit. The old track certainly wasn’t fit for purpose any more and the entertainment value had gone through the floor. If the club can keep going with healthy enough attendances and general support, it makes it harder for the council to say that the site needs to be put out of its misery because only a couple of hundred of people are turning up a week and no one cares any more. I’m almost certain thats what would have happened with the old track and was Osbourne’s plan to bleed any support for the speedway dry. Hopefully with a better track and a competitive team, attendances and support will stay healthy....it’s then up to Osbourne and his cronies to fulfil their side of the bargain and put some sort of new stadium. If not, the elephant in the room over osbourne and this mythical stadium just keeps getting bigger. Sadly I think the club and council are still ultimately just being strung along though. I don’t know why Geoff58 is sounding off as if he’s just uncovered some inside scoop.....we’ve known all this for years mate... it doesn’t need rubbing in any more.

Forgot all about this until now, but was at stanton house hotel last Thursday evening...saw a posh white Merc in the car park with a number plate along the lines of “K BJR3” (or something like that). Probably just a coincidence and didn’t think much of it until I remembered blunsdon is just down the road. Proper, old school rumour mill stuff, that.