40-38

Tai had four laps to try and help Robert pass Emil. It would have been better to lose 5-1 trying to do that than lose 4-2 while he clears off. I thought that was the point of pairs riding?

Anf if Tai had tried to slow Emil down Robert might have done that! Ludicrious decision.

Why did Wofinden go for the front?!

I can see nobody wanting to hit the first bend in front lol.

Russia or Poland? I'd rather Poland probably.

The great thing is that we have two riders at the moment for Britain who don't look overawed and ride like they belong in that company. even if we don't win it we're competing on a better level than we have for a long time.

Oh yes! Lovely to stuff the Aussies!!

To be fair we could have had the Czech Republic or France and at one point Australia and Britain were looking a bit shaky.

Typical Aussie showboating like they haven't just scraped through!

Phew!

No way should Lambert have been off gate 1!

Very good crowd, beautiful weather. Appalling racing and my god the atmosphere is flat!

Surely if he rode in the British semi final he can't pull out of this one?

If that's true someone remind Rossiter to stop faffing about as it's freezing standing here.

Or David Hemsley!

Damn, I was hoping for Ilya Bondarenko, first into turn 1 and last halfway round turn 1!

I was thinking of going for only the second time this year and possibly taking a newbie with me but I can't justify the money when two of our best riders are riding against us and how do I explain that away?!

https://twitter.com/staechmanager/status/879349610401202177 RIP Ila Teromaa :-(

David Howe? Im struggling to think of anybody else we could get in.

It wasn't quite as bad as Glasgow in 2011, we didn't win any races that night if I recall. Last night wasn't far off though, I don't know if they're having trouble getting shale still but it looked quite patchy and we didn't seem to have any speed at all. Somebody told me Lasse blew an engine the other night which might account for him looking out of sorts. We had a bit of bad luck, Wolves moved twice at the start but never touched the tapes we did it three times and demolished them!

Programme said Chris Durno.

Bjerre looked a shadow of his usual self, Garrity was as wild as I remembered him first time at Leicester and King is woeful. Ayres seemed a bit more on the pace which as nice to see, he gives it a lot of effort.

Lasse Bjerre was never afraid to go wide and give it the beans either. With the changes it should be better but the track surface does look poor at the moment. I know there were problems getting the shale but surely there is more than just one supplier?

Danny King hasn't really got going yet for Leicester so I've been a bit disappointed with him so far. I've been really impressed with Erik Riss considering I didn't really know anything about him and Josh Bates impressed me with his working out of the inside cut on turn 2 at Beaumont Park, especially giving Jason Doyle a fright in the first meeting of the season.

Well some more seamless presentation would be a start, rider interviews you can hear at the appropriate times, like before the meeting so it isn't drowned out by the tractors, stop randomly cutting songs into each other, play music that makes more of an atmosphere for an exciting motorsport (which I appreciate is subjective but they play the same dozen records every week), stop the in-jokes and the cliches. You don't go to watch other sports and feel like you've stepped back in time like you do with speedway, perhaps it's the demographics, I really don't know but you have to make the most of every minute you get the punters through the gates or you'll lose them to something that does that better. I think the problem stems more from the clashes than the actual doubling up. It's not ideal but I get the necessary evil of it in some respects, but trying to say to a new fan that you won't see nearly a third of your team tonight because they're riding for a different team just doesn't make sense to the unconverted. It doesn't compare to other team sports so I'm not going to go into it but at least if you turn up to football or basketball or rugby you know barring injury you'll see the team you signed! It baffled somebody I work with that Leicester, in the "top league" would be missing two riders tonight because they were riding for a different team in a "lower league".