Vince

At the end of the day if you say, for arguments sake, 1 rider in every 20 makes the grade in the PL or above then you need as many British riders on bikes as you can get. If,as I believe, that difficulty getting enough racing is one of the reasons riders walk away from the sport before they hardly get going then it doesn't make sense to be giving places to foreign lads. Especially as in many cases the main reason the foreign lad is better than his British counterpart of the same age is because he has 10 times the amount of riding hours.

I wonder how many of the posters on this topic (including myself) have ever written something along the lines of "Speedway should be a simple sport, 4 riders, 4 laps" while blaming the powers that be for making it complicated? I think that has happened more than a little here, some people think the sport is as good as it's ever been while some think it was better in the old days. No right or wrong, just an opinion. Obviously those who think the latter are mistaken though

I favour the idea of the losing team getting the pick of 1 & 3 or 2 & 4 gate. If the scores are even then positions are swapped each heat but as soon as one team is ahead the other gets gate choice. No massive advantage but maybe just enough to keep things closer for away teams without looking like 'it's a knockout'

A curtain on a truck is exactly the sort of thing you would need for a permanent track cover that could be fixed behind the fence and then pulled over and attached to points inside the track. It is heavy duty with webbing reinforcement and has brackets and straps attached. For one to fit a double deck trailer which is approx 45' x 12' you will pay in excess of £1000, so to have them custom made to fit the track you would have to estimate at least £15000. Then you need to make something outside the fence strong enough to attach it to but that also retracts below the top of the fence and put fixings on the centre green so I would have thought that would double the cost of the sheet so my guess would be in the region of £30k for something long term.

Like Horse racing, Cricket, Football, Tennis for example where events are never postponed because of surface problems caused by the weather despite being far less susceptible!!!

Do you really think that things haven't changed in the employment market or that there are a lot less employers who are Speedway fans these days and willing to give riders the time off they need? Do you really believe that riders (and parents when they are young) are not going from one end of the country to the other and then straight into work? If so you are wrong, there are plenty of riders working every hour they can and then working on their bikes or travelling to and from meetings. The very first weekend my son rode team Speedway we left Newcastle at 11pm and I was supposed to be at work in Southampton by 3am so started late and rushed around to get finished while he cleaned and serviced the bikes so he could be in Weymouth for a Bank Holiday afternoon meeting. Even so it is very much harder to find work that is flexible enough to allow time off for Speedway these days, don't forget that for postponed meetings that can be at very short notice as well so no chance of booking holiday. There are more than enough applicants for every job without needing to consider somebody who needs to finish early, take days off and probably need considerable sick leave every 2 or 3 years.

You can't seriously believe that the worlds top 20 riders from the 70's in their prime would beat today's top 20? One statement is no more able to be proven than the other. I really don't think you are right and the top riders today are at least as as good as they have ever been. More than that I think the standard of riders in the British leagues is very much higher than they are given credit for. Personally I believe that there are riders who have never really progressed past the NL who could have been 2nd strings in the old division 2. Don't forget I am one of the old gits who remember as far back as the 60's as well! As for more dirt on the tracks, a few years ago I would have been the first in line to agree and for the GP's I think that there is certainly a case for more dirt. However my opinion has changed these days and now I think it is more important that the surface suits the track and more dirt will very often kill any chance of decent racing.

But the Chapmans aren't running a Speedway business they are running a stadium in the same way that the landlords who collect rent from Speedway promotions are.

My point was that some forum members thought they had the answers to Newports survival saying it needed to 'speculate to accumulate' and ridiculed any suggestion that the speculation might not ever get a return in terms of increased spectators. However it would now seem that the only man with the true facts and figures might have had more business sense than they gave him credit for. It is very easy to spend large sums of somebody else's money.

I always swap sports for movies in the Speedway off season. Will now just be cancelling the movies as I think the sky sports subscription is too high for just EL coverage and there are so many repeats on the movie channel that it makes more sense to use the on demand service for any particular movie we want to watch. For me personally the GP's are far more enjoyable than the majority of league meetings. I will miss the EL coverage but not enough to justify the outlay and Eurosport and Motors already show the majority of the sports I want to watch.

What I remember about Newport is that there were some very vociferous fans who said, among other things, that the track and promoter needed to change and the crowds would return in their 1000's. The new promotion came in and changed just about everything the forum 'experts' wanted before finding out that the crowds didn't increase and it was money down the drain that hastened the end of the stadium.

Same old story, people only remember the good second half races not the majority which were meaningless to the riders and fans. It was well known (even to me as a kid) that the money for the second half was often agreed to be shared before the racing started so that nobody had to take any chances. Riders would still race, sometimes hard, but mostly their earnings didn't depend on results. How anybody thinks current crowd levels can support paying riders for several more races when the current format is losing money the majority of the time I have no idea. Introduce a less costly second half of meaningful junior meetings and half the crowd leave anyway and it won't be long before people are on here complaining about paying to watch 'wobblers' (although they are nothing of the sort).

You can hardly blame people for not taking your opinion of the track changes as an unbiased view can you? Just perhaps the moving of the white line has little impact on the racing line unless changes in surface and/or way the track is graded are planned as well. It all has to work in combination. I think it would be wise to wait and see how things are after a few meetings when everybody has had chance to work out the best way to make the track work under racing conditions.

Apparently the first 2v Jawa's were like the JAP's. As long as you made your usual 15 overtaking moves during the meeting you could chuck the bike in the shed (no posh workshop's in them days tha knows) with your black leathers and they would clean and prepare each other for the next meeting.

Makes you wonder why they stopped the clubs and riders having a bit of an earner at others expense then doesn't it? Will be interesting to see if this is the end of the matter or if anybody challenges the monopoly.

So far as I know there is no evidence that he has or ever will drive a van on the motorway under the influence of drink and drugs. I have never been into the drug thing at all but know plenty of people who did/ do dope on a regular basis without ever going on to bigger stuff. I would have thought growing up would include realising others are entitled to an opinion even if it isn't the same as yours! As far as I am concerned what was reported from the court last year makes this pale into insignificance even given that he was found innocent. That really was distasteful while this latest episode is hardly crime of the century. He is still young and imo an ar****le but plenty of people manage to put their lives in order as they mature and lets hope he has the right people around him to help him with that.

Strangely enough I had to go on courses to get certificated as a Clerk of the Course and another as a Scrutineer and yet another as an instructor for Motocross. I was given a machine examiners licence by the SCB because an amateur club asked for it, no testing or tuition of any sort. I would say that both the clerk of the course and scrutineers jobs at MX are at least as difficult than their Speedway counterparts. Anybody who has been around Speedway a while could cope as a pit marshall quite easily so that leaves the ref. I would agree that good referee's wouldn't be easy to find but that seems to apply to all Speedway up to GP level. I could certainly find several experienced Speedway people who could do a decent job and none of whom would do what a qualified ref did at Weymouth a few years back when the announcer had to put the red light on because she hadn't noticed the rider laid in the middle of the track a few yards from the start line as the rest were coming round for their next lap. All in I would say that it wouldn't be very hard for somebody like the Courtneys who have plenty of contacts within Speedway to assemble a crew as good as any.

Really? I have never organised a Speedway meeting but have been around enough to see how things are run and even helped out a bit at times. I have been involved in a large number of MX meetings with up to 300 riders taking part. That's 300 riders who need to have entry forms filled out and acceptances sent before the meeting, 300 bikes to scrutineer, a track to build within specific guidelines with posts, rope, start gates, signing on/lap scoring facilities all needing to be transported to the site. Insurance cover to be sorted, medical cover arranged, toilets put in place, lapscorers and anything up to 50 marshalls arranged. Then there are the results from 20 to 30 races to be sorted and posted before finally awarding the trophies (that somebody had to arrange before the meeting) and dismantling everything to be transported back to where it came from. I doubt getting 14 riders into a purpose built stadium with a permanent track is infinitly more complicated.

None of those things could ever happen now, no promoter could ever end up owing money to landlords or riders. Easily solved if proof of funding is asked for.

I wonder if the good idea was to do with the way the event was run rather than the riders involved, perhaps there were ideas of how to promote the event to get non Speedway supporters along, possibly they were going to do something between races or vary the format, we know from biker fm that there was to be a 6 man final. Perhaps there was to be something done with admission prices and so on, there are any number of possibilities. Would be good to know if any or all of these would work surely. Besides that if you have a carefully selected field of riders over roughly equal ability you are likely to see better racing than when a couple of superstars are involved anyway.

I don't think anyone is saying that these meetings will be fantastic or anything else, only that if the promoters want to run them and pay for it then they ought to be allowed. If they can make money or even break even, which they clearly think possible, then there is something to be learned from their efforts. If they weren't succesful I am sure you would get your 20 pages of 'what a stupid idea' and 'I told you so'.

How will it deplete the earnings of 'proper promoters' and wreck the league? Nothing to hear is more like it as you are just making statements without any substance to back them up. Anybody would think the promoters have jumped in with both feet before giving it any real thought if their opinions match yours. Isn't that the point? If they do then you would have to ask how they managed it and look to copy some of their ideas, if they don't a few tracks still make money and the rest lose nothing.

And still not one person has explained what harm these metings could do to the sport.