salty

Can't believe Hancock would risk riding in a meaningless challenge, if he is fit then that would be amazing.

To be fair, on many other threads where we have been bemoaning the lack of British progress, people have said we should embrace these junior European events as a means of giving our lads much needed international experience. Given that our teams are wrecked with absences anyway, we might as well enter our own lads, rather than bury our heads in the sand and pretend they don't exist. Becoming hard to see much of a future for weekend Speedway in Britain.

All depends who finishes in the top 8 (or out of it) and in the top 3 at Lonigo. With 5 other Danes going to tapes in Italy it's very possible that MJJ will find it hard to get a pick as they might be looking at other nationalities for their 4 choices.

Awful crash between Puk and Greg, hope they aren't too seriously hurt. Hancock might be very lucky, because they way his arm got sucked in was horrible. After we saw the worse side of the sport it was great to see the best with some superb stuff from Zmarzlik, Zagar and KK. Lovely celebrations as well.

Seriously! Gater with his "Darcy wasn't drunk, Darcy didn't hydrate" garbage was bad enough. Maybe even Starry has learnt that you can't defend the indefensible (though it hasn't stopped him before). Maybe he's on the charabanc over to Zielona Gara as the patched up Pirates (and guests) bid for Matt's "Holy Grail" of world domination?

Fair play to Matt Ford. He's still giving this event the big'un. "I've always made it clear this tournament is the Holy Grail for me. This is something special" Well the Poole team reminds me a bit of that knight who keeps gettng bts lopped off him in the Monty Python and the Holy Grail movie. No Pawlicki - no problem we'll use his brother No Holder - no problem we'll use another top quality rider who has no discernible link to the club. No Ward - no problem we'll use another rider who used to ride for us but we binned. As long as we call them the Pirates nobody will care. "What a chance for this beautiful, sleepy little town on the South Coast to become world champons. In 5 or 10 years time, no-one looks at the team line -up's - just the team that won it." Hats off to the Speedway Star. Apart from the mithering from Ford they have given this ground breaking event the coverage it deserves - diddly squat. Well done!!

I think liberal use of jokers would be appropriate to reflect the gravitas of this event.

Sure there is a particular legal practice that makes great play of their ability to help well heeled people evade punishment for various parking offences by skilfully finding technical loopholes.

But Gundersen, like Mauger before him, was able to build up to the big night and make those 5 rides count. Thats what was needed in those days. No reason if there was a different system in place then they wouldn't have been able to adapt their approach and make the most out of the GP's.

I wonder why the about turn? At the start of the month we were told it had been agreed Holder would ride for Poole as they were his "mother" club.

Off the top of my head I'd go for Janno in 1990 and Nielsen in 1994.

The biggest conundrum domestic Speedway has to face is touched upon in your post. This year we have Leicester and Eastbourne running home meetings on Saturday evenings, presumably because the promotions feel that is when they will get the best attendances. However, they have been beset by teams tracking a plethora of guests and RR and such is the breadth (and the likely expansion) of the international calendar nowadays that is hard to reconcile top flight speedway in the UK with weekend fixtures. I don't see how a squad system is really going to improve that situation. So do clubs bite the bullet and go for Mondays, Wednesdays or Thursdays with the top boys or stick to weekends?

The actual quote in the Echo from Darcy was “I got some bad news yesterday when I was having dinner and a couple of drinks. I didn’t eat properly and I wasn’t hydrated unfortunately." This sort of contradicts the reports that he has been aware of the split for some time. Maybe there was a final confirmation over the weekend but hardly anything that can be classed truly as mitigation.

Interview with Paul Burbidge. Quite lengthy, but selected quotes...."Neil (Middleditch) was happy with me at Wolves after my last ride. So I didn't expect to be dropped straight away, especially for somebody I feel I can beat" "If Poole were going to give me an opportunity ...then of course I would go back. But if I was just going to get a couple of meetings and get binned, I wouldn't go back to them. I fully understand Matt wants to win the league...but there has got to be a happy medium where you support the British riders and try to bring them on for the future"

Johnson made some comments, didn't see anything from Hopwood though.

Garbage meeting, slightly redeemed by the last few races. Track was shocking, but the reffing was even worse. Both were totally inconsistent.

Given my level of cynicism about the sport it wouldn't surprise me if he gets a token ban, alongside a more lengthy suspended one. Just don't feel that the unhealthy relationship between sponsors (both of individual riders and events), authorities and the GP promoters will allow him to be left out of the series for next year. Can't base my feeling on anything other than a general cynicism with the way the sport works, but I suppose we'll find out soon enough. Don't think a gentle slap on the wrist will do him much good unless he uses this opportunity to change the people around him and give his talent a chance.

According to the latest report in the "Echo" he was having a couple of drinks whilst having a meal, received some bad news and didn't eat his meal and then didn't hydrate. Hence being over the limit the next day.

Forgive my cynicism, but that would be a "monster" surprise to me.

How long before someone uses the infamous Middlo quote?

Yes, but Western Springs is not a "new" circuit to the sport like the ones in Riga and Tampere. We were very close to going to Riga for this weekend, but chose Copenhagen instead. Don't think I would risk going to a meeting in a first time stadium in the future.

Two new tracks on the circuit this season and neither have been fit for purpose. Surely more stringent control ( a successful rehearsal meeting?) needs to be introduced.

The Weird World of Speedway is a facebook group which appears to be used by very few people other than a former Speedway journalist.

Not strictly true. The rule change to allow riders to be (in effect) swopped with any other ranked below 24 only applies to those teams who have riders ranked at that level. In this case it is Poole and Belle Vue only in that position. Matt actually announced his team change before the rule change was posted on the BSPA site and once he got Compton the rule change no longer can benefit Belle Vue as they can only replace Payne (26) with riders below him in the grading list. The main question is, why, given the minimal improvement (if any) Benji gives to the team, did all this have to happen? But I guess we all know the answer to that.

Worrall was riding at Eastbourne, but Adam would have been a good call.