salty

Three World Finals have taken place in GB in the "BSI era". Peterborough(2002)Poole(2004?)and shamefully.....Reading. If I recall the crowds for the first two weekly events, with rounds at Sheffield, Eastbourne weren't too bad and compared favourably to the crowds when similar events were held in Denmark and Poland. The crowd for the round at Lynn has been good, but the question remains whether there would be sufficient support for events when England aren't on track. Three sparsely attended finals at White City in the 70's and early 80's and the lack of WTC Finals in the past few years suggest British Speedway is unwilling to gamble on the crowds supporting the current format. I can't see the WTC coming to the UK until the Belle Vue stadium is ready. Might be a longish wait....

All of which have had little negative effect on the sport. Compared to the list of other issues that Phil has listed below.....

Yes. But the crowd was poor (as it was last year at Mallila), so maybe they need to look again.

I guess the 3 points Poland gained from the joker were counter-balanced by the Danes gaining when Bjerre should have got excluded and when he got a second bite of the cherry following Milik's fall. Glad the Poles won just to shut up the multi-monikered one on this forum. MJJ's two last places were what ultimately cost the Danes victory. Daft idea to take the WTC to Prague compounded by seeding the Czechs through. Didn't exactly pull in the punters did it? Hopefully we can get back to the ttop 4 teams next year on a decent track.

Nail on head in my view. I've been banging on for years about the need to soak up as much continental experience as possible. I recall Eddie Kennett in his Rye House years, at the very start of his career, missing a trip to ride in the fledgling Under 21 World Team Cup so that he could ride at Rye on the Saturday night. Fast forward to this season and Jason Garrity had already announced his withdrawal from the race for the Under 21 crown prior to his unfortunate injury. We have never truly embraced the various European Championships or the World Under 21 team competitions, so hardly surprising our senior riders struggle on foreign soil. Peter Oakes tried manfully to change the status quo, but got disillusioned by the lack support from above as did Rob Lyon more recently. Unfortunately the short term thinking at the top of the sport has meant little money has been invested in a long term fix.

Sure that was the message, but not so sure it was the right move. Barker dropped a point, which allowed Harris to take a ride in place of Bridger. Given he was in trap 3 against Puodzoks, Woodward and Manizares, it was, at the very best, lose a point to gain two. As it was you could probably argue that by coming second Harris got just a point more than Bridger would have, so a fairly pointless exercise.

Disagree. You should use your joker with your top rider replacing one of the weaker riders. So from that point of view Middlo got it right, though you would question the wisdom of using your joker against Hancock!! I generally don't get too worked up about Middlo getting the GB job, as he can only do what he can with the riders available (you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear). Unfortunately, this SWC he has made a messy purse made out of pigskin, less with his tactics, but more with his selections. Eddie shouldn't have been picked at Lynn. Cook should have been persevered with. Bridger and Barker should have been nowhere near Prague tonight.

But its just the status quo as far as I can see. One arm Of RCP running the 4 stadiums much as they have done under the guise of the GRA. They have run Plough Lane into the ground and will continue to do so.

LInk to the Racing Post story mentioned in the Irish Examiner story. http://www.racingpos...ng/1319343/top/ Not sure what difference that makes. Just one tentacle of RCP passing the running (down) of the stadiums to another tentacle...

Any chance Rune could revert back to the land of his birth now that his Polish international and GP journies seem to be over?

Was pretty ambivalent about the World Cup, but I'll be rooting for Team GB now!

How is it an Anti-Poole thing? I'm not anti Middlo, I'm anti the system which restricts our countries chances of producing world class riders. However, I think the selection of Eddie was flawed and the person(s) who made the decision should accept responsibility. I can see Nicholls point of view regarding the situation preventing him riding in the European Championships, especially now Tai is riding in them. Sums up the whole mess the sport is in domestically.

Efforts are being made with the junior set up. Morris and Vatcher seem to have the attitude and determination to make a difference. However, I would still argue that too many young Brits don't have the same drive to succeed as their counterparts in other countries. We should be looking for every opportunity to give our youngsters experience abrad, but we costantly ignore the European championships and have only an ambivalent attitude towards the Under 21 events. Was ridiculous that before his injury Garrity was not going to compete in under 21 qualifiers. Surely we should be looking to encourage the riders to get that type of experience. Perfect opportunity to give Cook a go on Thursday. Would surely pay off in the future.

Can't see the logic of dropping Cook. Give him the experience in Prague wth a view to the future. Its unlikely we will win the play-off, so we mght as well use it to give some less experienced riders a go. He surely has more to offer in the next few years than Bridger and Barker.

The previous World Cup matches at Lynn have usually been pretty good, but that was dull fare tonight. Predictable finishing positions and precious little good racing.

He used Ljung as a tactical ride earlier on, therefore couldn't use him for the joker.

Stick with Cook for Prague. King for me to get the 4th slot.

The more Nigel bangs on about the Yanks finishing third and what an achievement it would be, the more I want the Swedes to beat them.

What are you doing wasting your time posting on here? Thought you'ld be hanging around the "paddock" (copyright K Tatum) with your tongue hanging out.

Whats Kelvin on about saying we need Kennett later on? If Middlo plays his cards right then he only needs to take one more ride.

Fairly comfortably as it happened.

To be honest the thing that turns me off is the jingoistic approach of the media. Every (football) World Cup the media saturate us with a load of pro-English propoganda, so when they inevitably lose on penalties there is a sense of relief that we are going to be spared the kind of garbage that the red tops specialise in. Speedway, nowhere near so bad, but I hope Nigel and Kelvin tone it down a bit tonight.

I enjoyed the meeting, just a shame that we didn't see a full strength Russian squad. The Latvians acquited themselves well, hope they do themselves justice at the Marketa.

I understand it may well be happening now, but the lack of meaningful action at the last 2 AGM's suggests a lack of foresight as to the seriousness of the situation. Too many seemed to blame the poor 2012 season on the shocking weather (with some justification). Edit. Re your earlier point about promoters not wanting to talk doom and gloom about the sport for fear of turning off sponsors and wanting to "talk the product up". You must have missed the countless doom and gloom warnings from promoters telling us that things were "unsustainable" over the years. In fact within a couple of weeks of Dave Hoggart telling us everything was fine, his co-promoter was giving us dire warnings of the future of the sport at Owlerton.

Can see your point, but have to disagree. Len Silver "There isn't anything dramatically wrong with the way Speedway is run at the moment. There may be some minor changes that may be needed to the way things work, but, as far as I'm concerned, I think it is still a good sport that is generally well run" Dave Hoggart " What we are dealing with is public perception and misapprehension that the sport is in serious trouble. There are a lot of people who think we have to make changes but I don't. Yes, it can survive without major surgery" Allowing some leeway to talk up the product is understandable, but lets not forget this was a feature where other promoters felt able to be more forthright and realistic about the sports future. It was also almost exclusively going to be read by supporters of the sport. Sorry mate but I've had enough of the - "head in the sand" everything's OK, we only need to do a bit of fine tuning - mentality. I reckon the domestic product hit an all time low the other Friday when in 3 Elite fixtures we had countless guests and 5 of the 6 teams running RR. Time for some root and branch surgery.