Humphrey Appleby

I'd think the main problem is that the UK government has proved totally inconsistent and unreliable when it comes to deciding something. We were all told that 'Christmas wasn't cancelled' and everyone made plans, only for that to be changed a couple of days before. Same with the schools 'definitely opening' and then being closed one day later... Even the whole story about the vaccine is inconsistent and has changed several times, with one minister saying one thing and another saying another. What sensible business is going to plan events that rely on spectators - with the inherent costs that entails - in this climate? If I were speedway, which is pretty much totally reliant on spectators for its income, I wouldn't even be bothering to try to run this season.

The obvious question is why would it be needed given that speedway teams have had the same opportunities to score at any point in the match? Duckworth-Lewis(-Stern) exists in cricket because teams bat alternately and the side batting second may not get a full innings, along with all the complications of how they may have been pacing their innings before the stoppage. If you want truncated speedway matches to be decided fairly, there are particular break points when most/all riders have ridden the same number of times (e.g. after Heats 4, 8, 11 and 14 in the 'classic' formats). It's not perfect as some riders may have ridden against each other more times, and/or not every rider may have ridden against every other rider at any given point, but that's no different if you ran a full match and the DLS method has its imperfections as well. What would be worth considering, is replacing guests with a handicap system. Bring in a junior, but give their team a starting points advantage based on the difference between their average and that of the rider being replaced. It's actually more complicated than it sounds if you have tactical subs and/or rides because you'd need to distribute the handicap over a given number of heats to avoid the situation where the handicapped team simply uses a tactical option and quickly wipes out the deficit. So I'd guess you'd need to allocate the handicap as happens in golf over particular holes, which would probably cause fans to give up the will to live, but if it could be done like DLS on the scoreboard...

Because speedway was of course of attracting thousands of young people, or indeed thousands of people of any age before apps came along. The argument that technology is ruining things reminds me when football refused to show matches on television - far less live - on the grounds that no-one would turn up to the grounds. The irony was that attendances actually increased once the sport entered the 20th century...

One of the reasons given for leaving the EU was getting rid of 'red tape', such as governments imposing limitations on ripoff credit card charges. Well now UK credit card companies are free to charge what they like, and are doing so...

It doesn't really matter how speedway compares to other sports, or whether 20 quid is really value for money or not if people aren't coming through the turnstiles. With football you'll generally also know that the matches will be held regardless of the weather, and you're not standing around for most of the 90 minutes watching the pitch being mown...

It's not exactly comparable. The actual rules of playing the sport are determined by IFAB, which is in effect FIFA these days despite the Home Nations representation. Unlike the BSPA, the FA generally doesn't get involved in tinkering with the playing rules, beyond stuff like determining the number of substitutes within those rules. The BSPA has a much broader scope to tinker with heat formats, team make-ups, and racing rules. The actual running of the leagues is largely determined by the league memberships and their boards/committees, although the FA (or County FAs for lower levels) does I think have to review and approve the constitutions and you can appeal decisions to them. The FA (and County FAs) also handles in-competition disciplinary issues, such as player and manager conduct. Of course, the FA isn't a complete ivory tower - even if it behaves like one sometimes. It's owned by a couple of hundred of the most senior clubs along with the County FAs, with the professional clubs (who obviously directly and indirectly generate most of the FA's income) having significant influence. However, the important point is that the competition structures and operational rules and regulations are generally decided by the clubs only once-per-year at most, with the day-to-day operational issues delegated to league CEOs (who are usually employees) and judicial issues handled by various parts of the FA. There will be some exceptions in that leagues in the National League System have limitations with respect to their formats and memberships, and also agree to apply common regulations with respect to ground standards for example. These are defined by the FA through various consultative processes. In general though, the English and to a large extent Scottish football structures are well established (although Scotland has recently been going through a big shake-up in non-league football) and don't change much from year-to-year. When I was on a league board, I think we were basically still using the same rulebook from 1960s, and I don't think the County FA was much different. There wasn't actually much for us to decide on a week-to-week basis during the season.

It only works up to a point. If you're Fortnum and Mason and your customers expect a certain quality for the prices you charge, moving to cheaper and likely lower quality products will eventually turn you into Aldi. Nothing wrong with that if your clientele is prepared to accept that, or if you develop a different clientele. But still charging Fortnum and Mason prices for Aldi products would be surefire way of going out of business.

Not sure why people are bothering to complain about public postal services which seem to have become the only delivery services that have got worse over the past year as everything becomes more reliant on them. The electronic version of the Spar doesn't have delivery issues. However, one annoyance is that I don't think the Spar can be viewed on both Android and iOS platforms with the same subscription as it needs a platform specific app. So any chance of making it available through something like Kindle?

The EPL is followed globally and makes a lot of money for UK plc. The BPL isn’t and doesn’t.

Speedway hasn't really thrived in big cities for a long time. It's really only Manchester, Glasgow and Sheffield where it's been sustained over the longer term, although I suppose you could just about make the case for 'Birmingham' if you include Wolves. Speedway seems to do best in towns where there's not (historically) much competition in the way of football or other major sporting teams. Whilst you need a certain amount of footfall for any sporting venture, speedway has been just as, if not more successful in smaller catchment areas. Maybe there's too many other things competing for attention in larger cities, plus of course the 'unenvironmental' nature of the sport makes it increasingly unviable in those places.

I actually think the new Wembley is fantastic - properly designed and well appointed with the football spectator in mind. Almost the best stadium I've visited, with the exception of the Dallas Cowboys one. What is/was a bit rubbish, was they obviously ran out of money for the surrounding infrastructure when they re-developed the stadium. Whilst in fairness the old Wembley was hardly situated in the most salubrious area - surrounded as it was by old warehouses and a concrete plant - they largely left it as a building site along with the crummy old concrete walkway which no longer makes any sense. Whilst I admittedly haven't visited since 2017, it was then only just starting to have been developed into something approaching a respectable complex.

Which was a bit of dump to be honest - even after various attempts to upgrade it with modern facilities. No doubt that's why it got demolished and replaced with a much better, albeit less iconic stadium.

I think even the 6th tier of English football - i.e. National League North/South - gets better average attendances than anything in British speedway. There's even some teams down in the 8th tier that have attendances that speedway would die for.

There were already established criteria for what constitutes an 'elite rider' for non-EU/EEA riders so presumably they can just be extended to apply to all foreign riders. However, how the minimum earnings threshold of GBP 26k plus employer and employee NI surcharges will be met in a sport that essentially operates on zero-hour contracts is anyone's guess. But surely one of the points of Brexit was supposedly to restrict the number of foreign workers and create opportunities for British ones? Speedway riders can hardly be classed as essential workers, greatly contributing to the economy, nor adding to the cultural wellbeing of the nation. Why should speedway expect different treatment from any other industry that has difficulty finding workers to do the job?

Yes, but the above example is precisely a decision that should be taken by an independent commission according to the rules in place. The underlying rules should still be decided by the promoters though, no matter how daft they may be. Bottom line though, is that Crapper would surely have known the rules about replacement riders and was probably trying it on. Even if it was just a missing bit of paperwork, the onus was on him to ensure it was registered wherever it was supposed to be registered. Whether or not a squad system is impractical in speedway, so many promoters have abused the guest and rider replacement rules and is one of the reasons why the sport has no credibility so many have walked away after one too many pisstakes.

Speedway...

It's their ball because they put up the money and carry the losses. You can't realistically expect people without any financial stake in the sport to ultimately be calling the shots - no matter how badly it's being run - because there's no guarantee that them spending the money of others will actually do any better. The sad reality is that speedway has such a poor demographic and has fallen so far in public consciousness that no serious administrator, marketer or financier would want to have anything to do with it, even if the sport could afford them. The sport has dug itself into a hole - partly although not totally of its own making - and it's very difficult to see how it can dig itself out. What should happen though, is that the promoters set the framework and underlying conditions for running the sport each year (or ideally over a longer period), and then an independent Commissioner or Commission is responsible for implementing that. It's the way most serious sports have gone in recent years, and ideally a commission would also include independent directors with marketing, finance and legal skills. However, speedway is too impoverished and sadly Mickey Mouse for that to happen in any serious way.

You need to separate the concept of a body independent from an existing sanctioning organisation, and independent leadership running the sport. An independent body will solve nothing if the promoters are still making the day-to-day decisions, as that's really where the problem lies. Those putting their money into the sport should absolutely be setting the directions - however good or bad they are at doing that - but how these directions should be implemented on a day-to-day basis should be left to an independent person or persons. This is quite different though, from a sanctioning body such as the FIM and ACU who have wider responsibilities for motor sport and may or not be acting in the best interests of the speedway.

The time for speedway to have done it was 20-25 years ago. The professional speedway leagues/promoters bodies should have got together and set-up their own organisation to take control and the profits from the SGP/SWC etc.. or at least obtained some sort of autonomy from the FIM to run their own affairs in the way that F1 teams did years ago. However, through a complete lack of vision and petty rivalries they've allows themselves to be divided and conquered and outside entities have come in to skim off what little cream there is. The problem with doing your own thing though, is that you have to set-up all the training and accreditation of officials, homologation of equipment, and track safety inspections almost from scratch. You can leach off the official authorities for a while, but eventually need to put all this place yourself. Plus in some countries you may need to get separate approvals or even new laws passed to run legally if you're outside an official sanctioning body. Whilst I'm more involved in the 4-wheel side of things, I know we run into all sorts of approvals and insurance difficulties if we run outside of Motorsports UK. Others do it (and I've done it as an individual), but I'd definitely be concerned as an organiser about the potential legal liabilities if something went badly wrong.

National licenses are an outdated concept anyway. High-time there was a single international licence for professional competitors.

Couldn’t really make out what was the point of the article. Seemed to be a lot of whining about what Poland has decided to do, but not actually stating the FIM’s position or what it could do. But may also be the way it was related in the Spar...

Much the same with many sportspersons, even in the rarefied world of the EPL or whatever. They make it in their chosen sport because they're talented and usually dedicated at doing that, not because they're good at business. And only a handful of people in any given professional sport make serious money, and even if you can make a fairly good living wage, you'll usually only have a short time in which you're doing that. There's also the issue that successful sportspersons will usually have always been successful from a young age, will invariably have people blowing smoke up their ar**s, and will often have others sorting their lives out for them. So they don't have perspective that the money isn't always going to be coming in, and they're not necessarily going to be successful at anything else they do. Plus it makes them vulnerable to hangers-on and those trying to rip them off. We've been doing some work for one of the major rugby bodies, so I've got to know some of the former professional players. This is a relatively mainstream sport where the players are generally better educated than most, yet it's shocking how far so many fall when their playing days are finished. But they way they're treated when become surplus to requirements, simply dumped and suddenly losing their entire support network, is actually also appalling. And of course speedway is even further down the food chain in terms of money, prestige and public image where some benefactor is willing to help you out with some work.

Of course it is. Even high profile athletes got away with it for years.

I couldn't care less if people take soft drugs recreationally. Plenty do, and I suspect if you conducted a random test of the whole UK population, you'd find a high percentage who do indulge in it and function perfectly well in their jobs. So not sure why people expect speedway riders to be any different. Of course, it's different to be under the influence if you're actually riding - the same as alcohol - although the likes of cannabis hangs around in the body long after it's had any deleterious effect. It sounds like Garrity doing harder stuff though, which is a different matter.

There wasn't anything like the competition from foreign leagues in those days, nor the Speedway Grand Prix that required complicated travel schedules. The Daily Mirror Tournament, was I think a one-off as well.