Humphrey Appleby

Is someone paying you to cheer lead?

So BSI are continuing to pay for the commercial rights for a competition they're unable to run? That wouldn't seem like good business sense, unless of course they asked to stop running the SWC. And didn't we hear that OneSport were prevented from running national teams in the European Pairs competitions because BSI supposedly objected that they were the rights holders to the World Pairs? So the competition is something we've seen before then. It's a best pairs competition with a reserve, which was the WTC format run from 1993 to 1998 except now with an under 21 reserve. Which also begs the question what Armando was rambling on about in the Spar the other week...

Phillipe is here to put a positive spin on things for BSI with whom he has a commercial relationship. Nothing wrong with that, but he cannot be considered a neutral party and he's either carefully wording his posts thinking we don't know the difference between commercial rights and inscription/permit fees, or he's just repeating BSI verbatim. Throwing in the term 'licence fees' just serves to further that confusion. And if I were the commercial rights holder of the SWC and the FIM made a decision to suspend it and replace with another team-based competition of a very similar ilk, I'd expect that to be included in the rights or be paid some sort of compensation. Of course, if the SWC wasn't sufficient profitable for me and I had a get-out clause on that basis, both parties might wish to negotiate some revised arrangement to reduce costs but ensure that both gain something from it. I think most appreciate Phillipe's participation on here, but I don't think it's unreasonable to not take everything at face value from an official source. Only a few weeks ago he was priming us for a return to a pairs format, yet now the powers-that-be seem to be discussing another format with junior riders and so on. Either someone isn't well informed, or the FIM and BSI are just making things up as they go along.

Are you talking about the meeting licence fees, because they're different to the commercial rights fees for a competition, and as far as I'm aware are payable on any meeting that's organised.

So they havent got a clue what to do then? Whats the big secret? Dont they need to let federations and host tracks know so they can plan their seasons?

Theres numerous examples of countries granting citizenship on the basis of irredentist claims.

The original idea of course, was for Ireland to become a federated dominion within the British Empire, but Northern Ireland opted out of the proposed state. But there was no real Independence Day whereby whats now the Republic became a fully sovereign nation. It happened in various stages, and only achieved its current status in 1949. But sport went on regardless... All Ireland sport is one of these modern day curiosities, but the Home Nations were amongst the earliest participants in modern day sport, and were competing long before half the countries in the world existed.

Ireland has a long history of competing in various sports as a country and then island, so it's hardly a made-up team.Players have happily competed in both rugby union and cricket for an All-Ireland for decades, and it's only in football where you seem to get the sectarian silliness. The RL World Cup is a joke though - trying to disguise that basically only five countries (even less than speedway) play the sport in any meaningful way.

I think it's more than a few posters on here - just about all of the active ones think it's a bad idea, and some of them are from 'across the Continent'. But yes, there's nothing to say this forum is representative of wider public opinion, so on what basis do you claim this idea is supported elsewhere in the Continent? Or does it actually just come down to the fact that it's too expensive for anyone to host, and BSI needs to maintain its profitability?

Well that's the ultimate conclusion. Nation X can't track a side, so draft in some random riders whom you wouldn't normally see in the 'Speedway of Nations' to ride for some composite team to make up the numbers. Bound to be a winner, just like the OneSport version is with teams you can really identify with. Of course, how many Football World Cups did George Best and Ryan Giggs play in? Yugoslovenia?

So on that basis we could have Czech Republic, Slovakia and Czechoslovakia teams? I suppose it's one way of padding out the competition.

The Holy Roman Empire might do better...

Western European Islands or Pretanic Isles?

The 5TT and the Czech Republic were once the same? Now I'm really confused... Yes, Germany, France and Italy could combine as Carolingia.

Yes, but in that weird 5TT format, I think the third rider could also take a couple of rides as a reserve.

I think most people know it's going to be rubbish, but reading what Castagna was saying in the Spar today, I wonder if they're thinking of using the 5-team, 3-rider format over 20 heats? That used to get used for the Ice Racing Team competition and I think early rounds of the WTC in the past, and is a sort of hybrid format between an individual and pairs competition. Still rubbish though, as I think two riders get 6 programmed races, and one rider gets 4.

Double points is ridiculous because gives one team the opportunity to score more points than the other. With tactical subs, the same amount of points are still on offer to both sides, so even putting aside the 'unfairness' of allowing a better rider to score those points, happiness is still 40-38 and having the score add up to 84 (or 46-44 and 90 in new money). Of course tactical subs are 'not fair' per se, but some tracks giving more advantage to the home team than others are also not fair, as are dubious assessed averages, along with all manner of other things in speedway. The problem with speedway though, is that it's basically 15 matches within a match, so if one team is dominant then that dominance tends to be magnified as the meeting progresses. Plus there's a fixed number of points available, so a meeting could potentially be decided by Heat 8 which would be pretty boring. Hence why artificial mechanisms are needed to try to keep the match interesting for as long as possible. I'd agree that tactical subs got taken to extremes in the past, especially with Heat 8 lending itself to double tactical subs, but with 3 minimum rides nowadays, you'd effectively be restricted to 3 tactical subs anyway.

It's cause-and-effect though. If it were worth their while to ride in the SWC, I'm sure they could manage to rustle up 4 riders. And lest we not forget that the best 'pairs' is actually 3 riders, so only one rider more. There are effectively only 9 countries who play test cricket, but that doesn't mean that the top echelon in that sport reverts to playing single wicket cricket. In fact, that only a few nations are good enough to complete actually adds prestige to that format of the sport.

Then stop charging so much money to stage the rounds.

And BSI one would assume.

But 2 or even 3 riders is not really a proper team.

Because that will cost more money, and they'll still need to pay for the SWC rounds that have presumably become uneconomic. They can presumably run the pairs over just 2 or 3 events, and it's easier to ensure the host country is represented in each round. But it's another retrograde step for the sport. Australia won the Rugby League 6 times in a row, and have won it 10 times out of 14 stagings. They don't reduce the competition to 3-a-side though.

Why complicate things so much? Just allow however many off scratch, if 6 or 8 points down. It worked perfectly well for years.

Even one tactical sub is better than the nonsense of double points. For one thing, a tactical sub can be used when it needs to be used, not having to wait until the 'right rider' is programmed which may be too late to be effective. And of course it doesn't muck up the scorecharts either. I think it was pretty rare to use more than a couple of tactical subs in one meeting anyway, although it does restrict a team manager's replacement options if there's an injury during a meeting. The one thing that should have been done, is only allow tactical subs when 8 or more points down (i.e. two 5-1s). I think 6 points gives too much of an advantage to a trailing side - tactical options should be allowed in more one-sided situations.

It's not - it's a glorified pairs competition. It wasn't a proper World Cup last time they used that format, and I suspect if I dig out a Speedway Star from circa 2000 it'll be praising the return to a 'proper' team competition. A euphemism for a cost cutting exercise.