Humphrey Appleby

It's a very basic stadium, but if Teterow is holding a GP next year, then there's hope for anything... Seems to be quite a hub of motor sport in Invercargill though. Teretonga Park is next door to the speedway and hosted GP level car racing in the past, plus of course Bert Munro was from there (and his modified Indian bike is on show in the town). You can still go racing on the beach.

Using leprechauns perhaps?

When I looked at this about 10 or more years ago, the cost of running an Elite League team appeared to be in the order of 400-500k per year. I recall hearing the television money amounted to about 50k per year, plus additional payments when a track was television live. There would be some sponsorship revenue in there, but I doubt that much given the type of 'used car salesmen' sponsors that speedway leverages, so clearly most of the revenue must be coming from gate money and/or a promoter putting their hand in their pocket. Not sure what it would cost to run a Premier League team, but maybe 2/3rds of the cost at a rough guesstimate. However, probably very little or no television money, so gate revenue would be even more important.

I'd rather teams race each other home and away than 'play', but this also pre-supposes teams are at full strength for every match. In reality, riders go AWOL for all sorts of reasons during the season, then you have all sorts of weird and wonderful replacements who actually ride for other teams and who could potentially distort the table. So whereas you'd expect a 28-match programme to be 'fairer' than deciding a title over (say) 4 matches, in reality the 'playoffs' are just an extension of what's not an inherently fair process to begin with.

Queensland alone is huge. Brisbane to Cairns is nearly as far as London to Moscow, and even up to Rockhampton is as far as London to Glasgow. It's simply not viable for what's a part-time sport.

Just let a reserve ride for any reason - the way it used to be. If you avoid a team putting a ringer there, then limit the number of rides to less than what the 1-4 will each ride.

The trend for attendances was downward for many years before the 'playoffs' were introduced, so I don't think that can realistically be attributed as the reason. If crowds have plummeted since, then it's far more down to different riders turning up (or not) each week, incoherent fixture lists and shambolic rules. More generally though, it's the image of an old fashioned sport that takes place in dirty rundown stadia that turns people away, and one that's not even particularly cheap entertainment anymore. Most sports employ playoffs these days as they provide a finale on a pre-determined date to conclude the season. It's one of the things introduced in speedway in recent years that I have no particular objection to, even though speedway isn't played and therefore the term 'playoffs' is ridiculous (but it's somehow typical of speedway to publicly demonstrate its illiteracy). They should be called the Championship Finals, Race-Offs or something like that.

Football is a far more popular sport, with far more money, and far more idiots willing to pour money into teams. Having pissing contests between Russian oligarchs and Arab Sheikhs is no sensible way to run a sport, and whilst it may seem to work in football, it would be disastrous for speedway.

Hardly revolutionary. Reserves were allowed for years in the past, and what's to stop a rider feigning injury to allow a reserve to ride? Why not just allow a reserve to ride for whatever reason?

An equal share assumes the starting gates are equal throughout, when in fact certain riding positions can be (dis)advantaged by their gate sequences. I used to be favour of fixed gate positions, but I feel in league matches the choice should be a tactical one. If a heat leader is better placed to control the race off the best gate, then I don't see any problem with that. Team riding has nearly died out in the fixed gate era, and I do think there's an argument for giving the heat leaders an advantage to create an aura around them. Maybe this is something where old ideas were better.

More than 100 years ahead. They had them in the 19th century.

It's a bit complicated. The 183 day rule makes you liable for UK taxes on your worldwide income, but other countries can and usually will also charge you tax for any income earned whilst working in their countries. However, the UK has double taxation treaties with most countries, so provided you pay local taxes on those earnings from elsewhere, then you're usually not liable to pay again in the UK. The residency rule can also determine where you make social security payments. Within the EU/EEA, you only pay them to your main country of residence and are then exempt from paying elsewhere. Yes, but I also undertake some work from the UK so in principle still pay taxes to HMRC. I've not actually got to bottom of whether NI contributions are still payable as the UK and Australia are supposed to have reciprocal agreements, but in practice do pay NI to ensure there will be no arguments about the state pension. The bottom line though, is that where you pay your taxes has nothing to do with nationality.

I pay Australian tax - it doesn't make me Australian. And I'd imagine Tai Woffinden should be paying tax in multiple jurisdictions.

Unfortunately it would. Too many people see things in black-and-white in an age when many people can have legitimate allegiances to more than one country.

Promotion and relegation is pointless unless there are more teams trying to get into the top level than there are places. It's generally bad for business planning anyway, but it works in football because there are plenty of teams to replace the fallen. In British speedway though, it's cloud cuckoo stuff.

Que? Opening a section means stewarding it, and also cleaning it up afterwards.

It would have to be opened and staffed. Presumably the stadium weren't expecting to need to use the capacity, so why bother?

I think the biggest reason for the demise of open and alternative format meetings because the top riders started to be allowed to miss them, and that devalued them in the eyes of spectator. John Berry said that it was in those sort of meetings you actually needed your best riders to be involved more than even league matches. I think the occasional open meeting added variety to the fixture list, and some of the more prestigious ones were often well attended. I think alternative formats like 4TTs and Pairs are actually preferable to riding the same teams over-and-over again in league matches if you need to pad out the fixture list, and in fact, something like a 4TT would be a better format for an inter-league cup. I doubt they're popular with promoters though, as they're probably more expensive to stage than league meetings as they'll have to pay more riders at full cost, plus with something like a 3TT or 4TT get fewer home meetings in relation to away ones.

The Australians still had playoffs even when the VFL was a Melbourne-based league, and the NSWRL/ARL was Sydney-based. In the The VFL at least, teams played home and away for many years. Given the relatively short season of the NFL, it's obviously impractical for every team to play each other even once, hence the need for playoffs between divisions even if the conference structure is largely a contrivance nowadays. In baseball, given the ridiculous number of games, every team in each league could conceivably play each other an equal number of times, which is what happened historically. However, there was always some form of 'playoff' even if it was just the World Series - although that's been extended to an absurd extent nowadays. I like the Australian system the best. A single league with the winners crowned 'Minor Premiers', then a playoff system giving more advantages the higher a team finishes.

Find it hard to believe that the speedway loses 13,000 seats given that it's already a big oval.

It used to be covered in the rule book. I believe the bond used to be returnable if a promotion completed the season and had settled any outstanding debts. If there any debts not covered by the bond, the promotion's rider assets can be sold by the BSPA.

It was a good edition last week.

Indeed, but why would the 'kids' of today not be interested in reading about and watching 1970s World Final on an iPad? I don't even own a DVD player anymore, having ripped my DVDs onto online media years ago. I was being slightly flippant, but it's a reason why the sport remains in the dark ages.

Unrelated question to Philipe, but will the Star Special Edition be available in an online edition as well? And if I can also take the opportunity to point out that kids don't do DVDs anymore.

Aren't federations that have hosted qualifying meetings also looked upon more favourably?