Humphrey Appleby

Maybe the shale hasn't been stored in a scientifically controlled pyramid shape then? Oh well, Phillipe did make sure to say it was organised by the PZM...

Let's hope then, the shale has been scientifically stored in a pyramid shape...

Surely it's cause-and-effect. Why did speedway lose its household names as Briggs, Mauger and Penhall were hardly British, and that someone in a national newspaper had to ask the result of a major speedway meeting surely demonstrates a lack of promotion on the part of the speedway authorities to start with?

I have two... Sidney is in good form at the moment.

This particular competition is nothing more than a semi-official pre-season invitational tournament. It's not a European Championship, despite the title. The fast track was always primarily about saving money, but why do not people not grasp that British speedway has to save money otherwise it'll be out of business? Even having a World Champion doesn't bring the fans in anymore - the British leagues used to have all the world champions, but crowds still dwindled. Unfortunately, the sport is at such a low ebb now that it simply has to cut its cloth according to what's affordable, and not try to compete with leagues paying money they can't afford. Whether or not we should be sending riders to get experience at privately run open meetings on the Continent is maybe another issue, but it would not be my priority.

I guess you've never had any ambitions of winning a Pulitzer then? If speedway had been selling newspapers then I doubt it would have been dropped. Newspapers report on football scandals all the time, and cricket coverage was not affected in the least after the Pakistani match fixing scandals a few years ago. Speedway was obviously pretty fragile if the media pulled the plug after what were some pretty tame allegations by today's standards, but we're not talking about digging for scandal anyway. We're talking about perfectly reasonable questions that some people are interested to have answered - who bankrolled the SGP, do the GPs make any money, where does it go, and what's the FIM spending their wedge on? Maybe speedway is in the state it's in today because of the complete lack of transparency and media scrutiny, and because serious sponsors don't want to deal with liquidated 'rights' companies and dodgy used-car salesmen approaches to accounting anymore. They have corporate obligations as well.

Always liked best pairs events and don't have a particular objection to 'best threesomes', but this is little more than a glorified series of open meetings.

Would have given that honour to Nick Knight...

It would be for an hour or two, but there's no money in it because no-one actually cares about the sport beyond a declining handful of fans who are happy to blow their air horns once a year at Cardiff.

Investigative journalism has to be left to those with 5 minutes to spare on the Internet...

Botham was a great player and undoubtedly a character, but I don't find he adds much to the commentary. It's all 'I told you so' and 'in my day', and how much wine he had to drink the night before. The weakest link amongst the regulars.

Ermm... go for the online version?

And an Aussie lover.. which you don't want to hear from an Englishman.

I think the trick is not to jabber on inanely or shout all the time, but provide explanation of the nuances of the sport. Something that speedway commentators have sadly not mastered, although the sport admittedly lends itself less to a leisurely pace.

Warsaw, Horsens and Melbourne haven't run a GP yet, so there's no proof either way. Won't Horsens be mates rates anyway? Think Krsko was heavily supported by their local government before, and when that dried-up they dropped off the circuit. The situation with Polish tracks and the financial support they get is well known, although obviously things are not entirely rosy in the garden with tracks/councils losing interest in running GPs, not to mention the establishment of the rival SEC. Don't know about Prague, but maybe they're supported by the city, or have far lower fees because BSI wants to keep them on the circuit for some reason. Same with the Italian GP that no-one could understand why it appeared year-after-year.

Because there isn't any money in running an individual GP, and you're more likely to lose money by the time you've coughed over the licence fee. The money is in the series television rights, sponsorship and GP licensing fees. Why of course the BSPA and others didn't the whole shebang themselves, even if they had bring on board a commercial partner, is the more pertinent question. I think more precisely BSI bought the rights with Benfield money.

He played in an era before sport became an extension of Australian nationalism, when good performances of the opposition were appreciated on both sides. Unlike most Australian sportsmen, he was also quite modest and appreciative of good cricket, something that only Warne has come close to amongst modern day Australian cricketers.

He was not known as the Prince of Silence for nothing...

So the argument about drainage would seem pretty implausible..?

That's of course their own stupidity, and even more stupidly allowing the arrangement to continue. I'd argue though, that organising a league season is more complex than organising a handful of world championship rounds, especially when you're using local organisers who can be blamed for any failures. And when they've 'done their wedge' can be cast aside and the circus moves onto the next sucker. Not quite so easy when you have responsibility to at least try to keep circuits open, for better or worse. It's surely neither here nor there whether the accommodation gets paid out of prize money or not. The issue is the level of prize money to start with. By way of comparison, I think something like 20-25% of the revenue raised from international cricket matches goes to the players. In the SGP, they get maybe 7-8%.

And the rest of speedway gets nothing, unlike pretty much any other sport.

Not quite on par with the 15 million for winning the UEFA Champions' League, or even the 200K for going out in the 1st Preliminary Round...

Five minutes of research on the Internet would have revealed there were no 'major football matches' scheduled. In fact, I thought the local football club was currently suspended for money laundering, so presumably there can only be lower leagues football there at best. And if some money is being spent on upgrading the stadium, can they not reposition or temporarily cover a few drains to facilitate a better shaped track? I'm not entirely convinced about the drainage argument anyway, and one would have thought heavy metal concerts would potentially do far more damage. Could see why they might not want to damage the football pitch if a senior team was actively using it, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Yes, they can be blamed if things go wrong.

I guess no-one is expecting the track to be any good then...