BWitcher

I really do despair at the intelligence of speedway fans at times. So, the whinging Wolves fans are Happy to sign a rider on 6.25 achieved riding primarily as a second string in easy races. Moaning about signing a rider on a 6.12?? average riding primarily as a heat leader (No 1 at start of season) in very hard races. Go figure.

Nah, PK has never been able to hold his own in such heats has he. PK is not the problem signing. The problem signings were Thorssell and Musielak.

Looks that way. It's all Arsons fault.

Of course it would. PK has had one bad season. That is it. It was a season that he was returning from a pretty bad injury, riding away from Wolverhampton and suffered mechanical woes... plus the new format. The combination of them all gave them the average he has. However, he is still head and shoulders above Thorssell. Being a 'club legend' has nothing to do with it. Being a 7.5 to 8pt rider on a 6.2 average has everything to do with it.

No sign of the thread returning either..

He would be a 2nd string for Wolves, which makes it the biggest no brainer signing in years. So, very likely we won't sign him.

The results are irrelevant. Completely and utterly. The sport HAS to make changes to attract new fans and those that have left.

No there aren't many of you at all. There aren't many speedway fans attending period. The mere notion of catering to the miniscule amount of people who attend multiple meetings is laughable. But, this is speedway and it's one of the ridiculous reasons dredged up to prevent the changes required.

Spot on waiheke. When is the penny going to drop... Year after year of cost cutting has resulted in year after year of declining attendances.

An opinion Some of us know the difference lol. I fear for Arson.

That would take around 2-3 mins though surely...

Rubbish, he is talking complete sense. Once again its the simple fact of British speedway, stuck in the past, head in the sands. British Speedway is the one losing fans, not Tai Woffinden.

Is the forum now run by the inmates? A couple of trolls lose the plot, one in particular and an entire thread is removed, plus one asking where it was? What happened to deleting the offending posts and banning the offenders?

I don't need to Sidney, you've backed it up for me.. Unless you have been making it up that crowds were a lot bigger in 1979 than 1989???

Yes they did. That is an undisputable fact once again.

To be fair any fan who has respect for the sport of speedway should be anti-Poole.

Sadly WK, it's folk like yourself who are one of the main reasons the sport is in the mess it is in now in this country. Stuck in the past and NEVER changed. You can continue to harp back all you like to the days before team leathers etc.. yet you seem to forget the majority of the sports fans abandoned it long before any of the things you love from back in the day were changed... Why did they do that? Quite simple, the sport didn't adapt, it kept serving up the same old, same old and the majority got tired of it and moved on to something else that was adapting with the times.

I agree with you there Sidney, although you don't have to go back that far for that. I may have been fortunate growing up watching the Sam Ermolenko led Wolves teams, which were very much teams. Sams team riding was second to none.

Yeah because most team sports have players in random colored outfits don't they. That is one area where speedway HAS progressed for the better. Is there a professional team sport, other than speedway, where the members of a team don't wear the same strip/uniform etc?

Always the sign of a losing argument when you have to resort to grammatical errors. I suppose riders must have been lying in their Backtrack interviews then. Cook and the Worralls is a fair comparison, after all, it wasn't long before they were in a team too.. at NL level ... Anyway, I think we'll just go round in circles now Moxey.... I will say there is no denying that the 70's and early to mid 80's was a great era for speedway in the UK. Big crowds, the perception of their being so many fantastic riders around.made every meeting exciting. I think we can all agree that we would all be happy if the sport could return to such halcyon days.

While I agree with much of what you say E I, it should be noted that the decline of speedway, particularly in the UK began long before TV came along. As regards PK, not going to argue with you at all on that point, although I would say, if only you had seen him on a weekly basis when he was younger

You didn't read the post WK. 2nd halves and track time didn't come into it. Riders were able to get into teams in a very short space of time, without much track time. That suggests the standard wasn't very high. It wasn't competitive at the top end. There were most of the worlds best riders, but the whole point is it wasn't all that competitive for them as they rarely raced each other. As we've discussed there are pluses and minuses to that. The point of the post was just to point out some of the inconsistencies in the arguments put forward. Don't get me wrong, I would much prefer there to be a large league now, with the number of teams/riders there were riding in the UK back in the 70's and I also miss the excitement that Sidney and others alluded to that you would have when a team visited with their top stars.. I'm just realistic enough to understand that the 'system' created more stars. This has actually got me thinking over the last couple of days. You often see people posting they want to see a return to the old 13 heat formula.. something I was always against (2 races less for starters) as you wouldn't see the top riders against each other so often... but perhaps we see too much of it. It's even more the case under the new format we are seeing in the EL. There is no 'magic' surrounding the top riders anymore.. no 'aura'. Perhaps a return to a system where you rarely saw them get beat would bring that back?

Let's sum up some of the arguments.. It's claimed the British League was so much tougher in the 70's.. It's claimed the standard of rider was better in the 70's. It's claimed the bikes were harder to ride in the 70's. Yet in the 70's, folk who had never rode a bike could go down to the local track, have a go and instantly impress, within weeks appearing in a team. Many times such a tale has been told in Backtrack. Would the same happen now? Absolutely no chance.

He's quoting Middleditch accurately.. Something you could perhaps learn from.

Strange, you attempt to say it was more difficult in the old days and then present the opposite argument. The facts are simple.. in by gone days, riders would 'pop along to a track' and be 'impress' in their first ever ride on a speedway bike. Within weeks they could be in a team. Absolutely no chance of that happening now. Sam Ermolenko and Kelvin Tatum think so... especially since the new silencers came into play. The margin for error is a lot less now, for a number of reasons.