tigerowl

The club has from March to October to stage seven home league meetings and could only manage to stage five. What a shambles.

Probably not. If the Peter Craven Memorial is run as a second half event and we don't seem to have the capacity in the sport to remember other great stars then I can't see a meeting being held for Percy. Nice post though, Gustix.

I have put Derek's profile onto the Speedway a to z website today. There is a photo there of him in his Poole race jacket. Click on the letter C on the home page and scroll down for his name. www.speedwayatoz.co.uk ***Bec, if there is any incorrect information or anything that you would like adding / amending, please send me a PM and I will sort it**

Don't know if he comes on the forum (riders would be daft if they did I suppose!!) but I would like to publicly thank Olly Greenwood for his efforts for us this past few weeks. He has given us 100% and if there is room for a three point rider anywhere for any club I would give him a go. He seems a top lad and would want to give him best wishes for the future.

I think Nelson will swing it the Scorpions way if he is their guest tomorrow.

Three guests and rider replacement for the Tigers again this week. Steady is out for the season, Joe has quit and Damien seems to not even had the scan on his knee as yet. Everyone else seems to be signing riders to fill the gaps in their teams and yet we have to suffer this situation every week. Berwick have replaced Ricky with Eddie Kennett and then Seb Alden Glasgow are running with a full team even though they are getting beaten every week Plymouth sign riders to cover for their injuries, Jensen, Jensen, Katajisto, Palm Toft Newcastle have signed Rosen to coven for Christian Henry The list goes on... Sheffield have done nothing to cover for their long term injuries.

Good luck to both riders with their recovery. Rob put in a lot of effort on Thursday for little reward and I was glad to see him get another go at Armadale.

Thought I would comment on the performance of the Glasgow team for those Glasgow fans who could not make it, rather than the Sheffield fans who could have made it but didn't.

Rider replacement for Joe Haines at 2. We can give rides to Ricky Wells, Andre and the reserves. No disrespect to Joe but me might get a couple more points on the board with r/r. I will be happy with 40 points tonight.

It was a decent meeting with some good racing. Dakota North was certainly the pick of the visitors but I was hugely impressed with Joe Jacobs. He was very tidy, looked quick and was in amongst the action in all his rides. Joe Screen rode much better than his score suggested as did Henning Bager. Young Anders Thomsen looked worth persevering with and Joey Ringwood had me worried after his first ride but didn't do much afterwards. I said before the start that the key would be how James Grieves went and that is pretty much how it happened I suppose. Full credit to the Glasgow fans who made the journey, despite being a worse side than we are. They backed their team and it was great to see them on the first bend.

I would have gone to a meeting just to watch Paul Johnson in action!! He was brilliant.

Sad to hear of Ricky's accident. Hope he is OK. Good luck and best wishes for speedy and full recovery. Hope to see him back where he belongs at Owlerton soon.

Having been to quite a few Conference grounds in the last few years, their facilities are generally far better then anything speedway has to offer. You can sit down and watch for a start!

I think the missing factor in my original post is rider wages. I think that has always been something of a mystery and there are no definite figures to hand.

I was looking through an old Speedway Star from 1975 and saw the admission prices for King's Lynn were 70p. It now costs £16 to get in at Saddlebow Road and that is about 23 times more than it cost 38 years ago. There were some other prices listed in the magazines of the time and I wondered how much other speedway related stuff would cost if prices had gone up exactly in line with what the fans have to pay now. New Speedway Machine - £16,000 Decent Used Speedway Machine - £8,050 Rear Tyre - £287.50 Pair of Speedway Boots - £529 Speedway Star £3.45 If the average wage had increased at the same rate then in would be about £69,000 per year. Looking at the figures I wonder if the crowds dropping may be related to the cost of the night out?

Another thing. We know you have put a lot of faith in Jake Knight, just like you did with Jordan Tyrer. I hope it pays off and, as a purist, I would have preferred a club asset at number 7 instead of a guest. However, the poster makes a fair point in an inoffensive manner and an earlier post said that he would be at the speedway regardless. I hope that still is the case after your unnecessary post. Only another 700 people or so to upset I suppose.

There is so much wrong I don't know where to start. Part of the problem is down to the stadium owners, part of it is the promoters as a group and part is down to the Sheffield promotion. The stadium owners spent millions on an extension to the Panorama Room which is fine if you want a carvery but the rest of the stadium is falling to bits. The third bend bar has been shut for years, the first bend bar is shut and the terracing on the first turn is crumbling away. My mum and dad have been going to the speedway since 1960 but have stopped going because my mum needs to sit down at a meeting now and its either dusty steps or bar. They have chosen neither. The promoters have turned people away with their stupid double points / obsession with averages rules. Tracks having to release rider because they have an average of 0.01 too high etc. The promoters regularly say they hate the obsession with minutiae of averages but do nowt about it. The Sheffield promotion have put together the most awful teams in the last two years. The rot set in last season when we replaced Parker/Ashworth/Auty with Franc/Hall/Wells and put the admission prices up. The presentation is dire - introducing the riders from 7 to 1 while they stand there with their helmets on is simply not good enough - not to mention the funeral procession music to walk out to. I keep banging on about a programme and perhaps there could be a free race card for those that don't want to buy it. But there is so much to be gained from a programme - not least some information about the riders and a feeling that you are part of something. I have been going for 40 years and always felt part of a club / family and that I almost knew the riders personally because I read all about them in the programme. Now I get none of those feelings whatsoever. I know nothing about Damien Koppe, Facu Albin etc. There is no atmosphere and there doesn't seem to be many first time fans coming along. If there were any, would they have a clue what was going on. Probably not, as there is no explanation about what is happening over the tannoy and, of course, no room in the 'programme' to tell people. Sheffield Speedway is part of so many people's lives and it is so sad to see the club in the state it is in and the massive gaps on the terraces. It's also sad to see people who care about it enough to come on here and post being slagged off with 'well, if you can do better etc.'

I would rather have James in the side than Jake, bur what a farce again. The management want to use their own asset but are not allowed to do so because he is not in a declared 1-7 and have to use a guest instead. This sport needs a right kick up the pants. Also, I've got to agree that the management seem to have lost interest this season. It's sad to see because there have been some great times over the last few years.

It would be nice if the presenter with Scott knew the first thing about speedway. He is off Blue Peter or something?

Oh yes, silly me. Of course they are listening. We all love watching teams operating rider replacement and with a couple of guests in every week, watching our team lose despite scoring more race points than the opposition (I bet Rye House fans were thrilled last night), seeing our favourite riders sidelined because they have an average 0.01 points too high, watching 15 heats take 2 hours to complete with no second half and no other entertainment other than Now That's What I Call Music 46 being played on repeat. Having meetings called off because it might rain (happened twice at my local track last year), seeing our own riders destroy our own title ambitions by riding for our closest rivals, not being able to make team changes because the riders haven't ridden enough matches - by the middle of June. We love it so much that I can turn up to a meeting at 7:44 p.m., park in the car park, walk in through the turnstiles without queuing, stand in the same spot every week amongst the same faces, never see anyone new at the track more than once and wonder if I will have a sport to watch next season.

Rob Godfrey might listen but I can think of a fair few that won't.

Yes, it was a good race and a good meeting. Which proves the point that several people have made on the thread. The fact is that speedway is four riders racing on an enclosed track on 500cc bikes with no brakes and that is the product that should be promoted. Tinkering with rules so that the sport loses credibility, messing about with the minutiae of averages so that fans lose their favourite rider needlessly, only serves to turn people away.

David tells us that the team is fine when we have been hammered at home by a five man Rye House!

What a superb and long overdue article by Philip Rising in the Star this week. The efforts of Neil Machin to keep the sport going at Sheffield for over 20 years deserve a knighthood but nowhere can the article be more applicable than at Owlerton. In the sport generally there seems to be an obsession with rules, regulations, points limits, rolling averages (whatever they are), double tactical rules etc. whilst the fans drift away and the sport falls apart around the promoter's generally deaf ears. At Sheffield the 'opening of the gates and hoping the fans come in' attitude seems to prevail. When I met my wife, she had lived in the heart of the city for over two years and had never heard of speedway. The only time I see any reference to the sport as I am moving around town is a picture on the back of the Sheffield Window Centre vans and a board outside the stadium when I drive past. If there is any advertising, I certainly haven't seen it. Once inside the stadium, there is a general tired feel to the proceedings. The free programme / race card is bloody awful. There is nothing to read, no statistics, no gossip, no information on the visiting team and crucially, no information for the first time visitor as to how the sport actually works. I accept that programmes cost money to produce, but if the admission charges were reduced by a quid and a charge made for the programme, the club would at least break even and the benefits of having a programme would be massive. When Dave Beresford used to write his gossip column in the old programme and gave stories about the riders and what they got up to, you actually felt part of the club. Now, I don't feel part of anything and possibly wouldn't recognise half the riders if I bumped into them in the street. This is not how it should be, The presentation is terrible. Reading out the rider's names in reverse order whilst they stand with their helmets on in front of the stand is not good enough. There is no build up, no information about the riders, just "at number 7 is...etc". Again, nowhere near good enough and, yes, I could do a better job, The racing is OK but there is no second half. 15 one minute heats, no other entertainment apart from the same music every week then a bit of free practice. Not good enough. Fans are taken for granted, expected to come back the following week and not enough is done to attract and keep new fans. I'm 44 and I think I help to bring the average age of the crowd down to about 66. Even Squall's dad looks young on the first bend!! *Edit* I ought to add, if I was a first time visitor to Sheffield Speedway Would I have a clue what was going on? - No Would I feel that I had value for money? - Debatable Would I go again? - No. I would feel part of anything. People need to feel part of a club, an affinity to the team and I wouldn't have experienced that at all.

Thanks for the kind words. The site is now up and running. www.speedwayatoz.co.uk I have made a start on the A riders. The Jim Airey button has been enabled but I haven't put the profile on. Any problems please let me know. Matt