4thbender

This is the most appalling piece of heavy-handed bullying tactics it is my misfortune to come across in British speedway. The minute we witness team promoters taking action reminiscent of 1930s Nazi Germany is the time to pack it in. I for one will not be visiting Workington Speedway again and would urge other fans to do likewise. Jenga is a prolific contributor to a popular fans' forum, has amused us on here for years and I hope will continue to do so.

Slick and Dusty sounds like a 60s pop duo.

No, I’m just a realist who supports his team and the efforts of the promotion - in what has been at times a difficult season - without expecting the speedway utopia that some fans seemingly demand.

With the number of guest riders increasing by the hour, it's turned into Scunthorpe All Stars v Sheffield All Stars. Still, it's a speedway match helping to fill up the otherwise sparse fixture list. .

There aren't any utopia-seekers on here (they'd be in the wrong place if there were). I've only seen fans who dutifully turn up at the turnstiles week after week and pay their £16 and feel (rightly) that their financial contribution to the team's continued success gives them a right to express a view on the rights and wrongs of team performance. The people on this forum may not all agree with each other - or the promoters - all of the time but they all have one thing in common: they're all die-hard fans of speedway.

Tigers website posting on Sunday said: "Tigers skipper Kyle Howarth has been taken to hospital in Newcastle with a dislocated shoulder..... Hopefully the shoulder is back in place and there is nothing longer term to worry about.” Tigers website posting today says: "...they’ve since had the huge setback of losing Kyle Howarth with a broken collarbone." Are things going from bad to worse?

Are you on the Owlerton payroll?

Can't understand why they've booked Worrall - we'd be better off doing R/R.

Are you on the Owlerton payroll?

Think we'd be better just going R/R (particularly on Friday)

Mathematics must work differently in California - presumably the sun gets to your head. Just for the record, the Speedway Control Bureau set out the rules of the Championship Shield at the start of the season. They agreed that a home win would be worth three league points, an away win by between 1 and 6 points would be worth 3 league points and an away win by 7 points or more would be worth 4 league points. We have a situation where two teams have won all their home matches and have each won one match away. One of the teams has picked up 3 away points and the other team has picked up 4. Given the importance that the Speedway Control Bureau has placed on winning by 7 points or more (to the extent of awarding it an extra league point), wouldn't common sense dictate that the team that has the bigger away win should qualify to the next stage? But no, the Speedway Control Bureau - in its wisdom - says that the team with the lesser away victory should be awarded the spoils. Comedy gold it might be, but just who are the jokers?

At home Lasse is our top scorer with an average of 10.34. Away from home he's our third top scorer, but less than 2 points a match behind Kyle Howarth. I think he'll have better days than the ones against Ipswich and Newcastle which I would write of as "blips." It would be a massive risk to even consider dispensing with his services IMO.

I only deal with hard facts - not mathematical technicalities (even fraudulent corrupt ones!)

It was noted in last night's programme that he's thought a couple of times of jacking it all in but his missus talked him out of it. He may therefore have one eye on retirement, in which case self-motivation becomes a real chore.

Not at all. The lad did well - surprisingly well for his first outing at Owlerton. Great to see a rookie who's got the bottle to open the throttle round the boards. But the real surprise package last night was Shanes. From zero last week to paid 12 this week. How's that for consistency?

Ahhhh! Marmaris - My favourite place on God's earth (outside Sheffield). Must go back there soon. Please send the Hotel Selen my best regards.... and have a boat trip from the harbour!

On last night's showing he's your best rider. His two heat wins were twice as many as the rest of your team put together. You should look after him - he seems to be your only hope.

No holes in this argument. Your suggestion that it's a "simple average" is mistaken; it's a WEIGHTED AVERAGE (ask your maths teacher), which means that the calculation is flawed inasmuch as it favours one party over the others. In any sport other than speedway, this would be seen as a breach of the natural laws of the game.

There IS no argument about who the better second place team is - the results and points scored prove it. The "argument" hinges upon the speedway authorities' adoption of a convoluted mathematical formula, defying all logic and common sense, to arrive at the wrong decision.

This could be the night when our season unravels. The promotion is making a big mistake introducing a new and untried rider against opposition as strong as Glasgow. The Nicol boy likes to talk a good race, but his main claim to fame seems to be that he's a mate of Greg Hancock. Since nobody's seen him on a bike yet any talk of him following Sheffield's Moran brothers American tradition is a bit premature. Georgie will need a few matches to get keyed in again, so all this adds up to a growing black hole in the middle of the team (it all goes back to the failure to sign a replacement for Bates back in January: a classic case of the promotion letting its heart rule its head). I think we're gonna struggle tonight.

Agree with this entirely. Lasse is no start-tart and tends to do things the hard way. This gives him loads of opportunities to demonstrate his dives around the air fence which by anyone's standards are a wonder to behold. No-one goes to the bar when Lasse's on track and we should keep him at all costs.

Can't help but think this is a knee-jerk reaction, and one which will bite them in the bum tomorrow night. Frankly I'd never even heard of Broc Nicol and from what I've read I can't imagine for one minute that he'll be scoring points at this level any time soon, let alone be an adequate replacement for the Bates boy. Really sorry for Jack, especially as he was just starting to get his act together. Whilst I'm glad to see Georgie back, I have to ask the question as to why they think he can do a job for us now when they didn't think so at the start of the season. The changes don't seem to follow any sensible policy.... unless the management have written off any hope of winning anything in 2018 and are experimenting for the future.

Yeah. Everyone suggests I ought to let it go but no-one seems able to actually give a logical response to my assertion that Sheffield have the better results and should be in the semis. Anyone with a basic understanding of mathematics can see that basing decisions on average league-points when the teams have differing numbers of fixtures is always going to give an unfair advantage to the team with fewer fixtures. Personally I would never be happy with my team qualifying for a semi-final if their performance didn't merit them being there. There's no joy in winning on a technicality. Just ask the guy who climbed two-thirds of the way up Everest but claimed that since he'd done it in half the time, his achievement was better than Edmund Hillary.

Charles Wright and Jonas Jeppesen released by Somerset today.

And had they done so I would have applauded their achievements and wished them well in the semis.... but of course they didn't. Which leaves the present conundrum of a team having been undeservedly awarded a place in the semis whilst the team with a better overall performance is excluded on a mathematical technicality.