G the Bee

The announcer at the shambles tonight which masqueraded as a speedway meeting sounded like he had won a competition to be announcer for the night! With respect to the guy, who I'm sure was doing his best, it sounded totally amateurish, to the point of being cringe worthy and embarassing. Rumors are that he filled in at the last minute, but why on earth was Peter York not doing both jobs tonight? When an EL club with the proud tradition of a club like Coventry stages NL racing, they should set the standard others should aspire to. They fell well short tonight. In so many ways... I've potentially got a group of friends from work coming up with me for the EL meeting against Birmingham. After what I witnessed tonight, on so many levels, I'm going to put them off.

I agree wholeheartedly with the vast majority of the above post from Ivanobe. What happened tonight was nothing short of an absolute disgrace. Still, we know Neil Watson reads these posts and I am sure an explanation will be forthcoming. I was quite vocal at the stadium in voicing my disgust at the meeting being called off, and for that I make no apology at all. Certainly I am of the opinion the meeting should never have started. However, there was no rain during the meeting itself and, as we all know, tracks tend to improve as a meeting goes on. If the track was unsafe after heat 6, it was unsafe before the meeting began. The only area of disagreement I have with the above (excellent) post is that, to a point, I do also hold the riders responsible. I am sure I will get shot down in flames for this, and I await the 'the riders' safety is paramount' argument. But my reasons for stating this I'll set out below. Firstly, I understand that the NL riders have less experience than other riders. However, of the 14 riders there today, for right or for wrong, 6 of them will be riding in the Elite League this year. The track was heavy. It was difficult to ride. But, as far as I'm concerned, if that had been an Elite League meeting, especially a Sky meeting, that meeting would have gone ahead. The likes of Morris, Sargeant, Nielsen etc will have to get on with it then. I also appreciate the argument that some will say that the NL is a training league so allowances should be made. I actually disagree with that sentiment. The MDL is a training league. The NL is a league where the customer pays to come through the gate. It does not market itself as a training league and, when Cradley (Dudley) won the triple last year, no-one undervalued their achievement because they had 'only won the training league'. The NL markets itself as a serious league which is the third tier of the sport. This meeting itself was marketed as being part of a big opening weekend. As a result, there has to be an element of collective responsibility here. All participants, whether they are rider, referee or promoter need to remember that they are, first and foremost, in the entertainment business and have an obligation to those paying customers. Once the decision had been made to proceed with that meeting, there should have been a determination, from all parties concerned, to get through that meeting. That determination did not seem apparent tonight. I think this is a general problem at all levels of the sport. They (both promoters and riders) lose sight of the fact that the product is there to entertain. One only has to look at the deserted terracing at speedway meetings week-in, week-out to prove this point. The supporters are not a by-product of the sport, they are the reason for it.

Don't get me wrong, I had a good day and it was good to see some speedway again. However, it has to be said: It's a strange situation at Leicester. They have a cracking stadium for one so new and seemed to have a blank canvas to design the track on. So how could they get it so badly wrong? Cook and Morris seemed to know how to pass, but only because (mainly) other riders were drifting too high off bend 4 and leaving a gap. Bomber picked off Pedersen well, in a cracking heat, and also came from last to second in the first lap of his individual heat, but I can't recall anything else of note. There is huge banking on each bend, but I'm not sure what it adds to the racing. In the final individual heats, Bomber was riding wide chasing Grajczonek but had to scrub off his speed at every bend to turn so hard. The track is totally the wrong proportions in my opinion. But what do I know?

You are spot on with this post. To be honest, the BSPA have been living in cloud cuckoo land with the pricing of this meeting for years. I suspect that they have worked out they will make more profits, on a one-off basis, from a small crowd paying £25 a head than a good crowd paying normal Elite League prices. It's all very good certain posters on here showing mathematical formulas to demonstrate how the meeting represents similar value on a heat-by-heat basis than a normal Elite League meeting but most people (like me) do not use mathematical formulas to decide which meetings to attend. Time and again we have heard calls for televised meetings to have reduced entry prices. Nigel Pearson on Sky has applauded clubs for charging reduced entry for televised matches (some of the Bham meetings last year spring to mind) as nobody wants to see empty terraces on Sky. So what do the 'powers that be' do? Charge more than the usual customer is used to paying. They must know that this, combined with the meeting being on Sky, will result in a mediocre crowd (I for one cannot see it being any other way) but do not seem to be bothered by this. This meeting should have been priced at £15. With under 16s free. Publicise it like crazy. The World Champion is riding. Make a big thing about the reduced entry prices and a chance to see the World Champion and give the sport the kick-start to the season it needs. The problem is, there is nowhere near enough wider-term thinking going on with those in charge of our sport. This is a shared event, but rather than it being seen as an opportunity for the sport to be promoted and publicised at a shared cost, it is seen as just another way for each club to make a little bit of money. It is precisely this kind of small-time, short-term thinking that is one of the reasons the sport is in the current mess it is in. Here's the crux of the matter. I'm a Coventry season ticket holder. I will be sitting at home, with a few beers, watching the meeting on Sky. At normal Elite League admission prices I would have been at Brandon. How many other supporters out there will do exactly what I am doing? They've got no idea at all...

Barker is in the 8 man team. Woffinden, Harris, King, Cook, Barker, Lawson, Worrall, Howarth.

As far as I'm concerned, and I've felt like this for a few seasons, every new season at Brandon is a bonus. Assuming the new owners are land developers, I suppose this could go one of a few ways. Will they be happy to run the stadium as a going concern until such time as planning permission is granted or will they simply close the stadium as soon as they are in a position to, then demolish it and let the land stand empty until planning permission is obtained (like what happened at Cradley)? Perhaps one saving grace for the club is whether we could see a similar model to that at Swindon with a speedway facility being incorporated into any planning permission for houses being built. We live in hope.

I really fail to see what all the fuss is about. Sure it's not ideal, but the reality is, having to make sacrifices like this are part and parcel of the fact that the sport has signed a new tv deal. If Sky want to show a tv meeting, that they are contractually entitled to show, and require that meeting to be re-scheduled to a day that suits their needs then that's all there is to it. That's one of the sacrifices you have to make if you want Sky to show the sport. I do feel sorry for Gary, but I suspect even he (and let's not forget he has done significant amounts of work for Sky over the years) appreciates the BSPA's obligation to meet the needs of their broadcast partner. No-one has said Gary Havelock cannot have a farewell meeting. No-one has said riders will have to chose between both meetings. The only thing that could have been done better, perhaps, would have been to have had dialogue and agreement with Gary before the change of date, which would have enabled the BSPA to make the statement they made yesterday about the clash of dates at the same time as the broadcast announcement. I have no idea about the availability of Wimbourne Road but surely the best arrangement would be to move Gary's meeting to the Wednesday before the ELRC. That way, any riders who may have been affected by the clash of dates between the two meetings can do both. The GP superstars (who, let's face it, are predominantly going to be using the meetings for testing and track time) get an extra meeting and Gary should still get a decent crowd being as the meeting will be on Poole's traditional race night. In fact, it could work to the advantage of both parties as riders might be more inclined to travel over to the UK with vans and bikes if there was the possibility of doing 2 meetings instead of 1. Any incurred costs involved with the change of dates could be met by the BSPA.

So one more thing than Birmingham! It just gets better. You won nothing.... Fact.

I don't see lots of 'comments' (by that I presume negative ones) from Bees fans. Any comments that I have seen (like the one above from mdmc82) seem pretty well-balanced and reflect some of the concerns that, it would appear, are shared by many Brummies fans. As for the 'noses out of joint' comment, I don't see how the Brummies results last season could possibly have concerned the Coventry fans. After all, at the end of the season, both teams won precisely nothing! So there was nothing for our noses to get put out of joint about!

I thought I read on here that new rules had been agreed. If the rider is an asset of the EL club, the EL fixture takes priority, otherwise it is the PL fixture that takes priority (unless the PL fixture is a re-arranged fixture). Assuming those rules have been implemented, Coventry on Good Friday, as far as I can see, will not be affected. Looking at the BSPA website, Fisher is the only rider with a clash as Workington (Howarth) and Rye House (Garrity) are not riding on that day. Fisher is a Bees asset, so his Bees fixture takes priority in this instance. For Bees at Leicester on Easter Saturday, Howarth has a fixture clash as Workington are at Berwick. However, Rye House are not riding, so Garrity should be ok to ride for Bees. So over the two days, Bees should only be missing one rider in their away fixture.

Well I'm sure most of us can recall the All Party Parliamentary Group for Speedway, which was set up with such fanfare a few months ago. Surely this is the exact kind of situation where they should be able to bring their influence to bear?

With respect, why? In my opinion, simply because of its timing, the New Zealand GP is an inconvenience the sport could do without. A GP on the other side of the world at exactly the time when the domestic leagues in Europe (and most specifically the Elite League) are starting up. The fact that this year's GP is two weeks later than last year's means even more disruption than before for some clubs. Granted the impact on the Elite League is somewhat lessened this year because of the lack of GP riders in Britain this season but we will still have a situation where 5 of our 10 teams will have to manage the disruption of limited availability of their star riders until the latter part of the second week of April. If New Zealand was a speedway hotbed then, perhaps, I could understand the need (and almost, perhaps, the entitlement) for them to have a GP and accept the disruption it causes. But the fact is that the glory days of New Zealand as a speedway nation as good as ended 20+ years ago when Larry Ross and Mitch Shirra (the last two international standard New Zealand riders) wound down their international careers.

As many of the posts on here are stating, it is suspected the major reason for the call-off was to do with the damage to the track done by the stock cars and the promotion not having the time to do the remedial work needed. I suspect the turn of events went something like this: Stock cars on Boxing Day leave the track in very poor condition. Heavy overnight rain into and throughout Friday morning compounds matters. The Coventry promotion take a look at the track on Friday morning in the wind and rain. They see a heavily damaged, soaking wet track and reason that they simply cannot get the track into the required condition in the time-frame available. I was not surprised it was off. Simply because of the stock cars. The weather was awful in the days leading up to the Christmas break (although Christmas Day and Boxing Day itself were fine) but, even if the weather had been perfect in these days, I'm not sure what difference it would have made. The stock cars would still have damaged the track on Boxing Day and it would still have rained on Boxing Day night. And let's face it, heavy overnight rain in December is hardly beyond the realms of possibility! Look at this YouTube link of the final of the stocks meeting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A8nR-y1JfY Watch the cars bouncing as they move through bend 1. There has been problems with that part of the track before after a stocks meeting. Indeed the Bees v. Kings Lynn meeting on Friday 7th June this season was held up hugely as bend 1 needed heavy remedial work. This following a stock car meeting the previous Saturday. Again, I'm just making a supposition but I suspect the damage to that bend alone was enough to put the speedway meeting in serious jeopardy. I suppose (and would be more than happy to be corrected on this matter by a member of the Bees management) that it was a combination of lack of time/manpower/materials to do the intense remedial work on the track that was (and baring some sort of miracle was always going to be) needed following a stock car meeting in the middle of winter followed by heavy overnight rain. Let's face it, once the weather on Friday cleared up they have had weather which is about as good as you are going to get at this time of year. However, I do not believe the Boxing Day overnight rain was enough to get this meeting called off. It was just the final nail in the coffin. In fact, I imagine there are very few people on here who think that this meeting would have been cancelled had there been no stock cars on Boxing Day. Which again begs the question - and one which neither Main Man or Neil Watson have addressed on this thread - "Why on earth was the meeting arranged for the date it was knowing that a stock car meeting preceded it so closely?"

Watching on my Google Nexus through the Livestream app. Excellent quality on full screen. That's with a slow 4mbps download speed too. Very impressed.

I wonder which meeting had been arranged first? Obviously the stocks and the speedway lease the stadium off the owners.

The fact is, the demand is there. They used to get good crowds at Newport with people coming from all over the country to go. The crowd at Poole for their meeting (which for me was the best ever winter meeting) was excellent and the racing pretty good too. I went to every New Year meeting at Newport (with the exception of the last running of it) from Jan 2004 and enjoyed each one. Yes it's cold, but no more cold than I have been some nights in the early and late part of the regular season at Brandon. Like I say, if the demand is there, then why not put the meeting on. If people choose not to attend (like yourself) then that's up to them but plenty of people enjoy these meetings. However... I think actually the biggest issue regarding these meetings is the seeming lack of enthusiasm from the riders to ride in them. The lineup at Newport was initially good (with the likes of Iversen, Harris, Watt etc. taking part) but, gradually, the quality decreased. Then Poole got it and put together a great meeting with the best winter line-up ever. It then went back to Newport, with a much poorer line-up before Newport folded. I was hoping that the meeting at Brandon might see a return to the sort of line-up that graced the Poole meeting, but it was not to be. My own opinion is that the fans will turn out in force for these meetings so long as the line-up is good. Unfortunately, the line up for the Brandon meeting was nothing to write home about - not helped, I am sure, by the likes of Kennett, Harris and Fisher (who had originally committed to the Brandon meeting but understandably pulled out) being unavailable as they were riding in the Monster Invitational meeting in the USA on the same weekend.

What a shame. The weather has been awful lately and I'm not surprised its off. Can't help but think, though, that the club were always going to be up against getting a winter meeting on with, essentially, only two days to prepare the track following the stock car meeting on Boxing Day. Surely any preparation work done prior to Boxing Day would have been ruined once the stock cars got on the track?

And a nice Pawlicki sized gap it leaves. Any rider who can progress to the GP challenge should not be coming in on an average of 4 as far as I'm concerned. And, to echo the quote by Steve0, this is not a dig at Poole but rather at the system which, again, seems to be allowing 'bargain' assessed riders to be signed when I, for one, thought that system had been cut out.

You need to rein yourselves in with all these comparisons between Michael Lee and Robert Lambert. Such comparisons, whilst inevitable I suppose, being as he has signed for Kings Lynn, do Lambert no favors at all. I hope he turns out to become every bit the rider that he is predicted by many to develop into but we all know that just because a rider is predicted in his teenage years to be 'the next big thing', this often turns out to be not the case. All of us Bees fans will remember when we signed the 16 year old Morten Risager back in 2004 and, of course, comparisons were made between him and Tommy Knudsen (who was 17 when he joined Coventry). As a 16 year old, Risager was very impressive and was on the pace (in a much tougher Elite League) straight away. But he never really developed beyond the rider we signed at 16. Now he is plying his trade as a second string in the Premier League.

If Mick and Co do cop a fine for this, we should have a whip around. By swiping Howarth (who appeared nailed on for a team place at Poole this year) from underneath the Poole promotion's nose they have given us Bees fans a nice early Christmas present. Perhaps we could pass a bucket around at the NSSC quiz on Tuesday. I would happily throw a fiver in. Just read the link below with a wry smile on my face! http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/sport/10666341.Pirates__Ford_insists_Howarth_forms_part_of_Poole_plans/

I'm more than happy with this top 5. If we can sign Garrity on Tuesday then I don't think we could have asked for more. Fingers crossed! Despite the drop in the points limit, I actually think next season's top 5 of Andersen, Harris, Fisher, Hansen and Howarth looks better than last season's top 5 of Kasprzak, Nicholls, Zengota, Szczepaniak and Summers/Allen. I certainly think they will go better away from home as we all know what an issue the away form of Zengota and Summers was. I can only applaud the management's approach to the team building this winter. The last two seasons have been a disaster and, of the riders who represented the club in any one of those two years, the only one in the team next year is Harris. And on his average, his inclusion was a no-brainer. A clear out was what was needed, and that is what we got (although I don't think anyone could have predicted that every rider in last season's team would be given the chop for 2014). I actually would have been ok with the return of Summers due to the fact his Brandon form is generally good and he has picked up some decent sponsorship for next year but, lets face it, his away form is a big concern and, even at home, he is prone to the odd poor meeting. Howarth averaged over 6 last season away from home which appears encouraging. I look forward to seeing them ride for you next season then!

And on that point, a huge well done to Coventry for taking a stand at the event. A brief article is on the Bees website on http://www.coventrybees.co/news.php?extend.2523 I suspect that stands like this do not come cheap but this is precisely the sort of event speedway promotions should be involved in. Lets hope it pays off.

Well done to the promotion team. Whatever happens over the course of next season, I don't think anyone will be able to take major issue with the way the team has been put together over this winter. Hans is just about the best number 1 we could have realistically signed this winter. Although I do wonder how well he and Havvy will work together? If Twitter comments are to be believed, they don't appear to get on at all. As for the final rider, I would love to see Gustafsson at Brandon on an average of 5.17. However, if that's a no-go I would now be tempted to give it to Summers. It would leave us half a point shy of the limit but his form is good around Brandon. Assuming that the two reserves are on a par with those of other teams, this team should be pretty hard to beat around Brandon at least. I still think the most important signing would be that of Phil Morris as team manager! Luckily I've come up with a plan to make it happen... After all, because we acted so charitably helping Birmingham out with riders last year, and in light of their current much documented problems, I think it's only fair we reach out the hand of friendship once more to our poor relations twenty miles down the M6! To solve their management problem, Havvy could go to Birmingham!

Where... Do tell... Obviously, if this is the case, it was all part of the 2013 grand plan to finish bottom!

Yes. Very strange. Simply cannot see how that is going to work. Especially as Lakeside seem to have 'bagged' top prospect Adam Ellis.