Dave_minall

Fair point. Eddie Kennett suffered the same fate as well I believe - I saw Rosco talking about it on Twitter, he was saying how it's unfair that Hans could take part but his team mate could not. What a mess our governing body are making of our beloved sport. Those ivory towers don't look so nice nowadays.

Just out of interest, what did Scotty say? What were his reasons for backing out? I will find out myself at about 5:30 when I get in from work as my copy will be waiting for me, I'm just eager to find out.

According to Harris (a while ago) if he wasn't handed the wild card spot in the GPs, he's not doing the WC. This would give us 2 spots to fill. Personally I'd go for: Woffy Kennet King Cook

How is Harris going to add value to the event? Harris hasn't added any value to a GP since 2007. I would very much like to think that somebody younger that wants it more would be a more exciting prospect than Chris 'I'm having problems with my bikes/crew' Harris would.

Superb post JT - This is perfect in backing up everybody on this forum who believes that Harris was the wrong choice.

I'm sure they're more than capable of getting their own, I wasn't implying that there is a 'feed' like the GPs.

I wouldn't say it cost them more money, what I meant that it is wasted money. They have to pay a crew to stay at the track and then show a slew of repeats and older meetings to fill the time. The thing about this is that I can imagine more than 50% of viewers will turn off at this point so Sky will have lost out big time

I'm on your side dude. I'm chuffed to bits that we've got the GPs this year as the lineup is awesome (or was before Darcy and Nicki ruled themselves out for a period of time) - I'm just venting. I'd rather have speedway with the annoying slow talking chap than no speedway at all.

I think it will probably depend on how many live rain offs we get - I know nobody can predict the weather but we all know how much it costs Sky when they have to call off a live meeting and last year probably hit Sky in the pocket quite hard. If this year ends up as bad as 2012 I think they may be inclined to drop it, but if that were to happen I think Eurosport may be interested in picking that up as well. If we have a fairly decent 2013 I can't see why they won't renew it. It'll probably be on a yearly rolling contract to keep things but that's my opinion anyhow.

one would imagine that this 'commitment' would include the playoffs and the playoff final. I seriously doubt sky are planning on ditching live speedway part way through the season. If they were going to do that then they wouldn't introduce the inside track feature and they wouldn't put other crews at different tracks to report scores back.

Does he talk that slow on the superbikes?

Fantastic to see. Another thing I've noticed is how many people have shut up on the whole Australian/British thing too.

Such a shame - that's a beautiful stadium. Off topic here, but how come speedway didn't return to that stadium in Germany that hosted the Super Prix final?

I saw earlier that someone mentioned that we don't have anyone else that has a chance of winning a GP round - I completely agree but how many times have we seen a wild card on the continent go out and get all last places? it happens all the time, but at least other countries are willing to put their riders completely in at the deep end so they know how much to step their game up. It's all about experience at the end of the day. Do they expect our riders to qualify for the GP outright and expect to do well? look at Tai, he was (no disrespect) awul in his first GP series, and now he's electric. Riders need a chance to see what the top boys ride like so they can step up to the plate in future. Chris Harris is (as much as I love to watch him ride when he's on it) the wrong choice. He's past it and we'll never see him doing well in a GP ever again.

Why didn't I think of that?!

I can't see how you can say that? for the past 2 weeks we've had a live meeting 2 days on the trot, surely if Sky weren't bothered we wouldn't be getting any PL fixtures? They're pushing more if anything, they're probably just not interested in any fixtures that are on this week.

The studio guy is ridiculous. I've never heard a person pause so much whilst talking. He will...literally...pause this...many...time during a... sentence I understand he's probably trying to fill space and he's also probably not done much commentary work, but he's just awful. Really, really bad.

lets be honest if Zagar and Zorro weren't there, Poole would have got all 4 points.

Cheeky bet on Woffy to win tomorrow. Skybet have him down as 12/1 at the moment. Could be a sly investment.

But surely by doing so it would teach him what the big boys are like? I know just being there will be an experience but he has no idea what he's up against by standing by the pit gate all night watching them go around. Personally I think Craig would love the chance to prove that he wouldn't be there to make the numbers up. Granted if the track was one of the normal purpose built tracks he would struggle but in my opinion not around the small space that is cardiff.

He did say this and since he was denied the GP slot nothing has been said since. He must have thrown his toys out the pram and then realised that he needed them afterwards. We need to bleed in some fresh blood into the GPs. Look at the other rounds - we have unknown youngsters at every round (pretty much) with the exception of cardiff. Craig Cook would at least put the cats among the pigeons because in reality, he doesn't give an S as to who's alongside him at the tapes. It would be very much like when Lee Richardson (RIP) rode superbly well back in 2006 I believe and very nearly made the final. No pressure = more fun Harris will go in believing that he might have another shot at the GPs and he will probably crumble. I'd love to see a youngster going out and beating the best. Looks like we'll have to wait until they qualify outright though as Harris will probably get the wild card spot until he's using a zimmerframe.

They definitely should award full points to Poole as this would have been the outcome had the meeting gone ahead. Reimbursing the Poole fans would in my opinion be a bigger financial outlay than a fine, but it does need to be factored in. Not doing this would damage the fans' want to travel to away meetings and that's something that cannot be tolerated.

I agree entirely Phil - the best course of action would have been to call the meeting off as soon as they realised they couldn't track a competitive side instead of trying to hide behind what could potentially have been a self inflicted puddle on a part of the track that's (in all honestly) not used that much. They've shot themselves in the foot big style here, honesty is the best policy and they've been caught with their pants down trying to fool the public into thinking that this was something that it is not. I don't want BV to be slapped with a hearty fine as they need the money, but they do deserve punishment of some sorts.

Whilst I do agree with you, a brush would do the trick the problem with fresh wet shale is that it tends to turn to a jelly like substance when it gets soaked. If you stood on a banked track that was soaking wet there's a great chance you'd slide all the way to the curb with no effort whatsoever I'm not on BV's side by the way - if this is the true extent of the 'damage' this is nowhere near bad enough to call a meeting off. Brush it off, put some sawdust down. 7 heats later nobody will be riding anywhere near it anyway.

We're in an unfortunate situation where most promoters and clubs need to bring in a younger age group, and the only way to do this is to appeal to them via the means of technology and accessibility - the downside to this is that 95% of promoters and clubs don't have the man power to have a dedicated team devoted to marketing, and thusly older means of communication have to suffer. I agree there is a fine line here where we don't want to alienate our older fan base but at the same time not to come across to younger folks by baffling them with old means of promotion and communication. We don't want them to come across as archaic at all otherwise that will mud the message. I'd like to think I have a viable solution but all I can say is that promoters need to bear in mind both target audiences when communicating news and finding that perfect line where its accessible to youngsters but also appealing to our older members too.