Arch Stanton

Probably. Only Belle Vue not riding and Blodorn is guesting for Lynn. It’s for Ellis, not Emil or Doyle. Batch has ridden well for Worky this year and knows Foxhall well. If he has his gating gloves on he’ll contribute decent points.

If you don’t win tonight then you’ll never win at Foxhall. It’s a golden opportunity as you full well know.

Agree but they don’t have a choice it seems due to Ipswich not yet having a televised home fixture. If they switched this one to Leicester, they wouldn’t be able to fulfil their contractual obligations as none of the other two remaining home fixtures for Ipswich can be moved to a Monday.

Our home tv meeting was due to be Belle Vue on July 15th which was postponed. We have to have one as stated above.

That’s an old statement, but the contractual obligation thing there is interesting. They haven’t shown a meeting at Foxhall yet so I guess that clears this one up.

Maybe the websites haven’t been updated yet. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they switched the TV fixture elsewhere.

It happens all the time. How often do you see stands empty in football grounds when their team has conceded a third or fourth goal? Happens in every sport including Speedway. It doesn’t make those people more or less a fan than those that stay so we’ll agree to disagree. You could argue that those that leave care more than those that stay. Some people love their teams in whichever sport so much, that they can’t bear to sit and watch them get tore a new one. Everyone is different.

This a pretty extreme case though Steve. Of course teams have been hit by injuries in the past, but I can’t remember an occasion where anyone lost both of their top two on +9 averages. There was a short spell mid season where we were without Doyle King Ellis and Thompson. That’s three of the top four! It’s been a bonkers season for injuries and is a testament to the other members of the team that we’re still in the discussion around finishing top with a few weeks of the season to go. There’s still hope Sayfutdinov may return in time for the play offs, although I didn’t like what I heard on Thursday. Have to wait and see on that one.

Wrong. He confirmed his season was “100% over” on the 9th of August after visiting the specialist for his 9 week check up. It was always likely to be the case, but he clearly hadn’t totally given up on returning despite what was said back in May. https://www.fimspeedway.com/news/doyle-confirms-2024-season-over# On your second point, nobody is asking for any sympathy. It doesn’t matter whether it’s been 3 months or 3 weeks, the fact is no suitable rider has been interested in coming over. I know they’ve held extensive talks with several top tier riders and came extremely close on one occasion but couldn’t manage to persuade him to do the deal. Both your club and King’s Lynn have faced the same problem. You can’t just wave an imaginary wand and easily replace the leagues best rider. Sure, they could probably have signed Troy Batchelor to replace Doyle, but who in their right mind would do that? (With all due respect to Troy).

Ahh the old soooperfan stuff! Good for you.

The whole structure of the leagues is up in the air at the moment. Thursdays are going to be an issue here and problems need resolving.

He was at the King’s Lynn meeting a few weeks ago. He’s been having a lot of physio and treatment in Poland since his injury. On you saying people are “not supporters” for leaving early, I can understand them personally. When Ellis crashed out it was one kick in the nuts too many for some people. The meeting was dead from a result point of view, the track was slick and the racing dreadful. Everything stacks up sometimes and I personally don’t blame people for getting off early. It wasn’t a mass exodus by any means, but a few had seen enough.

I’ve already said I think we’ll finish fourth and some have said I was pessimistic. Do people not realise the absolute state we’re currently in? The guts have been ripped out of the side. We’ve had youngsters at the bottom end of the team that have all improved, they’ve been a big reason why we’ve topped the table all season long despite the injury problems further up. But it’s a different kettle of fish riding without any pressure when the top boys are scoring maximums, to suddenly being the important riders who HAVE to score points. You also lose that inspiration that having Doyle and Emil in the pits brings to the younger members of the side. They almost certainly pull them along. The whole atmosphere at Ipswich has changed in recent weeks even before Emil’s crash and when Ellis crashed out early against Leicester it killed the meeting stone dead. People were leaving before heat 8 which never happens. We have four meetings left, Sheffield Belle Vue and Birmingham at home and Birmingham away. I think we’ll win one of those, Birmingham at home on the final fixture.

Sheffield Belle Vue Leicester Ipswich

Don’t be daft.

This. We’ve done remarkably well to still sit top without Doyle since the end of May. The likes of Rew, Ellis and Thompson have all ridden above their averages and we’ve battled hard to compensate his absence. Even Jenkins has stepped it up in recent weeks. But losing Emil as well is a killer. You look at the line up on Thursday and there isn’t enough top end strength there. We know Nicholls is decent around Foxhall, but he’s guested seven times at home this year and failed to hit double figures on four occasions. He’s no Doyle replacement and to be fair was never expected to be with all due respect to him. Our biggest problem is going to be Sheffield on Monday when even Nicholls won’t be available. You’re probably looking at R/R and possibly Blodorn covering the top two. That has disaster written all over it.

We were finishing top don’t think there’s any doubt about that. All we needed to do was remain unbeaten at Foxhall and I think we’d have done that reasonably comfortably. Not likely now so I guess it doesn’t matter a great deal although would have been handy to avoid Belle Vue in the semi cos we can’t ride the place but it is what it is. All we can hope for now is that Emil is properly fit for the play offs, and by that I mean fit enough to be at his best and not just fit enough to take part and not do himself justice, and we get a strong guest for Doyle. Then we can give it our best crack.

The plan was as of a couple of weeks ago, that Lindgren would be guesting for Doyle for both Cup final legs and all play off meetings.

He scored 7 from 5 rides including two duck eggs around the NSS a couple of weeks back. He looked far quicker there in the Speedway of Nations though so you have to ask the question, how much is he putting in to the league meetings for Birmingham? He now has an actual average of 7 and a half, pretty poor for a rider of his quality.

Can’t sign anybody now even if a suitable rider becomes available. The powers that be would rather we used guests from other clubs.

You have to wonder whether the club were still holding out hope (albeit slim) that he could be back for the play offs. It seems from reading that that he didn’t totally rule it out until his recent check up. Always better to be safe than sorry and do further damage by pushing it. Personally it just hasn’t been the same at Foxhall without him. Massive miss. Already looking forward to seeing him banging in the Foxhall maximums in March.

This was released a few days ago GM https://www.fimspeedway.com/news/doyle-confirms-2024-season-over

So Emil is still in hospital and waiting for an operation before he returns home to Poland. Was hoping for a little more positive news than that. It was said he was likely to be out of Hospital at the weekend. We now have less than three weeks until the cup final against Sheffield. Hate being defeatist but it looks like we need snookers.