AFCB Wildcat

I certainly don't hate Tai. It just seems to me that he's lost the desire to win in the GP. He's been there and done it as a triple world champ but maybe he has a different mindset now that he has a young family and he seems content to do just enough rather than put it on the line. He's earning his bread and butter in the Polish league and obviously he wants to be in the GP series to keep sponsors happy but he's lost his edge. How often has he had world beating rides in the qualifying heats only to disappear in the semis which has cost him dearly? In fact he is probably the only rider in the top ten finishers that didn't score more under the new points system than he would have in the old system because of this. My problem with him is that when it's gone badly for him, it doesn't seem to hurt compared to say Doyle or Freddie who are on it 100% and visibly angry when it's not gone their way. Maybe that's just the persona he likes to project but to me you've got to be in it to win it and to me he just doesn't seem to want it badly enough now. I could be wrong.

I work a night shift from Monday to Thursday so Wednesday's are no good for me, hence I can't go anymore since the demise of Weymouth & Buccaneers unless it's a weekend fixture at Poole. I'd managed to get on a first aid course during the day for Wednesday so I can go to football but now I can go to Speedway too so I'm really looking forward to it

Excellent! Friday works for me

I believe that Torbay Council own the land on which Plainmoor is situated although GI are in discussions with them about buying the freehold. A new stadium is promised at another location though so what could possibly go wrong?? It seems to have gone quiet about the Poole situation, but Poole stadium can't be viable on the Speedway income alone unless GI are happy with the income from the carpark which is used all week due to its town centre location, with the Speedway just satisfying the 'sporting use' clause of their lease with the council. I must admit I don't fully understand the situation as it appears that the stadium site is earmarked for development as part of the council's local plan, but it's all a bit sketchy as to what that plan is. As soon as relocating the speedway is mentioned then we know it's all over for Poole as it won't happen.

Hope not. Bournemouth are at home to Southampton on the 19th. Might affect the attendance going head to head with the south coast derby.

Interesting question, probably not many. A quick Wiki search shows that most definitely don't but others not so clear. In the Premiership all but Kings Lynn are listed as tenants of their stadiums. I don't know if Buster owns the Norfolk Arena lock stock and barrel. Of the rest, Glasgow are listed as stadium owners. The ones that are unclear are Leicester, Scunthorpe, Redcar and Kent at Iwade. Perhaps those with local knowledge could clarify?

Mine's okay

The trouble is, no matter how many officials you have or how many angles you view it from, in some situations it's purely subjective when apportioning blame. What are people's objections to a staggered restart if a referee called it as a racing incident? It seems perfectly reasonable to me. It shouldn't take any more time than the current system and I would have thought it fairer than an exclusion based on a toss of a coin when the referee isn't sure. In the current system, how often do we see a rider who was tailed off in the initial race pop out of the start in the re run? At least it would negate that.

The football has already be re homed once after the Recreation Ground site in the town centre was developed in the late 80's. I just think it's sad that sports clubs which represent their towns and should be focal points of the community are shunted out of town to the back of beyond so that someone can make loads of money from their spiritual homes. Where do they want to move it to now?? It's already bad enough. I took my grandson to an evening game last season after a day in Weymouth. It was a 2 mile walk back to town down unlit paths and roads as there was no public transport at that time of night and we only just caught the last train home.

I understand the principles but having only ever ridden a speedway bike very badly and spannered for my son at amateur level using Jawa long stroke engines I can't speak with any authority, so in your opinion would a rider on a long stroke engine have been competitive or even gained an advantage in this meeting at Peterborough? Would the high revving engines advantage have been negated by a prematurely degraded tyre? It does seem a crazy situation on the face of it to spend so much money if no real advantage is gained so is it simply that no one wants to go against the status quo?

I was at Anfield Saturday and the floodlights on top of the stands were blazing all afternoon in brilliant sunshine. Money to burn obviously.

VAR is a joke. I agree with it in principle but it was supposed to be about alerting the referee to a clear & obvious mistake that he may have made, not micro analysing every goal and using laser line graphics to show that a boot lace or strand of hair was offside. Those aren't clear & obvious mistakes. Indeed, there are many incidents where 2 riders simply arrive at the same piece of track at the same time and it's impossible to apportion blame. My main gripe is when 2 riders are side by side down the straight with the rider inside slightly ahead and the outside rider comes down on the entry to the bend. After all the replays the commentators say "there was contact, he's clipped his wheel/leg, he has to go" before the leading rider is subsequently excluded. Fair enough if he has left the other rider nowhere to go by moving him out to the boards but quite often the leading rider has taken a natural line into the bend and the following rider has plenty of track outside of him but is too close to his opponents back wheel which is inevitably going to swing out. Then you see aggressive and dangerous moves go unpunished because the victim managed to stay on the bike even though it ended his race.

Looking at Google maps satellite view, there appears to be absolutely nothing left of the track or stadium. It just looks like a rubbish tip now. I know there's been various stories in the Dorset Echo over the years about potential new sites but nothing has come of them yet so I'm not holding my breath

I believe they are. There has been a lot of talk about searches for a new venue. I'd love to see it happen as l have many happy childhood memories of going to the old Radipole lane track in the 70's after a day on the beach in the summer holidays. Weymouth on Tuesday's and Poole on Wednesday. I have to say though, that even back then when speedway was in its heyday the crowds were a bit sparse. I got back in to speedway after a long absence during a camping weekend in Weymouth many years later, after they had put flyers on all the car windscreens in the town centre car parks advertising that nights fixture so you can't say they didn't try to promote it. Weekend fixtures suited me due to working nights during the week and I was then a regular until it sadly closed. If it was a bit closer to town I think it would have picked up a lot more trade from holiday makers and prospered. I know that could never happen these days but the trouble with putting sports venues on industrial estates out of town is you're only going to get the die hards and not much passing trade.

Yeah, that was the last time that I went. I'd read on here that cheap tickets were always available on the day so didn't book in advance as usual but the cheapest ones they had were £50 or more, I can't remember exactly and it cost me £250 or so to get my family in. As you say, obviously rubbish!

Indeed and not least going up against the start of the Football season on a match day. I know there are a lot of football haters on here but unfortunately, a good percentage of the Cardiff crowd are casual supporters and not die hard speedway fans. Many have lost their local teams and make Cardiff their only speedway meeting of the year but regularly support a football team. Having checked average football match attendance figures it would appear that on average, over 750,000 fans attend a full programme of matches over the 4 divisions on a Saturday. A small percentage of those who might otherwise have otherwise gone to Cardiff if it was in June or July like it used to be is a big impact on the attendance figure.

I had a strong feeling it was going to be his night too. I stayed away from the result as I was in Manchester till Sunday so couldn't watch it till I got home. My daughter messaged me Saturday and asked me if I wanted her to put a bet on for me as it's my one wager of the year. When I got home she asked if I'd seen the result so I suspected he'd come through for me but as you say, the WAY he won. Wow! Conditions catching out far more experienced riders but he nailed it.

Oh I am certainly celebrating. Dan's achievement is remarkable in that he won despite me having bet on him. It's normally the kiss of death for a rider as I've never had a winner before. Unfortunately I wasn't there this year to see it as my grandson wanted to go to football instead but Dan paid for my day, and some

Cardiff City are home to Birmingham. It's a lunchtime kick off but the city is normally busy after football with post match drinkies etc. I've also read that there is cricket. The Welsh Fire against oval invincibles in the hundred, whatever that is? There's also a couple of events and an evening concert at Cardiff castle apparently. Bloody stupid, having the GP in the football season IMO. I'm going to miss this one as I'll be at the Etihad watching Bournemouth get battered. I'd rather go to speedway to be honest but it's my grandson's first (and probably only) Premier League season and he wouldn't forgive me if I didn't take him

Well I don't intend to find out. I stopped going when they started issuing those fangled printed paper tickets instead of a parchment scroll, handwritten in olde English with a proper quill pen

From reading some of the views expressed on here, you'd of thought that the only purpose of this meeting was to find a wildcard rider for the Cardiff GP when it was predominantly about winning the National title. Dan Bewley is already in the GP so was he chasing an impossible win from the off?? Being a wildcard in a single GP will be soon forgotten but having your name on the national trophy with all the greats that have won it before puts you in a hall of fame and that's what it should be all about. I really don't see how anybody can say that Adam's wildcard is tainted when the other option was to elect someone as National champion off the back of a ballot after only 3 rides completed . In my opinion that would have been a bigger farce and that name on the trophy would certainly have been tainted. In the circumstances I think they made the right call. Nobody deserved to be called British champion that night and it's correct that it is being re run. I also believe it's correct that Adam, as current British champion should be able to take the wildcard ride that he was denied by Covid as his win was worthy. By all means criticise the organisation for putting this event on so close to the GP without a contingency plan for this scenario but to suggest that Adam should forfeit his place to someone who won nothing is in my opinion ridiculous.

But the field for the 2023 GP series is decided in 2022 so what's the difference? If the Cardiff GP had been in its normal June to early July slot it would have been done by now. Surely it's better to have the British final at the end of the domestic season giving an option to rearrange if weather intervenes rather than so close to the GP but event shouldn't just be about a wildcard place in a GP anyway.

Has it officially been said that the winner of the rearranged British final will not be wildcard for next year's GP? As long as they arrange next year's British final for a date after the GP and the winner qualifies for the next one does it matter?

I used the service for the first time last night. I'm unable to watch live Speedway in the week due to work commitments and all the weekend tracks are the other end of the country. I don't get custody of the remote control until the wife has gone to bed so I bought the Edinburgh v Poole match to watch on catch up as I hadn't looked up the result. It all worked a treat for me. I guess all the live stream glitches are sorted for on demand and I thought the whole production was decent for what cost little more than a pint at the pub. No problem with Chromecast either which I've had with some of the club streams so able to watch on TV. Same again for Berwick tonight I think. Will retire to my summer house with a pack of Stella, what's not to like? (don't mention the score!)

Yes the size of trees growing out of terraces struck me too. I've seen that on those Abandoned Engineering programmes as well. Trees growing though the floors of abandoned buildings where you wouldn't expect them to be able to grow. It's amazing how nature takes hold again when humans aren't there.