Tsunami

To be fair, most sports have something going on at any one time. Speedway is not alone.

Totally unfair to the fans hoping to see a balanced meeting between full sides. Fans want value for money not weakened teams. That limits their use quite a bit with heats 13 and 15 already strong.

1994 closure was due to Kevin Wilde the owner who got sick of Speedway in his stadium. That was a surprise because our rent and extras went toward funding his attempt to be a professional gambler. Our consortium still proceeded to buy the speedway off Richard Bailey in the hope that Kevin would change his mind, but unfortunately he didn't. We then sold all the riders assets and I promised I would bring speedway back using my share of the money. As it happened the then accountant bought Wilde out and contacted us, as he knew we were looking at every stadium and land within a 13 mile radius. We then went into a partnership with 5 other tracks and were setting up a 'pirate' league when the BSPA got wind of our plans, and they were forced to drop the big league and formed the cheaper Premier League for 1997 that is still with us now with another name. The accountant then went bust in our first year, and we looked like we had lost it again. Happy days, all cloak and dagger, might write a book about it sometime. NB The 1970 closure was about Allied Promotions swapping our licence to their new track at Reading, hence the inclusion of Newcastle's Dag Lovas in their team from that year.

I heard it was a lot more than that that he needed.

You can't.

That was the car and Bridge that I was referring to in my post Topsoil. Presume you were trying to get to the Coast Road and up to the A19 which was the direction I was trying to go. Had to go through Wallsend eventually, but i'm OK now. It was about 4 rows under water eventually. The car park emptied all the rainfall in one stream through the grandstand gap and filled the bottom steps. Never seen that either before or after.

How can it be ? If this account relates to his agreed share %age of the SKY money, once it's in his account it's got nowt to do with British Speedway or BSPA in particular. Another useless attempt to have a go from UK Martin.

Jumped in or pushed in.

I think once again you have got it totally wrong. I see posters admitting that PC is an icon at BV but his stance in the 100+ frees list as being totally unreasonable. Leeway has been given as his recent illness might have a part to play. BV have come out of this as being very reasonable and trying to pacify a very delicate situation with such a well admired icon being involved. Stop playing the victim.

I thought that Alan was stopping the sponsorship after 10 years, and the club needed to get alternative sponsorship. Thats how I understand it TT. Could be wrong. NB Just reread the exact words of the programme and SS notes and they do say that Alan is not continuing next year. My thoughts were that with him owning the club, he has to be involved in some way unless someone steps in and buys him out. We will see.

Remember it well with riders standing on their chairs to get out of the rainwater. Under the bridge at Walkergate Metro station was once again flooded, and I think they had to drag an old couple out of a car floating on the water. Dave McAllan and Phil Morris were top after 3 rides for qualifying for the British Final. Yes, perish the thought John.

Where's the track staff coming from for say a Monday meeting ? We might get away with most prep being done of the Sunday and just tarted it up at Monday teatime. Dogs are on on a Thursday.

There is no author mentioned.

WOW. Speedway promoters not making money and still not got a certain rate of pay because of the complications of other items in the riders deal. No mention of top earners either, but at least we know there is not too much money in Speedway. Astounding.

I find it difficult to understand ex riders expectations to free entry to meetings. It certainly doesn't happen at say football, but I know people and riders who contact clubs and ask if they can come in say the Directors box, and are given an answer based on who they are and why are they there. No probs with that. In my first year in 1997 I used to stand at the pass gates as a greeter for the club. An ex-rider, not Newcastle, demanded to come in as he said all ex riders get in free. I stood my ground, and he continued to come every week and still moaned about paying to get in. One of the big problems is once a rider does get in, his expectations are that he can bring his mate in, his wife and her friends and it can get quite heated when you stop them. One of my riders told me I couldn't stop him bringing people in, and said if he wanted to bring 22 people there was nothing I could do about. It never happened, but we had a frosty existence then and after. Ironically when I set up my Free training school at Brough in 2008, he was the first to give me advice and help to set it up.

And that's the historic problem with our sport. Too many freebie hangers on like you, paying nowt but trying to be the worlds best critic on the sport. Tosser.

Wife's name.

Let's hope so, cos that would mean one less thing that waytogo28 can't exploit for his own current obsession with anything speedway.

I would suspect that the new promotion would not want to enlarge on the situation. They haven't anything really to gain, and it would seem that most BV fans are probably aware of the 100+ frees already. No need to wash their dirty washing on a public forum or magazine.

I understood he was a board member at ManU.

I have those Apps on my computer along with XCWeather. The worst one is Metcheck which always has rain regardless, but I find if you average out the BBC and Met Office you are pretty near the truth. On my iPhone I get the rain forecast down to the minute is starts. Bit late, but it is confirmation.

Quite agree. It's the spectacle of the action that they see, and might come back for more. How many new football fans don't go back cos they cant understand the offside rule. ? Why people SAY they tried to explain the rules and their friend decided not to come back. I don't believe them for a start, but why try to indoctrinate a new fan to speedway with rules, when the action of the track is the real product. Passing on your prejudice's is not very clever, if in fact it is true.

Correct, and noticeable who took the photograph.

You never give up do you. What you don't know you just make up to suit your attitude toward speedway and it's promoters. Would have though the replies to your posts on the riders wages thread would have demonstrated something to you. Don't know, but Alan was a sponsor from 10 years ago with his company Sapphire Engineering, and joined the board as owner shortly after. Apart from gate receipts, I would say his company has had the greatest input financially to the club, as well as pulling in smaller sponsors, and hosting the likes as Rene Bach at his home when he is in the country. Enough is enough I suppose, and we all applaud what Alan has done for the club.

Was there not some initiative, either last year or the beginning of this year, to allow all old riders to attend home meetings free of charge. Current riders get in free now, but riders being riders they think that a pass means +1 or +2 or +3, etc. and spoil the purpose of the rider pass.