brianbuck

One of the best true stories I have heard was told to me by Tony Mole. When he re-opened Workington, it was much against the wishes of the local Environmental Services Officer who was so miffed about his council over-ruling his recommendation that planning permission should be refused, that he took it upon himself to visit all the houses closest to the stadium to try and persuade the occupiers to complain. On knocking one particular door and finding it answered by an elderly lady, he asked her whether she could hear the speedway from her garden. "Oh yes, I can hear it clearly" she says. "Well don't you worry my dear" he says, "i'll will arrange for a lady from my office to call round next Saturday evening to help you to write a letter of complaint." "Thank you very much says the old dear, but don't send her on a Saturday as I will be at the speedway." "I go every week!"

I read your comment but this still doesn't answer my question. What exactly did Mr Robinson do to cause all this upset? I didn't see the match in question and all I can glean from the Speedway Star piece is that he and Alun Rossiter don't particularly like each other and that Rosco doesn't want him to referee any more Swindon matches. If that's the case, he (Rosco) can't seriously expect to be able to choose or refuse a referee for his club's matches. If Mr Robinson did exclude riders for dragging out the two minute rules and for delaying the starts, then I'd say more power to his elbow. If more referees did this, then the riders would soon latch on and meetings would be speeded up accordingly - which is what all of us want. Why also, should Rosco expect a referee to have to say beforehand that he intends to apply the rules as per the rulebook? Surely this should be the team manager's job?

The bottom line is surely a question of whether we really need centre green presenters? A clear, articulate announcer with a good knowledge of speedway in general should be more than sufficient in my opinion. All we really need on a match night is the racing, clear announcements of results and the contestants for the following race, plus any interesting information relevant to the meeting or one of the riders taking part. Instead, all too often we get inane long winded irrelevant chatter from people who often seem to imagine themselves as the star of the show, which just slows down the meetings and adds little or nothing to the entertainment value. As the ideal announcer, I'd nominate Terry Astley whom most people will never have heard of, but who for many years was the announcer at my cycle speedway club's (Sandwell) home matches. Terry always did his homework, was always clear and consise and never reduced himself to pointless wittering. He works on the track and sweeps out the pits at Birmingham and Wolverhampton these days, and in my opinion, is wasted!

What exactly did this referee do to cause ll this furore? I wasn't at the meeting and have only read this forum and the account in this week's Speedway Star but the impression I have is that Mr Robinson applied the rules rigidly which I don't think is a crime and reading what Alun Rossiter has to say suggests that he is griping because the referee didn't tell everyone before the start that he would be doing this, so I would ask why it should be necessary for him to say that he intended to enforce rules which everyone should be aware of?

There isn't the need to frame any new starting rules - just a need to rigidly enforce the existing rules! "Two minutes" should mean that a rider has 2 minutes to be at the start line (or a rest line drawn across the width of the track 2 metres behind the tapes. Any digging, rocking backwards and forwards or turning back towards the last bend should be included in the two minutes and there should be no reserve replacement for a rider excluded under the two minute rule. Riders can't have it both ways. They should have two minutes to be ready to start the race - not two minutes to get out on the track and then as long as they please to get themselves ready. To avoid confusion, the two minute warning should be sounded before the start of every race, and the pits gate should only be opened when it is sounded. All it needs are hard and fast rules that are rigidly observed. There would be chaos at first whilst riders tried it on, but they'd soon get the message and meetings would be speeded up accordingly once this has sunk in.

It seems inevitable that sooner or later the Elite League will have no option but to join forces with the Premier League - and it will have to be on the Premier League's terms for the cast-iron certainty is that no Premier League promoter is going to vote in favour of anything that increases costs, so if any amalgamation is going to work there will have to be a drastic restructuring. Many leading riders won't like the pay rates which will have to be offered, and will probably tout their services around the continent but there won't be room for them all so in the end, they will have to play ball by lowering their own costs and accepting lower points money. Will this be a bad thing long term? I don't think it will be if we can get properly balanced teams and a competition in which every club has a genuine chance of winning and with an emphasis on British riders rather than foreigners. If it means that for a few years we are in the wilderness as far as the World Cup and the Grand Prix are concerned, then that's how it has to be.

Just for the record, it was the police officer himself who told us that Mr Phillips knew that we were coming. His actual words when we asked "how did you know we would be here" were "because you have a Judas in your camp."

Just to put the record straight. There was no confrontation when a group of us (about 15 in all) assembled outside Alan Phillips' office this morning. Mr Phillips had been tipped off by some unknown person, that we were coming and a policeman was present (apparently at the request of Mr Phillips although we don't know that for certain.) We explained to the police officer that our intention was to present Mr Phillips with a letter from the supporters' club asking him to do the decent thing and pay off his debts rather than leave them for someone else to pay off. He accepted the letter without comment and then said much the same things as had appeared in the Speedway Star article - ie that everyone but himself was to blame for the demise of the club, and ending by saying that his face "didn't fit" as far as the BSPA were concerned. None of us were happy with his explanations or his claims but at no time did the situation become threatening or abusive, and before we dispersed, the police officer thanked us for the way that we had conducted ourselves and remarked that it was the calmest and most peaceful demonstration he had ever been at.

I think it's an established fact that Wolverhampton and Cradley Heath play to different crowds and in my experience, few Wolves fans go to watch Cradley meetings and vice-versa. The two clubs have their own distinctive followers and the only thing they have in common is that both use the same track. I'd agree that the National League has become very badly balanced this season and that this is leading to a high percentage of one-sided matches which is not good for either the winners or the losers - or for speedway in general. Unfortunately, it's not possible to level teams up - only level them down, so Cradley have the alternatives of either dramatically de-strengthening their team (which understandably, the supporters won't like), or moving up a division and taking on the much higher costings with possibly only a marginal increase in attendances. Of course, the real solution is for Cradley to have a track of their own - and as a lifelong supporter of Birmingham, I do wish you a happy ending to the long, long search for that goal.

I don't have any inside knowledge of Tony's plans but I would think it logical that they will be about Premier League racing. Clearly the Elite League cannot last much longer in its present form and will have to eventually amalgamate with the Premier - and common sense says that this is going to be on the Premier League clubs' terms for surely none of them will vote for or accept, anything which increases their costs. If that means that the top Elite League riders desert their clubs then so be it. In the long term, that may well be for the best.

I would definitely recommend Nico Covatti as a very good addition to the Sheffield team. Whoever takes him on will get not only a very accomplished and skilful rider but also a wholehearted battler who interacts superbly with the supporters.

Six tracks have now made this fantastic gesture - Coventry, Wolverhampton, Cradley Heath, Scunthorpe, Belle Vue and Berwick. It's much appreciated and emphasises what is good about speedway and the people involved in it. Many thanks to all of them.

I think the offer of free admission for Birmingham season-ticket holders made by these six clubs represents a marvellous gesture and emphasises all that is good about speedway, and I'm very sorry to see cynics suggesting that there is some kind of ulterior motive about this. I believe that it is a genuine desire to offer a helping hand to a group of supporters loyal enough to Birmingham to shell out cash in advance and it is much appreciated by those who will benefit from it. The notion that the intention is to "convert" Birmingham supporters into supporters of rival clubs is total nonsense. I'm not a season-ticket holder myself, but I'll be regularly visiting other Midland tracks during the remainder of the season as I would have been even if Birmingham had not closed like this, but it won't affect my loyalty to the Brummies which has survived for 62 years now, and it won't lessen the way I will do everything I can to help get my beloved Brummies back on track - but I'm grateful for the gesture and very much admire the promoters concerned for their generosity of spirit. Shame on those who can only see an ulterior motive that I don't believe is there.

Grateful thanks to all the Belle Vue fans for their sympathy and kind words. They queued up to shake our hands and wish us good luck - and it was very much appreciated by those of us who were there.

In respect of the post which raised the subject of the planning condition that the speedway facilities all be removed if racing ceased, this applied only if the original 3-year temporary planning consent was not replaced by full planning permission at the end of that 3 year term. In fact, the temporary consent was extended to a fourth year, and then full planning permission was granted, so this condition no longer exists. As far as I am aware, if speedway does finish at Perry Barr, and a new promotion came in in say, three or four years time, there would be no requirement to apply for a planning consent as the existing one has no time limit attached to it. All that would be need would be to show evidence that the stadium had been used for speedway racing without causing serious problems to local residents - which has been the case. Whether this would still apply if there was another 20 year gap would probably be different since there would inevitably have been major changes to housing etc in the intervening period and of course, because planning matters would have changed. Joe Thurley was not required to apply of a planning consent when he installed the speedway at the old Ladbroke Stadium on the other side of the Walsall Road in 1971 - all he had to do was show evidence that the stadium had been used for speedway before - even though it had been 40 years previously, but that wouldn't washwith the Council these days. Still, this is all beside the point. This latest news is devastating for Birmingham supporters like myself, but we are all grateful for the kind comments and good wishes that have been extended from supporters of other clubs. The situation looks bleak for us at the moment but what else can we do but keep our fingers crossed and hope against hope that someone will come in and save us.

Don't be beastly to Nico Nigel! Our shoelaces do break without warning sometimes!!! Speaking to Nico before the meeting I learned that he is still waiting for all his own equipment to arrive in the country and was grateful to Danny King for the loan of a bike for the night. Plus the fact that he hasn't ridden in a meeting or had a practice run for over a month.

The poster who has criticised Danny King for "leaving" Nico Covatti when they were on a 5-1 in heat 8 obviously isn't aware that Nico lost his steel shoe after only two laps and had to slow down, so Danny really had no option but to get clear rather than risk having Ricky Wells get past both of them. Mention of Wells obliges me to say that this was the best I have seen him ride at Perry Barr and having also seen most of the Wolves home matches, I would suggest that his is a candidate for being the most improved rider of the season. I always saw him as a bit of a "plodder" in the past, but I think he deserves my apology for that!

I sincerely hope that a new venue can be found to keep Coventry Speedway afloat but although I don't doubt that there are many suitable plots of land in and around the City which would be ideal, I know from experience that it will be extremely difficult to relocate the club. It is well known that we laboured for 21 years to get speedway back to Birmingham but no one should imagine that nothing was happening during those 21 barren years. That wasn't the case at all. There were four viable alternative sites available, these being Hall Green Stadium, Perry Barr Stadium (where we were eventually successful), The Wheels Park at Bordesley Green, and Salford Stadium, so on the face of it, it shouldn't have been too difficult a task to move in at one of these - but it certainly was, and frustratingly too! The owners of Hall Green would have jumpoed at the chance of having speedway back there but they were petrified of upsetting a very powerful residents association which has long been waiting for the chance to shut down the greyhound operation there. The then owner of Perry Barr Maurice Buckland was so anti-speedway that although he had numerous verbal discussions with various would-be speedway promotors (because a condition of his tenancy was that he must make the stadium available for "other sports"), he declared privately that he would rather go bankrupt than have it back there! (In the end he did go bankrupt and that paved the way for us to get back in!). At Bordesley Green, plans were presented for the construction of a new track completely separate from the old one there which had been tarmaced over for the stock cars and was no longer suitable), but for some reason they would never reveal, the Wheels Company's directors set their faces against having speedway there again, and even though they did come under pressure from the City Council who owned the site, they wouldn't budge and always hid under the supposed fact that the objectives of the Wheels Park operations was the rehabilitation of young offenders and apparently, speedway didn't meet this criteria although stock cars did! Tremendous efforts were made to relocate to Salford Stadium, a little virtually disused venue about a mile from Perry Barr in Aston. It was a small stadium with accomodation for only about 2,500 but with scope to be able to easily double this, and was ideally situated on the Lichfield Road, close to Spaghetti Junction, within walking distance of Aston Rail Station and had 11 bus routes passing it. As well as that, there was also a narrow cinder running track in place which could easily have been widened to provide an ideally shaped speedway track. There was also a tarmac cycling veldrome surrounding the running track, and the only users were Salford Cycling Club who paid £20 a week between May and September to use it for two hours on a Thursday night, being restricted to this by the fact that the track lighting hadn't worked for years. The stadium had been given as a gift to the City by an unknown benefactor in celebration of the Festival of Britain in 1951, and was costing the Council £6,000 a year to maintain (just to get £400 in income from the cycling club!) By all that was reasonable, the Council should have snatched the hands off the prospective speedway promotors who would have upgraded the stadium, repaired the lighting, paid a realistic rent, used it on approximately 30 nights a year for speedway, leaving the Council to offer it to other potential users on the other 335 days of the year. Noise tests were carried out (in a district where there were very few residential houses, yet every conceivable obstruction was then put in the way of it's use as a speedway venue. After considerable pressure, the Council eventually decided to offer the stadium out to private tender under four conditions (the first being that the activities of Salford Cycling Club must be safeguarded). The only tenderer of the five subsequently received who could comply with all four of these conditions were Birmingham Speedway, yet the Council then accepted the bid from a company which operated a commercial five-a-side football arena which couldn't comply with any of them - blandly stating that they had done so because "the criteria had changed!" I tell of this saga to give an idea of how difficult it can be to make progress with a potentially new speedway site. Tacid support might be forthcoming from a Council's Sports and Leisure Officers, but when the proposals move on to try to get past departments such as Environmental Services, Housing Officers or transport and road services, that's when the real opposition begins to surface and it can be frustratingly difficult to overcome their objections especially when they just replace one obstacle with another, but having said all this, I really do wish Coventry well in their efforts and would be happy to help in any way I can if the experiences I had in the past could be useful. Good Luck Bees.

Birmingham's stadium at Perry Barr is always and span and very presentable and the toilets are maintained to a very high standard. Unfortunately the venue is let down by the fact that much of the spectating areas are very flat and don't give a very good view of the track. The view from the tiered glass fronted bar area however is excellent but of course, many supporters do not like watching from inside even this this has its consolations on wet or cold nights. The speedway club has done what it can to improve things, purchasing two temporary sections of covered terracing and adding other uncovered terraced areas where there is room to fit them in. The GRA have been very co-operative, especially the staff at the stadium, but they won't allow anything which obstructs the view of the greyhound track and the bottom line is that at Birmingham, we can only work with what we have got. I also regularly visit Wolverhampton where the viewing is very good, the toilets clean and well maintained although watching from inside the bar isn't so good as it is not tiered and only the people on the front row get a decent sight of the track, and Coventry which although a stadium needing a bit of a facelift, has good viewing and customer facilities though I don't much like the centre "black!"

I think it is safe to say that between us, we have done this issue to death and should let it drop now. It is clear from the exchanges that although both "sides" think that the air horn ban is nonsensical, there is general agreement that as long as it exists it should be observed but unfortunately, given the time over again, the moronic few who wouldn't do the decent thing last Tuesday and abide by it, would do exactly the same again next time. As one poster has said, it is unlikely that there will be any comeback from the Council unless any local residents complain and the only likelihood of that happening would be if some supporters happen to say to non-supporters living locally that they were used (there are still a hard core few who would have the speedway shut down if they could.) That's why I urge people from other tracks to abide by the ban. Just to back up this statement, after the track had been operating for about a month in 2007, a lady living in Nash Square (the closest residential road to the stadium) noticed a report on the Brummies match at Rye House the previous Saturday night and knowing nothing about speedway and not realising that it was an away match, she wrote to the Council to complain that we had run on a Saturday night when we only had permission to run on Wednesdays, and that the noise was horrendous! In addition, as she was employed as a secretary at the University opposite the stadium, she gave this information to her boss who also complained to the Council and declared that this was conclusive evidence that the speedway club wouldn't comply with the conditions! The Council took the complaints seriously as would be expected, and although in this instance we had no difficulty in providing evidence that the complaints were a nonsense this gives a good enough indication of why we need to comply with the conditions we accepted when we were given a planning consent. I know the majority of Poole supporters (and I gather that there were over 500 of them) did respect the request not to use horns last Tuesday, but a significant number didn't and had we not raised this issue, this would have given a clear message to moronic types from other tracks that it would be clever to defy it. Regarding the other subjects that people have raised on this forum. The question of pop concerts at Villa Park was raised with the City Council in discussions before our planning application was first logged, especially after one of them was so loud that it could be heard 15 miles away in Lichfield and was the subject of hundreds of complaints from people living in the vicinity, and the breathtaking reply from the Council ws that because the organisers had complied with all of the conditions (none of which they were prepared to make known to us), this had been acceptable. It was indeed a case of one rule for one party and a one rule for the other as someone has said! Going 15 minutes beyond the 10pm curfew on September 30th was a breach of the planning conditions, but this was the first occasion that this has occurred in the 7 seasons that the track has been running, so if there should be a complaint lodged, it will be fingers-crossed that the Planning Officers (who do not seem to be so anti-speedway these last few seasons) will appreciate the reasons and overlook it. In respect of the Tuesday race night, an application made by Tony Mole before he passed on the promotion, to vary the condition that we only run on Wednesdays and Bank Holiday Sundays was approved by the Chief Planning Officer who has the discretion of making minor amendments without these having to go before the full planning committee, and we now have permission to operate on any week night conditional on us not running on more than one night in each week. I hope this answers the remaining questions that have been raised and I suggest that we let this matter rest now.

Jimmy Gooch would definitely come into this category. He pottered around as a reserve for donkey's years then suddenly at the age of 42, he had a purple patch and was good enough to qualify for the World Championship Final.

Wolverhampton's 10pm curfew is also voluntary but the club has the good sense to observe it strictly. Birmingham's 10pm curfew is a condition of the planning consent so to ignore it or observe it casually, would be suicidal, despite the fact that the stadium is situated at the junction of two of the busiest and noisiest roads in the City and opposite Birmingham City University from where the noise of loud music is regularly deafening!

Yes. Well done Newcastle Speedway. Typical generosity and thoughtfulness of Geordies. Birmingham made a similar gesture with free hot drinks and cakes at the Perry Barr Press and Practice Day, which was also much appreciated by those of us there.

I saw the Mail as a natural replacement for the old "Speedway World" which was launched in 1937 and continued until about 1961. The World was a newspaper style publication, always well informed and very well filled with highly readable articles and did not waste too much space with pictures. Unfortunately though, its appeal fell away when it established a link with Stock Car Racing which meant that half of it became of very little interest to speedway people. I preferred the Mail before it switched to the magazine format which made it become too similar to Speedway Star. I always thought there was room for both publications but less so when they became more like each other. I was sad to see its demise.

As a speedway enthusiast for over 60 years I think it is fantastic to read of the progress at this superbnew venue and would like to wish the promotion and the team every success in 2013 and beyond, and hope very much to be able to take in a meeting at this stadium before the season is through.