old bob at herne bay

The more you hear about the cronies that make up the BSPL Ltd. the more I wonder whether they are the root cause of British Speedway's continuing decline ? We have the crook at Eastbourne who has disappeared owing riders thousands of pounds getting off scot free, and been instrumental in getting Eastbourne Speedway closed down ... yet Chris Morton is banned from being a promoter for ..... being involved in building a Nation Speedway Stadium, which the BSPA frankly showed no interest !

25yearfan, You would think getting say a thousand out of 213,000 to a speedway track near Norwich wouldn't be a problem. London has a population of nearly 9 million, and you were lucky to see a thousand of 'em turn up at Lakeside Speedway. Point taken about Tiger Louis, who came from a moto X background into speedway. But with so many double up riders it is hard to see where decent heatleader standard riders for any new teams would come from. Lots have retired unable to make it pay. Sure there are plenty of young trainees keen to practice their mistakes at National League level ...... but hardly likely to attract a new audience to a new track. Oxford will be interesting .... they have been fortunate to join with EB and Kent pulling out of the CL freeing up some riders. Lets hope they can attract a viable crowd from the 150,000 population of Oxford .

Fundin and Nygren backed up by "Gentleman" Aub Lawson in the twilight of his career I seem to recall. There's a trio that would frighten the lives out of today's "SGP sooperstar" riders. Always wondered what would happen in a tussle between Mr N. Pedersen and any of Ove , Olle and Aub. :-) :-)

It is remarkable that only in British Speedway can we hear on the one hand a shortage of riders (even with almost everyone doubling up), and yet speculative discussions of new tracks opening....... In the case of Norwich, any former Norwich speedway supporters will have long lost interest and moved on. . I doubt there are enough speedway folk left in Norfolk and Suffolk combined to support another track without impacting on the existing tracks at KL Ippo and Mildy. (not to mention PBoro.)

There was a time when you used to see a photo salesman with a large board outside the turnstiles selling all manner of home and away riders photos, and a selection of rosettes, badges. sadly don't think any of the current English clubs have enough fans interested in spending money on merchandise to make it a viable proposition. What I have seen of "merch" in track shops has generally been pretty poor quality. Have to say I do have a decent baseball cap from Kent Kings track shop.

I can go one better than that ... Lakeside backstraight tea hut ..... asked for a portion of chips. Sorry mate, we aren't going to do any more chips until we have sold all the burgers .

I can go one better than that ... Lakeside backstraight tea hut ..... asked for a portion of chips. Sorry mate, we aren't going to do any more chips until we have sold all the burgers .

What do Poole Speedway charge for car parking at Wimborne Road ?

Got to say as a Kent Kings supporter last season..... surprised that Heeps is being offered a place in a Premiership side - he would struggle at reserve IMO. Batch was a good heat leader at Kent in the CL - but failed to deliver all season for Sheffield in the Premiership.

Norwich surely very unlikely with Kings Lynn , Ipswich, Peterborough and Mildenhall already in the area. Back in the day of the Norwich Stars at " The Firs" they were the only East Anglian club in the top division with Ipswich operating in the lower divisions.

This all sounds sadly all too familiar with the Kent situation at Sittingbourne Stadium :-( New landlords with other priorities demanding large rent increases from the speedway promotion. .

Seems the nucleus of last year’s Royals have all left the “Palace” and gone to Mildenhall. Jordan Jenkins maybe available......Sam Hagon apparently is busy at weekends so not likely to sign for a weekend track.

Any news of the team name and logo .... Iwade Crusaders ....Sittingbourne Crusaders ..... Sittingbourne Royals ????

Think the administrator needs to do some weeding. This thread clearly belongs in the Championship Speedway section now that the promoter of the club has declared he is running a team in the Championship.

Maybe the Ford’s are still finalising their rent for 2022 ....before making offers to riders for 2022?

Nice bit of off season publicity opportunism by the Ford duo….. sure will get some column inches in the local papers and the speedway press. personally doubt Basho was ever planned to ride for poole in 2022 with so many fixture clashes . Wonder what piece of publicity the Model T’s will invent for the new year?

Lack of team riding is because most of the current riders aren't good enough to do it. some still can .........

Lack of team riding is because the riders aren't good enough to do it. some still can .........

Who's the "bums on seats" rider to get the 1000 crowd to break even at Perry Barr ? Thought that was the problem last season - not enough people wanted to watch the Brummies ?

If he's hungry .... plenty of good curry houses in Manchester from my memory...... sounds an ideal choice........

Always assuming your club will not decide to have a sabbatical halfway through the season due to a new variant.

One of the MANY reasons that the racing is so crap now is that there are fixed gate positions for every race. We have riders that are useless using the best gate positions, and he top riders stuck on the rubbish gate positions. Team pairs should be able to choose gate positions to suit their style of riding and the needs of their team. Humphrey remembers correctly that teams 6 points in arrears could choose 1and 3 OR 2 and 4. This should be re introduced. These rules would put an end to any advantage being gained by flooding of the away team starting grids by track officials, as used this season at Eastbourne.

Good to hear Iwade could be lining up in the NDL . No lights at the old gun site so assume it will be Sunday afternoon racing. This might be problematic for some of the NDL riders who do grass track ?

I always struggle with this concept of any speedway club "assets" Virtually all clubs rent their stadiums. So the only tangible assets seem to be one tractor and associated grading accessories water bowser and assorted hose for track watering one air fence and safety fence one starting gate and set of flags telephone at starting gate set of coloured exclusion lights , couple of green lights plus a string of red lights referees box control panel. guess they own the shale on the track ? but transport costs negate its value. Rider assets are difficult. Bunch of self employed contractors, who may ride wherever they like for whoever they like and may decide not to ride at all for you despite you having their "signature" . (e.g. your asset may be a SGP rider but he has zero value because he no longer chooses to ride in the UK) So any club has very little in the way of assets, and those assets have a very limited market.

With all these riders allegedly owed money by the company running Speedway at Arlington in 2021, they surely have reason to seek legal advice to attempt to recover the monies allegedly owed. Or is it the case that none of these riders have anything that will stand up in court to prove that they are owed money ? The Douglas/Cook promotion at Lakeside and recently the Jordan/ Cook/ Fineing promotion at Eastbourne must be held to account.