Chadster

There are 120 available points in a 20 heat individual meeting. Divide that by 16 and you'd get 8 point something, so the lowest possible winning score would be 9, if my maths is correct, which there's every chance of it not being.

Just like the good old days!

Nigel Boocock (11) and Rick France (9) scored 20 out of 23 in a 55-23 defeat at Belle Vue in 1968 and Boocock got 14 out of 27 at Sheffield the same season. Despite all this one-sidedness Coventry actually won the league that year!

Sheffield had Charlie Monk, John Dews and Brian Maxted score full maximums in a 54-24 win over Belle Vue in 1968. Has any individual done better than Nigel Boocock scoring 16 out of 24 at Wimbledon the same season?. There was certainly one more occasion when he scored over half his teams points that season.

Was at that meeting. Carter broke the track record in his first ride, which didn't sit well with the crowd. Morton came out the next ride and was obviously going for the record and the crowd really got behind him, though he was ahead by a mile. When it was announced that he'd smashed Carter's record the noise was tremendous. And if it needs saying, what a great track Hyde Road was.

1s 6d to get in!

One of the things I noticed watching the SEC was that Lambert may not often have been first into the first bend, but he regularly was coming out of the second bend. I always thought that was a characteristic of Woffinden at his best.

Andy Galvin rode for the Dons a few times as a young kid, but when he came back riding for Hackney he used to wind the crowd up something rotten. Great box office, though

The letter actually says they propose to resume greyhound racing at Poole when the public are allowed back in, a far cry from the implication of the original post.

When you begin a competition you get a drop down box which gives you the option of choosing a team to control or 'control none'. This gives you control of every team. Even then on the match screen, next to each team's name is an icon, either an outline of a head or a computer. You can change these. The head icon for both teams means you control them both. Hope this helps.

Pretty sure you can control every team on Flying Shale if you want to.

Certainly agree that the classic Aces body colour was excellent. Clear design, striking colours; perfect. I liked the West Ham colour. Red and Blue go well together and the crossed hammers were a clear indication of the area the team represented. I could never understand why in later years they felt the need to add 'West Ham London' to the jacket; completely superfluous. I quite liked the Hackney chequered flag race jacket; very distinctive, though the hawk itself seemed a little feeble and got a bit lost against the chequered background.

The probability is that by the time speedway gets back, the dogs, horse racing and possibly even football would be back and in that case I feel there'd be little interest in speedway by the bookies.

Those early season Dons v Hawks challenge matches in the NL days were something else, it always seemed to me that the league meetings were quite tame by comparison. I do remember that last heat 5-0 and the uproar in the stadium. Happy days!

The BL was 18 teams in 1965 and 19 thereafter. Another think to consider would be the move to fixed gate positions. I can't remember when that was introduced, certainly when Nielsen was around.

I obviously don't know when we will come out of lockdown and speedway can resume, but unless other countries open their borders and travel restrictions are limited, then will there be enough riders in the country to stock the teams? Does anyone know how many Aussie/American riders are still based over here. Perhaps the BSPA could be devoting some thought to alternative competitions to 7 man team league meetings.

My Star hasn't turned up so far here in Derbyshire. Would it be possible to switch a print subscription to a digital one?

Ron Mountford suffered a bad leg break early on in the 1968 season, which meant he missed all of the rest of that season and was never the same rider when he came back.

Really fast starter. I remember seeing him comprehensively outgate Ivan Mauger at Hyde Road.

The evidence quoted here supports the idea that Langton was one of Beklle Vue's greatest riders but very few if any of us will have seen him race, whereas I've seen 4 of thee 'famous 5' and, while I never saw Craven ride, his exploits in the World Championship and his tragic death mean thet he's well known.

Presumably they were the riders who won world championships when riding for Belle Vue? I know 4 did. What about Crump?

I went to watch the last meeting at Liverpool in 1960. I can't remember anything about it except that it rained hard but a check on the Speedway Researcher website has Wal Morton at No 1 for the Pirates. The winning time for heat 1 was 95.8. Has there ever been a slower time in Heat 1 of a meeting?

Different formats for the cup were used in the first 4 years of the British League, 16 heats in 1965-7 and 18 heats in 1968. I always thought it was a retrograde step to go to 13 heats for the cup. The longer format for the cup offered a welcome change from the run of the mill League meetings.

Essentially people seem to be arguing for the return of handicap racing, which was tried in the 60s and scrapped after 3 or 4 years. I never saw it so can't comment so perhaps some of our senior posters (where is Gustix when you need him?) might comment. From reading about it the impression I got was that the top guys didn't like it and if the likes of Briggs, Fundin etc were struggling with it then......Another difference today is that whilst the superstars aren't in the top league, the overall standard is much closer together and that would make passing more difficult.

Like most things, there is no one size fits all solution. Sheffield have just abandoned weekend racing to return to Thursday night, Poole are so determined to race on a Wednesday that they've dropped a league to do so, ex-Saturday tracks like Swindon and Kings Lynn now happily run in mid-week and all the indications are that if they had a choice Belle Vue would run on a Friday rather than the Saturdays which I remember so fondly from the Hyde Road days. Incidentally, I think Falcace is absolutely right in his analysis of the social changes that have taken place.