waiheke1

If Gustix and star man agree on something I'd be very tempted to bet the house on the opposite.

Surely scbs is accurate, they won't give Jacobs one? Not sure rr weakens aces too much. Should still win by 10. Checked: scb is right

Who takes frickes rides?

OK but there is also a difference between signing a rider on an average, and that rider being expected to score to that average. R Worrell was just over 4, but he is a 6-7 point second string. To me that means he is not a 4/5 pt rider.

It to put it another way: will b perfect for tai. Cook and Nicholls will have ridden it more than anyone. And will suit racers like lambert and Harris. Maybe tai needs to lend them his bikes like Ivan did in 79

At the same time, could penhall have ever ridden better than he did in 81? I'd argue he fulfilled his potential, even if he didn't win as many titles as he could have.

the issue isn't neccesarily the number of fixtures. Sweden and Poland manage fine on less. The issue is the income those fixtures generate, which in turn impacts on what can be paid to the riders. I'd still rather see the EL go to fixed race night, 8 or 10 teams racing each other once plus play offs. And teams potentially running also a PL side minus the "stars".

this year's line up is pretty good to be honest, in terms of the form riders of last season making it in. You'd want Emil in for Harris obviously. Otherwise Vaculik maybe ahead of Jonsson? There's no rider on the qualifiers that stands out as being missed in the series, though I'd have loved to see Lambert qualify.

So we finally have the track sorted, from all accounts it is excellent, and this is your response?C u next time.

Kurtz only qualified because lambert missed out due to ef. Kurtz was also gifted a point due to kk crashing, otherwise would have finished on 8 like cook. Calling this a weak field is harsh when it is the strongest of the 4th quarter finals. Kurtz will go on to be a better rider than cook, but at the current time I would much rather have cook in my team than Kurtz.

Must be a chance I would say. Though where are the semis? Guess more likely to be a local rider

Lambert very unlucky, plenty of time on his side as you say sid. Would rather see him get a semi final wildcard than Harris. Cook unlucky to finish behind Kurtz tbf, Kurtz gained a point when kk fell I believe. And cook then fell in one heat. A point there, and the point masters gained due to Lamberts ef, could easily have had both brits through.

Tnt. Have you just ignored the last 20 posts about the discount!?!

Don't think you can really accuse lambert of only focusing on Britain? Cook has clearly tried to get polish speedway. And garritty arguably not good enough to get a spot in Sweden or Poland. Tnt you also left huckenbeck and lahti off the list of qualifiers.

Track looks good. And those riders looked a hell of a lot better than the standard I recall from the British league juniors back in the 80s.

Toni kAsper . Steve finch. Carter and knudsen possibly in the category of Lee and morans, riders who didn't fulfill the potential shown at wembley 81 though for quite different reasons. Tommy Jansson and Tony Briggs for different reasons again. Saw quite a bit of scars brick when he rode for aces in 85,tbh never thought he was as good even as someone like Kenny Mckinna.He was a load better than mark crang though, or the aces juniors of that era except for declan Eccles, who maybe falls into this category. Eccles made a young Andy Smith or garritty look like a model of composure!

Sounds like lambert was very unlucky to go out, and a fall cost Cook a possible spot. The bits seemed to have by far the hardest qualifiers, can't see it impacting on their spots for next year.

A rider averaging 5.5 is not a 4/5 point rider, he's a 5/6 point rider. 90% of the league averaged between 5-7 last season. The fact is no one "needs" riders like mpt in this format, when you could get much better riders on materially the same average.

Kelly Moran. Carl blackbird. Neil evitts. Steve Baker.

Dudek 50 more Janowski 50 more Pawlicki 50 more Nki 20 more Woffy 10 more Harris 10 more Killer 20 less

Utter waste of time is right. You had a go at another poster for getting facts wrOng, yet still haven't acknowledged that it was your facts that were wrong. It's OK, apology accepted.

he managed 3 away Sid, which is in all honesty a couple more than i imagined he would, so at home it's not pushing it too much to say he may have picked up a couple of "surprise" points - because on paper I agree you could expect him to score zero.

surely the sport ending up amateur isn't a plan to take to improve speedway, it is what will happen if the sport totally falls over. How many people attend NL meetings - 100? at say 10 quid a pop? How many speedway tracks could stay open on a grand of revenue per meeting, even if all the riders ride for free? the plan should surely be to improve the product, not weaken it. It needs money spending on marketing and making meetings a full hour and a half of entertainment, not costs cutting even more. I've been to two speedway events in NZ this summer. The first was "midget cars" at Western springs. A good stadium, about 4-5 hours of entertainment, professionally presented, good atmosphere, a crowd of maybe 4000 people, it is thriving. I also went to see the Auckland vs Canterbuty speedway at Rosebank Rd, crowd maybe 100, commentator enthusiastic but incredibly amateur, interminable delays between heats, run out of programmes at the gate... The kids enjoyed the actual speedway racing more. But in term,s of what they would like to go back to watch, Western Springs was the unanimous choice, because of all the other factors. It's the former model speedway should aim to emulate, not the latter,

i make it 6 riders in inital 1-5s with an average under 5. R Worrall - actually a decent option, and Aces built close to the points limit. Woryna - assessed on a 4, a terrible signing considering Bees had enough points to bring in a 7+ rider Swiderski - decent signing on a 3.87, will average well above 5 as a 2nd string, and lakside only had around 4.5 pts to play with Klindt - terrible signing considering Leicester had 7.5 points to play with for this spot Tungate - should improve on his 4.5, Swindon ended 2 points below the limit sedgeman - see tungate So really, i would say only Aces and Lakeside had a "need" to sign a sub 5 point rider,( and you could argue at Swindon it made sense to sign one of Tungate/Sedgeman). I would add also that all those riders should average above 5 as second strings, and I would consider all better than MPT (who I would consider a genuine 4-5 point 2nd string). Neither Poole nor Wolves, the early season form teams, have a sub 5 point rider in their starting line up. Or put it another way - if you can sign Bjerre on a 1 pt higher average than MPT, who is going to give you the better points return vs starting average?

Of course we want good racing. And as the majority who post on here are the "die hards" probably the number one concern of people on here. But, in terms of things which attract a good size crowds, it's well below things like marketing, atmosphere and a successful team. My point is that those argue that all that is needed to fix speedways problems is to ensure good racing are incorrect - that good racing on its own wont bring crowds back.