waiheke1

yes, it really is great news that premier league football now gets more viewers than previous year elite speedway fixtures?

Because clearly a successful business model is to look at what was successful 30 years ago, and try to replicate it no?. Speedway's issue is precisely that it is too much like 1985, not too different. and let's face it in 1985 there were lots of complaints about the state of speedway: Falling attendances, rising costs, too many mediocre foreigners, not enough young Brits coming through, poor weather, badly prepared tracks, increasing rivals for the entertainment pound etc. Any of those sound familiar? England had just one rider in the world final, their best riders were either injured, banned or refusing to race for England due to argument with the team manager. The British league had shrunk from 16 teams the previous season to 11 that season. Wembley , white city and Blackbird Rd had recently gone, the Shay was about to, Hyde Rds demise not far away. There has been a significant number of deaths on British tracks within the preceding few years. Of ocurse, there were no serious competitors to the BL, so the top riders (bar some of the yanks) all raced there - people can whinge about Sky, GPs or playoffs, but what really made the difference to the UK was when the Polish league started and riders could earn better money elsewhere. Speedway could learn a lot from cricket, darts, rugby, where succesful marketing and some alteration to the product managed to transform the sports into something attractive for modern audiences.

but in pre play offs, 90% of matches it didn't matter if a team won or lost, because a couple of months into the season you knew there were only 2 or 3 teams that could win the league. One thing I don't like is teams reshuffling teams just for the play offs, I think there should be a rule that a rider must have ridden "x" meetings for the team to be elegible (or a much earlier deadline for changes), unless called in as an injury replacement (with some strict enforcement around definition of injured riders e.g. not riding any other speedway apart from GPS).

subscribers, revenue and profits are up, what is it that is dropping? tbh I find it remarkable that their revenue and profits are going up in this day and age where people can access, albeit often illegally, most of the content free of charge via the net. Surely that shows they are a successful, and adaptive company? ad agency? sales? politics? Jehovahs witness? tbf, there are quite a few professions where the ability to spout crap is a pre-requisite!

isn't it actually more likely that their parents are married, and hyphenated surnames when they got married?

Rival competitions started up, offering more money, and therefore British clubs no longer had a monopoly on the top riders. At the same time, British clubs failed to react to the changing wants of consumers, and kept doing things the way that had been successful 20 years previously, rather than evolving. And tbh, it was never true that ALL of the top 20 riders rode in Britain. In the 60s there was Plechanov, in the 70s there was the odd Swede/Pole who didn't, in the 80s normally the odd Yank (plus Egon), But certainly MOST of the top 20 did.

updated list to and including 27 Sept: 1 TAI WOFFINDEN 11.76 2 Emil Sajfutdinow 10.56 3 GREG HANCOCK 10.38 4 Jarosław Hampel 9.89 5 NICKI PEDERSEN 9.80 6 Darcy Ward 8.82 7 BARTOSZ ZMARZLIK 8.79 8 MACIEJ JANOWSKI 8.73 9 PIOTR PAWLICKI 8.65 10 NIELS KRISTIAN IVERSEN 8.55 11 Janusz Kołodziej 8.46 12 Martin Vaculik 8.36 13 PETER KILDEMAND 8.24 14 ANTONIO LINDBACK 8.20 15 MATEJ ZAGAR 8.19 16 JASON DOYLE 7.89 17 Przemyslaw Pawlicki 7.72 18 Piotr Protasiewicz 7.59 19 CHRIS HOLDER 7.58 20 Grigoriy Laguta 7.54 No real surprises in the above list, and suggests that the assumed wild cards of Hampel, Kildermand and Lindback largely deserve their picks (along with Emil if he changes his mind). AJ and Freddie slot in at 21st and 22nd respectively as the next best Swedes. Dudek excluded due to having ridden less than 10 meetings, otherwise would slot in at 14th. Harris next best Brit at 32nd, with Cook 41st and Nicholls 43rd.

Sounds like a great meeting - brilliant fight back from the Aces. Still an outside chance away from home Really dissapointing night for the reserves, if we'd manage to match the visitors we'd be heading into the second leg likely 10-12 points to the good. A surprise they were so poor, expected if anything we would slightly outpoint the Pirates at reserve. "goggle gate" - can't see anything being done - "best case" would seem to be deduction of two points (based on previous, even if deducted the Aces won't be given these so just a two point swing not four), but tbh its happenned and i'm not too phased about it. No issue with Dakota North having been given the week off. I've been in situation of being on the other side of the world to sick loved ones, there's not a lot you can do, and I can understand his dad wanting him to stay in the UK for the final. Also no issue with him being out playing golf to try to take his mind off things. It's only because it's Poole that this has been raised as an issue, and admittedly that is their own fault based on their behaviour in the past. Amazed at Zagar's performance, given he was clearly unfit in the GP the other night - fine effort, and hopefully answers those who have accused him of not trying, and those who say the EL would be better off without GP riders. I said before the playoffs that I'd happily see Aces miss out and Poole win in exchange for good news on the Darcy front, if we lose hopefully we do hear some positive news there. (Ideally of course Aces win, and we get good new re Darcy).

betts, turner , hellsen isn't as good (IMHO) as Janowski, Holder, North or Zagar, Nicholls, Cook or Killer, Batch, Morris or Andrsen, Harris, Joonas or Puk, Bjerre, Schlein.

in an 18 team BL, to be a heat leader meant you needed to be in the top 60 riders in the world (top 54 in the BL, plus add at least 6 poles/swedes not racing in the UK). Use that criteria today (i.e. a HL is a rider in the top 60 in the world), and based on my statistical rankings of riders: Poole, Swindon and Coventry have 4 HL, BV and KL have 3, Wolves and Lakeside have 2 and Leicester have 1. So, each team has on average 3 riders of HL quality. There are also 7 riders in the EL I would rank in the top 20 in the world, so again on average nearly every team has a genuine "number 1."

oh come on. Surely you're not indicating there was anything amiss with Grigorij's "breakdown" en route to the world cup. It's simply the second most unfortunate case of engine trouble this year, behind Troy Batchelor's woes against the aces.

Threaten to punch him out next time he's at Swindon. That's a fool proof response to any situation.

I know batch isn't that popular at the moment, bur surely looking at averages he and killer would be the two riders you aim to retain. Add Doyle and Andersen you'd have an excellent top four, with a Summers type rider to round out the five.

Vaculik is much better than batch based on form over the last couple of seasons. Not sure g laguta is any more interested than Emil. Agree with your analysis, but think aj will get that fourth spot ahead of mjj.

Exactly. His name will be mentioned in discussions on "best rider not to win the world title" but not in discussions on the greatest rider of all time.

Tbh pretty much any company can recruit temp staff to cover for someone on leave, and if they are willing to pay market rate could hire someone far more qualified than the original employee. Very strange you would think otherwise.In most sports of course you couldn't do this. Strange analogy though

Why would aces management be annoyed? A fully fit aj is better than a 70% fit zagar. As an aces fan agree this stinks though. Riding in GPS I have no issue with. Riding a couple of heats in the golden helmet and then withdrawing fine also. But to ride the whole meeting and final and then be unfit!?! Hard to blame either aces or zagar, and realise would be hard to put in place water tight rules, but this does really make a mockery of things. That said Swindon can hardly take the moral high ground after the batch average lowering farce. Though again, hard to argue that wasn't the right thing for them to do.

Congrats ozrik Thanks r&r

Tai said no under the current fixture list. Didn't he indicate he would be interested if there was one race night? Really? So adding a gp rider to a team would nearly double that teams costs? I find that hard to believe.

Can it really not afford the top riders? The likes of woffy mjj pawlickis kk thj have all ridden here in the last couple of seasons, which when you add to the likes of puk zagar Holder kildermand aj Doyle janowski etc. is a decent portion of the world's best. Properly marketed and run the sport should surely be capable of doubling current attendances (arguably 3 or 4 times more) which would surely cover increased costs associated with better riders

Done

Can u make a laguta vaculik and Andersen all 600 now pls.

No. But there is a better spread of talent these days. And probably max one brit would have been given a wild card if you had a lot already qualified. I out more than half the field would have been bits given the aussies kiwis Swedes plus Olsen plech Autrey etc.

There were two rob homers. The one we are talking about it it's already been stated was born in 72 nd rode 89-92.

Any idea what crowd is needed to break even? Given that bill Buckley lost decent money on a 14k turn out in Auckland, surely they must be aiming to double that in Melbourne?