SilverLens

A lightweight’s tale - some random thoughts, sorry if I ramble About 10-12 years ago, casting around for a bit of sport to entertain myself and the lad (c12-14 years old) on a weekend in the summer, I ended up looking up speedway and, lo and behold, up popped Rye House about 30 minutes from where we live. As a former Wembley Lions and White City Rebels fan from my youth, I thought great! Lacks the glamour but lets give it a go…. It was a great evening’s entertainment… affordable, good fish and chips, nice bar, lovely bank overlooking bends 1 and 2. So we became ‘regular occasional’ spectators, a few meetings every summer plus a regular trip to Cardiff etc. Premier and National League made for a good show, even if the wait for the County ambulance did become an all too regular occurrence. Seeing the brilliantly talented Woffinden come through made for brilliant entertainment at times, seeing the team of British or nearly all British diners was a plus. Even then though, I used to wonder how the sport kept going. No attendance figures were/are ever published anywhere it seemed to me, and the numbers I saw rarely seemed to tally with the figures banded around. So how they can afford to run ‘Elite’ riders I can’t imagine - I always assumed TV/sponsorship was propping it up. Rye’s social media presence is rubbish, twitter’s an absolute joke. The website used to be pathetic, marginally better now but even so it’s poor and no real attempt to engage supporters. In over 10 years, I never saw one advert for them in the local press over my way - should have been hammering the local press, stations on their line into London etc, but it always felt like they never bothered. Did they ever think to get a rider kitted out with a bike to local schools for a bit of PR, engage the kids etc? And now: the bar’s gone… introduction of air fences ruined many sight lines… toilets almost as bad as Leyton Orient in the late 70s… Giant moles sorry Moto X course in the middle actually ruin the low level sight lines. Actually the car park could have been utilised for Moto X and saved a lot of development costs? And they move to Wednesday nights… not their fault but for a London-centric track, really bad news. Perhaps OK if you’re a local but if you’re commuting on a different train line and you’ve got to get home before driving round, hard work. Or travel out to RH, back into London afterwards and out again on a different line. Nah. I would do ridiculous trips for the sport that is my life long obsession, as Shadders knows, but to do it for a sport that I just enjoy, for maybe 15 minutes of racing… Sounds like a massive moan, sorry, but I’m gutted if this is the end for Rye House. IMO one huge problem speedway faces is getting in volumes of ‘floating voters’ like myself. There are a wealth of options available for people to spend their time and money on these days, I’m not convinced (at least from my RH experience) that enough is done to publicise the sport or to get the youngsters in. Bear in mind many cash-strapped parents will find it easier to take the kids to speedway a few times than say 1 Premier League match. FWIW I agree with the idea that an affordable second tier team is better than unaffordable ‘elite’ speedway - you grow to love your regular riders as long as they put in the effort, as with any sport. Don’t get me wrong, the last meeting I attended was a great battle with Kings Lynn, Lambert looked really classy and it was a pleasure to watch. Speedway needs to find a way of hooking a new generation of supporters, otherwise the tracks will just continue to disappear. I came back after 30 years basically because it was fun in my teens, just think how few youngsters have been nowadays. On a positive note, rugby union at club level was an unheralded sport played by amateurs 30 years ago, now it has become professional and teams are thriving around the country so perhaps it can be done; of course it may require investment that is impossible to find to make the leap but I will be keeping my fingers crossed.

Would anyone who went like to comment on the sight lines, given recent discussions on the new 'molehills' in the centre green? Thanks