E I Addio

That seems to be the main difficulty in working out a punishment that hurts the promotion but doesn't hurt the fans. If the match is re-staged with a full squad the BV promotion have achieved what they set out to do, if the match is awarded to Poole its the genuine BV fans that suffer.

The Speedway Regulations also includes this duty on a promoter:- "take all necessary steps to safeguard, at all times, the interests and welfare of all Riders, Officials and Spectators during a Meeting, being responsible to maintain good order throughout the Stadium and its environs and in the event of a serious disturbance to notify the SCB immediately of plans to avoid a repeat". So the responsibility to maintain the stadium and not to have burst water mains of flood the track by other means still rests on the promotion. So as far as us cretins are concerned it looks like BV are banged to rights.

That's interesting. Both the original statement and the apology seems to have been taken down . Very strange. Is this because of legal advice? It's usually when lawyers get involved that people are told not to make any statements prior to an inquiry of some kind. But BV have never claimed that the match was postponed because half the team wouldn't be riding. That is the whole point. It is the fact that they gave what now seems to be a false reason for postponing the match and that is what makes it a serious matter.

I see that in Speedway Star Neil Middleditch has pitched in and probably comes as close as he can to calling Belle Vue a bunch of liars without actually using the word. He says all he got was a text saying its off with no explanation, then he talks about BV already having R/R for Mroccza and adds "something doesn't smell right". His comments seem pretty strong stuff to me. The SS article also says the SCB have "substantial " photographic evidence so clearly they have much more than the few pictures we have seen on here. Not looking at all good for Gordon and Morton.

No doubt Matt Ford will be pushing for a tough sanction. He can't stand cheats

A basic principle of good business is (or at least should be) that the customer is always right. Thus if your train when is cancelled you are depending on it is of no importance why it was cancelled, the rail company gets a fine from the Rail Regulator, end of. If you go to Tesco's and they are out of bread the customer is not concerned why there is no bread he just goes off to Sainsbury's or Asda and gives then his custom. In the context of BV they have advertised a speedway meeting that was cancelled for an illegitimate reason and the customer should not have to suffer the consequences. Either they waive their right of league points and have a challenge match with guests at reduced admission, or they get use PL riders to fill the gaps again at reduced admission or work out something for the fans (what they do is their problem) but the cardinal sin in any business is to fail to provide the product at the appointed time, and action has to be taken to make sure matches are not cancelled on a whim less than 4 hours before the advertised start time in future.

But then what happens if before the re-arranged date the visitors star rider or second heatleader gets hurt? Is it postponed again ? What if it is two days before the play-off cut off date ? What if in the meantime one or other of the sides re-declare with a stronger line -up ? What about the season ticket holders who can't make the re-arranged fixture ? Once you go down the road of postponing meetings at short notice for anything other than totally unavoidable reasons i.e. rain-offs it becomes fraught with all kinds of problems. When I started my last job which involved travelling around London and Home Counties I was told nobody will be interested in the reasons why you can't get somewhere on time. Absolutely correct. The riders should be told the same thing. They are paid to entertain the public and it should be their responsibility to get somewhere on time. If there are travel problems then tough. A heavy fine will concentrate the mind .

They officially have no money anyway. According to the last set of accounts filed by Belle Vue Speedway in November 2011 they has £0 cash at bank, liabilities of £486,271, a net worth of -£447,167, and assets worth £6296. However having postponed the meeting for whatever reason they will still now have to pay for Poole's flights etc, for the re-arranged fixture, that would be the case even if it was a rain-off. The cost of the cancellation and re-arranging the fixture will probably set BV back about £10,000 which is pretty small beer in the context of the season and a fair chunk of that can be made up in gate money if they continue in good form and look in the frame for the play-offs, so in the grand scheme of things it hasn't really cost them a lot of money, that is why any SCB fine needs to be heavy and include a points deduction. Otherwise it will give the green light to others.

Apart from any investigation by the SCB, if there really was a burst water main and if it was the cause of the meeting being cancelled then the landlords would be in breach of their contractual obligation and no doubt would not only not collect rent for the meeting but would presumably be liable to pay BV promotion for loss of income (gate money) and other expenses. No promoter is going to write off the cancellation costs of a meeting if it was due to a stadium defect. One of the telling features is the lack of apology or expression of regret to the fans that have been let down. From the BV website:- Tonight's Elite League match against Poole was postponed due to a leaking water main and water pipe under the track. " There is surface water on the back straight but a substantial area of the base is saturated. "In consideration of rider safety it was a club decision to postpone the meeting because it would have been dangerous. A new date has not yet been arranged." Not a word of apology to the fans, not an expression of regret to those inconvenienced, no mention of "due to circumstances beyond our control.

Chris Holder on twitter:- Chris Holder ‏@Chris_Holder23 1h So magic miss flight, we get fined, race and lose... Belle vue boys miss flight cancel meeting... Okkkkay Says it all really. Does anyone really believe B.V's pathetic excuse ? Or to put it another way. would the meeting have been cancelled it had been Chris and Darcy that missed their flights instead of Zagar and Zorro ?

Maybe he is going to accuse Eastbourne of cheating ?

I don't disagree, (in fact Worrall will already have a higher average on the next G/S) with that but everybody loves a fighter and Richard has come into the side at short notice and very much as the underdog and showed great spirit. He is never going to be World Champion and has his limitations but if he holds his end up and increases his average by even a small amount everyone will be pleased.

He had Dave Watt in is corner last night, giving encouragement and advice. Watts presence makes a big difference. That's why Justin Sedgemen started riding pretty well in the EL last year despite being sacked by Redcar. Watt and Hans Andersen are by far the best captains in the EL (except when Davey gets an occasional downer).

:lol:

The Lakeside website has just announced new associate sponsors Skidmarques, tyre and alignment specialists in addition to new main sponsors Vortex, announced a couple of weeks ago. Before that Ruggles and Jeffrey were announced as community partners and Hagon shocks as training partners so despite the economy and question mark over Sky the club has been fortunate on the sponsorship front. I heard that Skidmarques came as guest at the Wolves meeting last year and between them donated a tidy sum to the Lee Richardson fund and were so impressed with PK's 18-point maximum that night they apparently donated about £2000 worth of tyres for his car (that must be some car!). Encouraging news for Lakeside fans after a disappointing week.

The highlighted part is really the nub of this particular part of the discussion. Talent is one thing, mental strength is something quite different. A rider might have the natural flair to perform well on certain occasions when things go well but converting that into winning a world title with all its various difficulties along the way is something that few can do.

Sorry if you find it annoying if I use English in its every day sense, but if we take your use of the expression "at the time" in the way you now say it was intended then presumably we could also say that when Gary Havelock won the World Title it was unprecedented at the time and when Bomber won the British GP that was also unprecedented at the time. Is that correct ? If so, then I am sorry if I am being obtuse but I am not sure how discussion of John Louis achievements at the time take the discussion any further forward. If riders achievements are to be judged "at the time" then surely that supports my point the one cannot compare riders of different era's and we just have appreciate great riders for what they are without comparing one generation with another. Please try to clarify to us thicko's without getting annoyed. It is, after all only a discussion.

Not quite. His first WF was a5th then 4th then 3rd. Unprecedented ? Depends how you look at it. I would suggest Tommy Price 13th then 1st and Peter Craven 15th then 1st set the standard by reason of taking the top prize at the second attempt. Of course, if you extend "English" to become "British " then we get to include Freddie Williams, winner at his first attempt followed by 7th, second and 1st again. The more you juggle it the more you are stuck with the fact that you cannot compare era's. Just accept great riders for what they were.

That is a good point and it ties in with an earlier post (which I think also came from Bwitcher) that we tend to remember a riders best performances and forget the less impressive. In the year Mort won the inter-continental final had just about scraped through the British Final in 8th place, then went on to a good win in the inter-continental, but when the real deal came along, the World final, he was back in 9th and behind 7 of the riders he had beaten in the Inter-continental. Again, this is not an attack on Mort but it demonstrates that when the dust settles we remember mainly the high spots and that distorts our perception over the years. In the same way, when Harris becomes a respected retired rider he will be dining out on his GP win rather than the disappointments of later years.

It still all if's and buts. The point being made, building on SCB's very good post about juggling with facts and figures is that cam argue until you are blue in the face but you cannot really compare era's. FWIW, Mort would come very high up on my assessment of riders but I can't put forward a convincing argument to back it up. Its just a personal impression, that's the whole point. Was Mort better than Michael Lee or Bruce Penhall ? Obviously not. Were Penhall and Lee better than Holder or Gollob? Not many people would say one way or the other. So Morton was around 6-10 places behind the World Champions of his day and Harris was around 6-10 places behind the top riders of his day. That's about as much as we can say without getting involved in impressions and unreliable memory. Let's leave it at that.

We can take that a stage further. Bomber was good enough to beat the worlds best in a single meeting, which Morton never was, so if the 2007 British GP had been an old style World Final (which at Cardiff it might well have been) Bomber would have a World Title to his name. It was by any standards a great win and he was best on the night. So if that had happened would we now be comparing Bomber with single winners like Michanek, Collins, Lee, and Ermolenko or would we be comparing him to likes of Szczakiel and Muller, who on paper at least were good enough to win a World title but are regarded as lesser men than the others. Was Bomber better than Kenny Carter ? Can you trust the record books ?

This is the point Bwitcher is trying to get across. Your judgement and percption is clouded simply because of the impression riders made on you at a certain point in your life. Take Jack Young, for example. The record books tell us he came from the second division to win the World Championship,then in his second season in the first division he scored 19 maximums in 38 league matches and went on to become the first rider to win back-to-back world titles in an era which we are told consisted of some truly great riders. Can you say that he was a better or worse rider than Mauger ? No because you didn't see him and therefore can add nothing to what the history books say. When I was first going to speedway there were plenty of old timers telling me that the riders of the 70's were not a patch on those of the early 1950'2 Like Aub Lawson, Split Waterman and Bill, Kitchen. Who am I to argue with them if they saw them and I didn't ? The point is that Mauger and his contemporaries were products of their generation. It is futile to compare them with those who went before or came afterwards.

That's not what he is saying at all, if you read what his posts actually say instead of interpreting them to suit your argument. Bruiser McHugh's post was spot on. Bwitcher is simply putting forward a logical argument based primarily on figures and facts rather than memory. Putting "get real" in capitals and adding a smiley face does not make your mis-quote of his argument correct. Every good rider is a product of his generation, you cannot analyse it any further than that. The riders we see when we are young are always the best. Tomasz Gollob may have been hopeless if he was born in the generation of leg-trailers on a long -stroke J.A.P.'s just as Jack Parker may well have struggled with the technicalities of modern machinery.

Perhaps this explains why the website is suddenly saying how happy the club is about having early season Sky broadcasts from Lakeside now there is a new major sponsor to have TV exposure, when in the recent past Sky has always been a bit of a pain because of the way it hits attendances on a Monday. Anyway, great news for the club especially as Ruggles and Jeffery have just been announced as Community Partners working with the club in schools etc. I wonder whether this latest sponsorship is an encouraging sign that the Sky contract will continue next year. Anyone putting a lot of money into a club on a two year deal would need to be reasonably confident of continuing T.V exposure. I think also, that coming on top of Swindon's announcement of a new major sponsor it is good news for the whole sport that commercial sponsors. can still be found in these tough economic times.. Maybe this so-called "joke sport" has a bit more credibility in the wider commercial world than some of the BSF doom and gloom merchants would have us believe. Lets all hope Wolves can follow suit and get a new major sponsor sorted.

You are not the only one. I think a lot of us feel the same way. A tremendous sense of loss felt by a lot of speedway fans.