E I Addio

Another one of your dreams. In Phil Space's article in the Bournemouth Gazette he thanks Lakeside for their assistance and says they did to get another club to take the fixture but nobody would. When interviewed on Dartford Bridge Radio Ford said " There is no doubt that Jon Cook is the best, and fairest promoter in the country and would accommodate us if he possibly could" Of course they are not weakened. At least Bradley didn't commit to EL racing then say "Sorry guys I've got a better job in Denmark." You can't weaken a side by replacing a rider who was never going to be there anyway. Half a lap behind ? Oh ye of little faith ! You overlook Muddlo's renowned ability to take a novice and turn him into a world beater (unless you are suggesting Starman was talking rubbish when he made that claim) . A couple of races for Muddlo to work his magic and I am sure Carl Wilkinson and Richard Hall will be whacking the points in like nobody's business.

Ford should be heavily fined for fielding an under strength team. His license should be suspended for the rest of the season and David Hemsley appointed as caretaker promoter.

You don't have the ability to think for yourself then ? How many poor meetings have you actually seen for yourself at Lakeside this year?

Hope it doesn't hit the gate too hard. Poole are usually one of the clubs that pull in a pretty decent crowd.

Ed's highest score since joining Lakeside and I think the first time he has had the confidence to go out in heat 15 as a Hammer/, so lets hope he has turned the corner and is on the way back to the level he was at 5 or 6 years ago. I am pretty also that this is the first time Rich Lawson has failed to score in a Hammers race jacket. Most unusual for him.

Yep, there was a slight possibility of an away point so they are going in without their top two, just to be on the safe side.

Briggo at West Ham was stunning. Our memories are not totally reliable, I admit, but from memory I can't remember anyone in the whole of motorcycle sport, except Mike Hailwood, who was so much better than the opposition as Briggo was at Custom House. According to my memory Anders Michanek was pretty stunning when he visited Hackney.

I basically agree with that but it's the T/R as usual,that threw a spanner in the works. At the time we had the 3,2 etc arrangement we also had provision for two T/R,s all or most of the way through. That meant that team with a strong top two but a weak tail could gain an extra six points by way of T/R's which made it seem like the home team won on the track and lost on the rule book. I know all the arguments on the maths but the fact remains that a T/R is still perceived by many as an unfair advantage, it's more trouble than it's worth.Get rid of the T/R and go back to the old style 3,2,1,0 scoring system and you have, in my view at least a system as good as you can realistically get. I wouldn't object to one T/S ride per meeting but realistically they are never coming back (especially not under the present EL format) so shouldn't really feature in the discussion

Wasn't the old style world final run over two legs once as I recall. Not a success and never repeated. As you say , the inherent weakness in the idea, apart from missing riders is that the probability of the winner being known early. This sort of event depends on the tension of getting it right on the night. The first leg wouldn't mean much because there won't be a result , and after the second leg there would be up perhaps 10 riders who no longer gave a chance of winning. You only have to look at the number of riders who pull out of the ELRC these days.

Adam Shields career was ended basically by injury, but it's more complicated with Davey. Davey has his critics but I can't really fault him in his years for Lakeside, and with hindsight his first two years there may prove to be the Indian Summer of his career , and indeed arguably his best ever two years. His third year with the Hammers was dragged down by injury, personal problems, and having to ride out of position as first heatleader when at best he was only really a second heatleader as Steve says. He was also a very good captain, applying himself to the job as much at Lakeside as he did at Poole. If the BSPA are serious about using the PL as a development league for young up and coming riders then Davey has a hell of a lot to offer and still has a few years left in him to be a valuable captain to any PL club. I, for one, hope we have not seen the last of him in British Speedwáy.

I know loads of non-Speedwáy fans who are becoming interested in the sport and have just joined the forum, and they all said they thought the poster was talking about Cradley in Herefordshire, and they all,pm'd me and asked me thank you for that clafication, otherwise they would have been driving all over a Herefordshire looking for a Speedwáy stadium that wasn't there . Wow ! What a sight that would have been. Good job we some speedway journalists on the forum, what?

The first point I would make is that fairness and consistency are not necessarily the same thing. Because on person gets an unduly lenient punishment for something it doesn't mean everyone else should get away with it. I think we can discount Len Silvers behaviour in the past because times change, and no doubt Johnny Hoskins may (and probably did ) something similar to whip up the crowd but times move on. I can't remember any of the present crop of EL promoters doing anything similar, apart from the Keith Chapman incident I mentioned previously. To the best of my knowledge Chapman suffered no disciplinary penalty for his behaviour. I stand to be corrected if someone else knows differently but if my understanding is correct then I agree that it is unacceptable that someone in a management position should be allowed to behave that way without reprimand, but that doesn't make the Hemsley case wrong, it makes the Chapman case wrong. The sport is riddled with inconsistencies but two wrongs don't make a right. It's ridiculously inconsistent that Craig Cook should be allowed to ride in the PL but Lewis Bridger on a much lower average isn't. That doesn't make the Craig Cook decision wrong it makes the Bridger decision wrong. Now, as far as Hemsley is concerned, in any sport any attempt to intimidate the referee or umpire should be severely dealt with otherwise you are on the road to chaos. If Hemsly was guilty then it's right that he got a fine that will hurt, so he doesn't repeat the behaviour. The fact that someone else got away with it is an indictment of the sport but it doesn't excuse Hemsley. If as you say self interest is at the root of Hemslys fine that is a serious claim and needs a bit of substance to support it. Personally I think Hemsleys fine is a bit steep but if guilty it still needs to be substantial. I am more surprised that people on here are so concerned about Hemsley and hardly give a peep when others seem to get away with similar behaviour. That is where the real wrong really lies.

You will never know the answer to that one, because they, have never done it, never come close to doing it and frankly there is no reason to belive they are ever likely to do it. The same goes I think for all the current EL promoters as far as I can recall, with one exception, who three years ago went to the referees box with his team manager, against the rules, to remonstrate with the referees decision to exclude a particular rider. The action was all the more distasteful because it was done while another rider was lying seriously injured on the track. That exception was .....er....the current BSPA chairman. That's to imply I have an option about Hemsley though. No excuse for that sort of behaviour by promoters in any sport. Incidentally, assuming the fracas was in some way connected with the referee inadvertently turning the lights off, it is just worth mentioning that the same thing happened at Lakeside about 3-4 years ago when the guy who did the music inadvertently turned the lights off. There were no threats or anything else. They just sent out for an electrician (for some technical reason these floodlights can't just be turned on) . Mistakes happen. Threatening people doesn't put them right.

Someone said on post 17 that Glasgow are losing substantial sums of money. The new promotion there have come in and spent a fortune on the club , including buying riders like there is no tomorrow yet they are still losing a lot of money. That tells you all you need to know about the PL model.

Except JD had already been out for a month with visible injury. He had his side ripped open by Bjarnes footrest and a punctured lung. He didn't miss just the one match for tactical reasons. Lakeside had already signed Tomas Jedrzak to replace him.

Joe Screen, Pawlicki , and Dakota North all produced doctors certificates when they missed meetings for Poole but nobody believed them. Tungate may or may not have had a genuine injury, time will tell, but let's not kid ourselves that medical certificates mean a thing in Speedwáy. They can be produced at the drop of a hat as we all know.

Sorry , my mistake. I don't know where I got the maximum idea from. However, I checked the Updates site and according to that he was leading his third race when his bike packed up on the last bend, and in his fourth ride he was last in what seems to have been an ftg race but came close to snatching third. So the 4 points he scored would have been 7 without the e.f. and possibly 8. It's very difficult to say if he was fit or not. 7/8 points is not a bad score for a rider with an alleged shoulder injury. The acid test will be how soon he rides again, but it doesn't look totally convincing at the moment. Pretty bad though that we have Swindon fans actually posting on here that they don't care if Roscoe did pull a dodgy stunt, so even if Tungate was above board there are Robins fans that approve of cheating and can be put in the Matt Ford/Muddlo/Starman category.

T I was critical of Joe Screen missing a Poole meeting "injured " and then scoring an 18 point maximum in Denmark the next night, and I was critical of the Dak North situation but if those facts are true i.e. Rosco tweets Tungate out for two weeks then the following night he gets a maximum for Somerset then TBF there do seem to be parallels between the three cases. Not going overboard about it yet but it does hum a bit and an explanation would be useful, otherwise conclusions will be drawn. Can anyone post a copy of Rosco's tweet ?

Judging by the posts on here I woukd say the opposite is true. The more knowledgeable fans are, the more balanced they are in their posts and would probably be good to explain things to a newbie but some just seem to want to criticise without bothering to learn about the sport. We have some posters, notably Aces 51, Skidder 1, and several others who have been around the sport for many years , taken in a lot of knowledge, and generally post with good insight, which would be good conveyed to a newcomer. At the other end of the scale there are a number that have been around the sport for years and chosen to learn or understand next to nothing about engines, track prep, rules , how averages work etc, etc. These are the ones whose posts are invariably sniping, sneering , moaning, and generally experts in their own eyes. These are the ones who complain riders are not trying when there is often some mechanical issue, or think racing can be improved just by putting a bit of dirt on the track. Imagine a newcomer standing next to one of these know-nothing's and instead of getting a balanced description get a constant dirge of ,"Tracks rubbish, rule books rubbish, he's not trying,sports a joke,T/R ride igives an 8 point advantage, our tracks better than their track, " etc,etc, they'd never be back.

I suppose you have to say if the opposite of boring is exciting then we can't call riders exciting either, because if we start describing some as exciting what does that say about the rest ? Boring doesn't mean no good. Some great riders have won most of their race from the gate, they are no less great for that, but they don't get pulses racing as much as those like Mark Loram who do it from the back. The sport needs all sorts of riders, but some, by definition are more exciting than the rest.

Gordon Pairmans post didn't show he failed to understand the issue, he simply explained why the list was compiled the way if was. It's not a question of who Jon Cooks comments were aimed at. They were aimed at two members of of the BSPA who, we are told voted the list through unanimously then seem to have claimed they didn't fully know what it was about. Coupled with the fact that we are now told by Muddlo and Rosco that the EDR situation was not properly thought through this year it really makes one wonder exactly what is going on at the AGM's if they are voting things through without understanding them. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the vast majority of contributors to the forum are content to stick with the view that Cooks comments were aimed at them instead of two other promoters and thus miss the seriousness of the situation.

Lakeside will struggle on this one with R/R for Ed Kennett. His rides can only be taken by Lawson, Kerr,( who is basically a reserve anyway) and the two reserves. Normally Bridger would be needed to cover rides for Kerr and Mear but if he is R/R for Kennett and takes another Kennett ride as reserve replacement, he is going to run out of rides to cover Kerr and Mear. What with it being a brand new track for Lakeside, and a long tail, can only see a big win for the Aces

Jon Cook wasn't calling the fans thick or biased or both. If you read Gordon Pairmans post on the subject on this forum those comments appear to be aimed at two BSPA members. He wasn't defending a list that showed the BSPA had failed tomgraspmthe nature of the problem he was talking about a list in which it seems a couple of BSPA members appear not to have understood how the decision was arrived at. It's all explained in Gordon Pairmans post and subsequent reports in Speedwáy Star.

Plenty of people said they liked it. Plenty of others claim they don't like the track but it makes one wonder why they sit and watch it if they don't like it. They must have pretty dull lives away from the telly if they have nothing better to do, or else they must just look for something to moan about. You and try artist formally known as Screamer are on here every week bitching about how awful it is but you still keep watching it. Bizarre.

" I love this track, it's great" ----Lewis Bridger quoted today on the Lakeside website.