E I Addio

As I understand the position, averages will be calculated every 4 weeks to so a Tier 1 reserve won't be able to build up a huge CMA before being re-assessed so even if he went into the 1-5 he would likely only be there 4 weeks before coming down again. In the context of Lakeside it means that even if Lewis Kerr went into the 1-5 it would mean any one from Swiderski, Lawson , Kennett, Nilsson would be down at reserve and able to take 7 rides if necessary. We can't say for certain until the season gets going but my gut feeling is that it will work out alright.

Greg only went to Poole because he lost his job in Poland when his team went out of the play-offs in the last few weeks of the season. He went to Poole because they could afford him and we're trying to get into the play offs. A club struggling at the bottom of th table by the end of July are not going to make the play- offs and are unlikely to splash out on a rider like Greg. I don't know about Emily Sajfutinov but as I recall her brother Emil only did a few weeks and missed a few meetings anyway. Emil wants a big wage upfront and no club struggling are likely to be able to afford it. He is very unlikely indeed to be seen riding for a British club.

The reserves are still protected but the 1st Tier reserve (Lewis Kerr) can go into the 1-5 if his averages goes high enough. Rob Mear stays at reserve all season whatever his average. I doubt that we'll see Swidders at reserve. More likely he will put at least 2 points on his average, possibly even 3 points once he is dialled in.

Since some clubs are struggling to sign good enough riders that get them up to the team building limit of 40.5 how are they going to find riders that get them up to a higher limit ?

Easy. You go on the website, click on 2016 Hammers , and as if by magic, all present signings will appear. Couldn't be easier. The riding numbers like any other club are allocated just before the start of the season usually after Press and Practice, same as every other year.

Stevebrum, love him or loathe him, is at least a regular fan with a love of the sport. Like most other passionate supporters he talks with a mixture of sense and nonsense with a bias towards his own club. The sport is much better of with the stevebrums of this world than the armchair fans that offer advice but don't go as far as actually going through the turnstiles, for whatever reason.

.....and the information was posted on here at 8.10am . Strange coincidence that. Your post also said you didn't know which riders had been signed, but that information is on the website for those that look .

As Liam said you always have the joyful one to support you. Having a differing point of view is fair comment, but when you, like the joyful one say you haven't been to the track for ages, don't read the website, don't read the programme notes, then say you don't know what's going on, don't understand the points limit etc, well that's just a bit stupid. Some of the comments about the riders have been just plain naive.

The winner of the bingo will then be 'guest team manager' for the evening. It is anticipated that they'll do a better job than Neil Vatcher. Not difficult to work out who one of the constant carping complainers was on the old Lakeside forum that made it become tediously one -sided boring. Just to be clear, when V.O.R speaks of "we" and "none of us " he doesn't actually speak on behalf of anyone except himself even though he appears to think he does..

Friday tracks have riders going off to the SGP now. They just don't fix meetings on GP weekends. There is room in the calendar for that. The problem is not a tiny number of GP riders but the double uppers who have PL commitments with PL tracks.

I understand the guest problem but crowds are much smaller now than when Swindon changed their race night. You talk about a couple of seasons and people got their heads round it but on present crowd levels can most clubs afford to go under the breadline for a couple of seasons before picking up again ? Whichever way you play it their are problems, especially as with only 8 EL clubs we cannot afford a single one to drop down to PL or worse still close completely. The BSPA were meeting today so we should have some more info by their fans forum on Sunday, but don't expect a quick fix.

Unfortunately Sky say it needs to be a minimum of 8, so that knocks that one on the head.

And who are these PL clubs wanting to step up and why have they not applied to step up until now? One look at Birmingham or Leicester shows it's not an easy task stepping up, even more so for those clubs that will need to change their race nights.

Lakeside tried Wednesday race nights in 2008, and they abandoned the experiment because attendances plummeted, and that was in the days when we still had Adams, Crump etc. What reason is there (apart from pure guesswork ) to believe they would be any better on Wednesdays now? Coventry, Lakeside, and Belle Vue have Friday race nights for a reason. That's when the best crowds come.

I am not sure there will necessarily be many more foreign riders than are here already. Riders like Freddie Lindgren and Hans Andersen have an undoubted commitment to British Speedwáy but do we really want the likes of Jepsen Jensen, the Pawlickis or THJ back with their ( lack of ) commitment? Job sharing means the same outlay in bikes and fixed overheads for half the income. I can see some of them coming with bikes not in the same fettle as the ones they ride in Poland/Sweden and therefore not scoring at the same level, plus we have seen how some them don't need much if an excuse to go awol. The only real solution is to get more home based riders up to a decent heatleader level. Scott and Bomber won't be around forever and there are not many coming along to replace them at the moment. The situation is being addressed belatedly but it will be a few years yet before we have 3or 4 Craig Cooks filling heatleader slots. That really is the nub of the problem IMO.

If you have Monday and Thursday you still have riders flying in from Poland to ride Monday, back out to Sweden on Tuesday back over here on Thursday then off to Travel to GP, u21, GP qualifiers and whatever else on Friday, with no time to prepare for the big ones. Very few if any likely to bite that one, apart from those who want to be here anyway. If the reason for fixed race nights is simply to avoid d/u riders I can't see sufficient numbers of punters turning out on a Monday just to see their own second strings instead of guests. Admittedly the use of guests has to be addressed but the bottom line is the second strings are not really the ones that put numbers on the gate.

The first rider I actually saw riding an Eso. Great competitor . Very sad to hear of his passing.

Coupled with Fords past reputation for pulling stunts especially with Joe Screen in 2009. If it involved any other promoter I doubt if one would bat an eyelid but when Ford is involved we don't know what to believe.

No, just an old one I dug out from the archives, not to be taken too seriously. (Sorry, can't get the smiley faces to work on my I-pad)

Has she fallen over then ?

Nobody has said the EL wants to strip the PL of their race nights. Nobody has said you can solve everything by moving to Thursday's and Friday's . Nobody has said the riders will be queuing up to return. So after a short burst of sense from Aces 51 the forum has returned to its usual drivel. It has been stated that we should hear more about the squad system and how it works next week. The squad system is not the be-all and end-all that solves all the problems but it is quite possibly an important factor in improving the situation. Surely it makes sense to see what information comes out next week before lurching into a tirade about the EL-v-PL issue, or making any other pre-judgments.

Well done Aces 51 in injecting a bit of common sense, logic and balance into the discussion. Unfortunately it will go over the heads of most.

Based on ouch's post about needing two consecutive race nights rather than one , and probably half the GP riders especially the Poles have never shown much interest in coming here at the best of times. Nobody is disputing the fact that the most important thing is to get riders to miss less meetings, although all the available info at the moment suggests they will try to do it by some kind of squad system and race nights fixed at Thurs/ Fri but we will probably know more by the end of next week.

Spot on with your first two sentences but I doubt whether you would see many GP riders coming, apart from those that are here anyway. You might get enough to get Kings Lynn and Leicester up to a reasonably competitive level which is something I suppose but I would be surprised if you would get enough to make any significant difference to the overall level of competition. Even non GP riders of the level of Peter Ljung, Jonas Davidsson and Timo Lahti for example are not interested, and certainly not Miedzinski. Plenty of them are interested for a bit of extra cash before the Polish season starts, and if their Polish clubs go out of the play-offs but very few want to commit to a whole season apart from those that are already here.

So is having a couple of millionaires in your promotional team, especially when one of them brings his own assets.