E I Addio

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.

I don't see how you can set the points limit much below 40. If you set it at say 37, the combined average will go up to around 42-ish then what do you do the following year with riders on falsely increased averages ? if you set the points limit back to 37 or 38 it means getting even weaker riders in to make the points limit.

Ok , its confession time. I only started the thread to get a few bites. Just goes to show that you only need to cobble any old conspiracy theory together, then sprinkle the magic words Cook, Ford and BSPA , then the old red mist comes up and it all kicks off. Gave me a chuckle anyway. Sorry guys I won't do it again (well, not for a few months anyway)

Back in October, after the AGM we learned that there was to be a heatleader list but no details were given of who was on it or how riders were selected. We subsequently had a full interview with the new BSPA chairman Buster Chapman telling us how he was going to put British Speedwáy back on the map but all he said about the heatleader list was, well, not much. Now normally it's the chairmanship job, or at least a senior executive to explain such things but in the event Jon Cook, who is not even on the MC these days was wheeled out to give an interview to SS, and still not a word from the Chairman. Then when the Lakeside team is named we suddenly discover there is to be some sort of squad system, but no details are given, still no statement from from the BSPA and in particular not a word from the chairman, who by all accounts is not even keeping his own fans informed about his own team building. Now in this weeks SS we find Jon Cook is wheeled out again to explain where we are with the squad system. Alright, the full details are not yet finalised but at least we have an idea what's going on, but once again why did this information about a pretty radical change to team building not come from the Chairman? Now we come to the interesting part. Despite all we heard from the Chairman about all he is going to do for Speedwáy we now discover that the squad system is the brainchild of.....you've guessed it Matt Ford. Is it just me or is there a feeling of deja vu about all this , a proposal by Matt Ford being adopted with very little input or comment from the Chairman . Or, to put it another way round, who actually is in charge at the BSPA ?

Neil made some tactical mistakes, as most TM's do, and is entitled to be criticised for them. However that was one of the things that got blown out of all proportion by the same few who chose not to understand how the fast track system works, chose not to understand how team building is constrained by the points limit, and just dumped all their comments at Neil's feet in a personal manner, even though some of them don't even attend the meetings. Jon Cook has said several times in the programme that he takes responsibility for the teams failings, but do you know what ? Not one of these chronic complainers has had the balls to come to a fans forum and put any of this to Cook face to face. I

A point already made by Macca 56 a full day before you picked it up, and to which I replied "Yes, fair enough, and I have no problems with your point on the word "most"..........,," So his point was taken on board. Macca 56 then "liked" the post. So the point was clarified between myself and Macca 56 and I don't think anyone with a reasonable command of Enlish would interpret the exchange in any other way. Goodness knows why you found necessary to repeat something that had already been resolved. I wonder what your problem is sometimes.

The notice on the old fans forum site concludes by saying " we look forward to you joining us on Facebook and Twitter if you are not already there" so it hardly seems to be some kind of clandestine escape. To be fair some of the vitriolic abuse hurled at Neil Vatcher for example in the months before he left by one or two posters really was beyond the pale, totally exceeding constructive criticism. As has been said , there's nothing to stop fans starting there own forum . Let's hope the poster who went under the name of Joyful John will start his own forum and then he can sit at home making his stupid comments to his hearts content.

Read the thread properly, and read posts 31and 32 where I was replying to Macca 56, who has already made the exact same point as you are now repeating. He "liked" my reply so he and I are clearly in broad agreement and he has obviously grasped the wider point I was making, even if you haven't .

Yes, fair enough, and I have no problems with you point on the word "most" although that is going into semantics a bit. The wider point is that I have already referred to Philip Risings OP on the Polish TV thread in the international section. Your point is fair comment but there appears to be more to this than the fixture list implies. As I keep repeating there is not great deal we can comment on until we know the full scale of the problem, who is missing from EL fixtures and how often, or indeed whether there is going to be a serious problem at all . All we have at the moment is the usual someone who heard something, which may or may not have some substance behind it.

Well we have a Leicester thread that's longer than the Lakeside and Belle Vue threads put together so there have been plenty of comments about not much.

No it doesn't make a nonsense of it. Once again it is you trying to be provocative and argumentative instead of reading the thread properly. Anyway, as I said in post #3 on this thread it would be a mistake to jump to conclusions before all the facts are known and whether ant answer to the potential problem can be found. Nope, no envy from me. You picked the wrong one to aim that silly comment at. I prefer live Speedwáy to what you call "live TV " . The TV broadcasts don't do it for me. I need to be there with the noise, the atmosphere and the company so I rarely watch it on the telly. If the couch potatoes want to be in front of the box every night of the week that's up to them, but it's not for me. How about you ?

See Clambo 71's post above. That explains it.

The difficulty is that all teams have riders who could go one way or the other more so than most years. Poole are least affected but Dave Watt is not getting any younger and we don't know if Hans dip in form was a blip or the start of a slow slide, although he is probably the best second heatleader and better than most teams No 1's For Belle Vue, Scott is reaching the veteran stage, and although he had a good season he still had a poor spell towards the end, and it is some years since he showed real consistency for a whole year. He can't go on at the top for ever. Who knows whether this year will be a turning point or whether he can still bang in another good year ? Will Richie Worrall start fulfilling his early promise after a couple of years in the doldrums ? We don't know which Kasprzak will be turning up, or if Fast Freddie can find the form that has been missing for some time now. And the question marks go on. Bjarne Pedersen, Bomber , Craig Cook, Mikkel Bech, Kymakorpi, and several othe key players have all been a bit hit and miss for some time now. Any one of them could have a cracking season or be very erratic and go awol at crucial times

I don't think it would be for Sandor Levai to complain about other riders being dirty. He was one of the worst. Certainly not above getting inches in front of someone and snapping the throttle shut to have the man off. More than dirty he was downright dangerous at times.

Exactly. Also what dates were given to the riders by the clubs when they signed.