E I Addio

According to a new announcement on the Lakeside website there is a cooling off period before any announcements, and reading between the lines it seems to be due to seeing who will be prepared to sign up to the EDR next year. However Jon Cook and Neil Vatcher say they have enough information to start signing three or four riders plus of course AJ who has already said he is coming. Every other promotion must presumably be in the same boat and able to start signing riders if they have not already done so. I don't know what people are moaning about..99% couldn't particularly care who the new chairman or MC are going to be, as it will make no difference till the season starts, we are going to have details of any major rule changes around 2-3 weeks earlier than normal and team announcements are likely to follow .

Oh no ! Not another season with the rules being adjusted to suit Belle Vue !

How to do it in easy stages;- 1. Go to the Speedwáy GP site and you will see that so far, four GP dates have been announced including Cardiff. 2. Click on your wiki link and scroll down until you se Motorcycling, and immediately below that is the word speedway. 3Click on Speedwáy and lo and behold it will take you to the four. GP dates that have so far been announed Isn't technology wonderful?

That's not what I said.. Balanced teams are essential to competitive racing. Fans won't to pay to see their home team overwhelmed week after week. Of course there needs to be an incentive for both riders and management to be on top form, that is what sport is about, but it's no good having rules slanted or applied in a way that allows some teams an advantage others don't ha ve,. The EDR is a classic example of this, given the wide range of abilities between the top and bottom EDRs Bottom line is that Speedwáy is not just a sport , it is an entertainment, and if it's not entertaining , then however noble the sporting ethos, the paying public- the ones who count- simply won't turn up, as recent years have shown.

I don't know about spin but he is dead right when he says if there is to be a monopoly on prizes it will be the death of the sport. Most fans North of Cheatford Muddlo understand that . The question is whether the BSPA actually do anything constructive about it, particularly where the EDR is concerned

Perhaps he has decided the team manager should be sacked

After Lakeside, Coventry is my next nearest club so I was more or less geared up for a few 180 mile round trips next year and to become a Bees supporter if Lakeside folded, but that decision is now put back a year. A reprieve for me or for Coventry, nor sure which !

Even when AJ was not in UK speedway he said the only EL club he would ride for was Lakeside. I know riders say these things and half the time they don't mean them but AJ's record since he first signed for the promotion seems to back that up. Oh. and while we are after each others riders I would love to have Hans as second heatleader to AJ and I have always felt that if Bomber had a full season at Lakeside to get to grips with the track he could become a real force to be reckoned with. You can keep Kylmakorpi and Howarth if you like .

Speedway is on the link you posted. Item 35.1

AJ will be back to, lead the charge. More riders to be announced at the Dinner and Dance

He didn't. It was 2013, CLANG ! ! ! The thread must be giving me dementia .. Doesn't change my mind though

Oh so Coventry made it all up ? Anyone who has followed any form of motor sport for more than 5 minutes miknows that people say all kinds of things to try to rattle the opposition because unless, for example somebody strips the engine down and looks inside it nobody will be any the wiser. What may or may not apply to Freddie applies equally to Tai. I'll just make a couple of final comments because quite frankly the discussion is getting ridiculous because come what may you are determined that tpTai's bikes were, in your words sub standard, based little more than your observation when clearly you know next to nothing about engines. I would say first of all that I can't comment on the quality of Tai's 2914 engines but all I am saying is I doubt whether anyone else can apart from Peter Johns. Firstly, as previously said. Tai stated at the last GP that he didn't have a "best" engine but has about 5 GP engines he uses for different tracks. Even if he brought one of his GP engines for the British Final that doesn't mean his normal EL engine was, in your words "substandard". It may well have been perfectly adequate for normal EL racing. A couple of points about the speed of bikes. Talking to Chris Louis a few years ago , who said he had ridden Tony Rickardssons bike and it actually wasn't all that fast , but it was set up in such a way thatt Rick could hang on to if and get the best from it, which, according to CL is more important than sheer speed on UK tracks. Half the time when a rider lacks speed it is just as likely that he is getting too much power and spinning up as not getting enough power. I don't doubt that it's possible Tai's bikes were not all they could have been but there could have been a reason for that other than a deliberate and conscious decision to use sub standard engines over here. In fact most EL riders have two engines, s few have more but none has one engine for all EL tracks so for your theory to stand up Tai would have to have at least two substandard engines over here, so as to earn less money. The second point about engines is that you yourself said on another thread that PK's poor 2014 form was due to engines not the rider and events have proved that to be more ar less correct, yet you apply the opposite to Tai. My final point which I think is significant was when Tau guested for Lakeside. He broke his collar bone in a GP on the Saturday and honoured his guest booking on the following Friday. With a broken collarbone he had every reason pull out of the guest booking and I wish he had have done because he clearly wasn't fit, and nobody would have criticised him if he had done. As was he rode and scored four points, clearly in a lot of pain. My point is that the fact that he had the guts and commitment to honour a guest booking straight after an injury with the World Champinship still at stake at that stage, doesn't suggest to me that he was treating the EL with disdain. It suggests to me that he was doing his best to maintain his commitment to EL racing that season, especially as it wasn't even his club. You have your opinion but as I said I remain unconvinced. I have nothing else to add. We must agree to differ

Maybe for the same reason that Freddie Lindgren said he was bringing his best engine to guest for Coventry in the Play off semis when he clearly didn't. Tal doesn't have a "best" best engine. H e said when interviewed at the last GP that he had different engines for different tracks, and had used about five engines in the GP's according to which track he was racing on. AJ has had his base in Poland for years. Both his main mechanics are Polish and his main workshop is in Poland.

He was doing a reasonable job against top riders in Sweden , and holding his own against pretty good riders in Polands Div 1 . By pretty good I mean riders like Bomber. I don't want to get to hung up on the PK argument because it was meant to illustrate a point rather than the point itself. The point is that. there are various factors that affect a riders scoring and the exact cause is not always obvious to those in the stands. As I said before, you make some fair points and I wouldn't say you are wrong but equally wouldn't say you are right. there are a variety of possibilities that those on the outside can only speculate on.

PK is not the best example , but he is the most recent. He was on the way down as I had conceded before but he was a lot worse in 2014 than in 2015, and PK was actually getting beaten by second strings on his own track at times. In the same period Dave watt was having big trouble sorting his engines out in Poland. . It happens at times.

they are fair points you make, but I don't think it proves that it was necessarily his engines. As I said before Peter karlsson was getting worse and worse at Lakeside at the same time tai was doing badly at Wolves, and PK was eventually sacked but he was certainly trying everything with his engines, even trying different engines but it didn't do any good, so who is to say it wasn't the same with Tai. I don't think you can necessarily conclude that he had a bad attitude. at least not deliberately so. I have spoken to a couple of riders who said it is very difficult to ride in 3 leagues and to give your best ever time, something has to give. some riders can do it but some cant.. I am not defending Tai , simply saying that we cant always make assumptions when there are so many possible factors involved. once again, where is your evidence that his engines were substandard , apart from your assumption ? Has he said so ? if they were substandard , what was different about his UK engines compared to his continental engines ? How do you know they were not the engines from the previous year when he was doing well ? after all Peter Johns said in SS a couple of years ago that Holder had been using the same engines over here for three or four years, so it could well be the same for Tai... Again, for comparison look at the trouble PK had with his engines at Lakeside, and he still lost his job.

The new heat format has its shortcomings, not least from the fans point of view seeing the same riders against each other three or four times in a meeting. The point I was making though was that I don't think the heat format can be blamed entirely for Tai's lack of form in 2014 if he was scoring well in the strong continental leagues. It's all very well for fans to sit back and pontificate on the reasons for a riders bad form but half the time the riders themselves don't know why things are not working out. Riders don't turn up at a meeting with the intention of not earning money, and with Peter Johns behind him I very much doubt that Tai's engines were rubbish. Personally I would take a lot of persuading that Tai's lack of form was due to anything other than workload and injuries.

I would agree with most of that. I think blaming the current race format is over-egging the pudding but it's correct to say that good form in one country doesn't always translate to good form in another country. Take for example Peter Karlsson at Lakeside in 2014, the same period when Tai was supposedly not bothering at Wolves.. Admittedly PK is not the rider he once was but to the casual observer it would appear he wasn't bothering at Lakeside and was eventually sacked . The truth was he tried everything with his engines, various set ups , various engines , but the plain fact was that what made him outstanding at Lakeside in 2013 wasn't working in 2014 and it wasn't all due to advancing years, and it wasn't due to lack of effort. The other thing that people overlook, or at least refuse to acknowledge is that Speedwáy at the top level is very mentally demanding. You can't just jump,on a bike, flick a mental switch and perform at your best.As Bwitcher says, riders are different.Some such as Hans Andersen have always had a massive appetite for racing and are able to cope with around 100 or more meetings a year over a whole career and still maintain pretty decent form. Others have told me that once they go above about 55-60 meetings in a season their form drops off. People can speculate on all these claims about Tai not bothering or not having his best bikes over here but I suspect the most likely explanation is the sheer workload of 3 leagues plus the GP's plus the SWC.

Referees routinely ignore rules about headgear. If the riders hair is not completely covered by the helmet it is supposed to be tucked in , but riders like Skornicki and Lindback always have it flowing out the back in contravention of the rules. The you have riders who paint their own crash helmets, I don't think I have seen a single one of them, certainly not GP riders that have the appropriate helmet area covered by the racing colour but nothing is ever done. Not surprising the ref on this occasion got a bit lax about the rules.

The theoretical date is 18th October but there is precedent for giving a club extra time to decide, as happened in the case of Peterborough

Doesn't want to talk about it publicly but he was blurting it all out in the bar according to Starman. Hmmmmmm....... Poor old Matt Ford, you almost have to feel sorry for him. Thinks he's cobbled a water tight excuse together to try to keep the lid on it then along comes Starman try to impress us how much he is in the know and opens up the whole can of worms again ! ! " Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive " ----William Shakespeare.

We are not talking about how he felt , we are talking about what he (allegedly ) knew.. Try to keep up with the discussion. According to Speedway Star he had been given very little information. Now you are telling us he knew exactly what the op was, so which is the truth , what Speedway Star is saying or what you are telling us ?

Spot on. That unfortunately will be Fords epitaph and no amount of discussion will change it. . Nothing more to be said really

Auty , Birks and Kerr had season ending injuries, That is the difference.. The only replacements that were remotely adequate were Boxall and Roynon who very soon had their own seasons curtailed due to injury. That is the weakness of the EDR system, if you lose your top tier reserve you are pretty well stuffed. You are stuck with NL riders half the time trying to do a top tier riders job/.

Whichever way you dress it up it beggars belief that they would tell him there was a 12 hour operation but not tell him what the injury was and that he didn't think to ask.