E I Addio

For once, I have to agree with you,

That is absolutely true. It is also inevitable that the fans like to have their say, and there will naturally be different opinions but the point DissAssTer was touching on was that the discussion would be so much more informative and enjoyable if people tried to be a bit more objective and factual instead of shooting from the hip. There is no doubt the entertainment value is not always what we want it to be but the reasons for that are often varied and complex. I speak to people who spend £30 or £40 going to a football match and tell me it was a load of rubbish but they still go . As Trees said in her post there is nothing like live speedwáy and sometimes the comments on here lose sight of that, although that doesn't mean it can't be made better. Sorting out the FTDR allocation would be a good start but that's for a different thread.

That's not what he is saying. Like a couple of others you are reading something into it that isn't there. Of course Joe Public on the terraces knows whether its a good meeting or a bad one . No dispute about that, but it would only take one post to make that point. What we are seeing on this thread is people who know nothing about track prep, nothing about, engines , nothing about set ups , analysing and presuming to tell us why it was a dull meeting, and why KL is the best track since sliced bread. People bang on about not enough dirt on the track for example but quite often there is enough dirt but because of the weather it has to be packed down, so the meeting can be put on. That in in turn can spoil the quality of the racing. It could be 101 different reasons or it could be simply the opposing team were having a bad day, just like every team do at times every year. And yet here we have people who have never sat on a bike or driven a tractor sitting in front of their TV screens telling us that because someone fell off and someone else didn't it proves this or that, or going through the old "my tracks better than your track routine ". Absolute nonsense.

Good post. One of speedways problems is that it doesn't come over particularly well on TV. You don't get the noise, you don't get the smell or the atmosphere and as you say seeing your team win always makes a dull match seem better. However good or bad a meeting is live it is never as good on TV. . The problem with this forum is that after almost every TV meeting, even the half decent ones we get a string of moans largely from people who weren't there and most of those seem to be from those who never or rarely go to live meeting anyway. You can almost tell before the meeting starts who is going to be on here moaning afterwards .I make no comment on last nights meeting one way or the other but you have hit the nail on the head of what the sport is about. As you say there is nothing like live speedway. Well said.

TBF he met Morris 3 times and beat him 3 times. You wouldn't expect him to beat Lambert and was beaten by Kerr in his first race. In couple of races there were only 3 riders, Maybe not the most stunning performance of all time but he did his job and beat his opposite number every time they met. Whatever might be said about Lakeside as a whole I don't think any blame can be laid at Adam's door.

Here we go again. After making a complete fool of yourself on the Coventry thread with mudslinging against Mick Horton that you couldn't back up when challenged we now move on to your familiar theme of mudslinging against. Lakeside. Some Lakeside meetings are bore feasts some aren't, just like any other track. Plenty of independent posters on here have confirmed that. Arena get sufficient crowds to sustain EL racing so they must be doing something right. If you don't like Arena nobody forces you to go, but saying any meeting there is a guaranteed bore fest is as blatently untrue as your claim that nobody wanted to ride for Mick Horton. Before indulging in any more mudslinging it might be a good idea to get some help for those repressed emotions that translate into such a negative outlook and desire to snipe constantly, making a fool of yourself in the process.

Spot on. I think you have just articulated what a number of forum members have been thinking for some time. A handful of KL fans are starting to suffer from Shovlar-Starman disease except for the fact that the sun apparently now shines from Busters posterior rather than Matt Fords.

It won't go from bad to worse. For one thing we have the mods regulating things hence Sidney keeps getting bans when he oversteps the mark with personal threats. Nobody else seems to keep getting bans. Apart from Starman virtually all the regular posters recognise that much of what is said is knockabout stuff and we treat it as water off a ducks back, and most of the time there is no malice behind it. On the occasions when things do get s bit over heated, most posters, Starman excepted, are mature enough to put it to one side and move on . People from different backgrounds have different ways of expressing themselves, and we have look at the point if the post rather than getting hung up on words used. Personally I enjoy the banter, and I like reading forthright views even if I don't agree with them. Apart from Sid, who is quite harmless really and a legend in his own lunchtime and most of us quite like anyway, the only two who are where the buses don't run are Starman and Gluesticks so it's not surprising that they regularly get hoisted by their own petard.

You mean like Sidney threatening to punch people's face in and getting a ban and Starman calling people trolls when they challenge his opinions?

As far as I know , Sky don't even pay enough to cover the drop in attendance at these matches when the weather is dodgy and many will be taking to their armchairs even if it was free rather than come out in the freezing cold. I hope the weather is better next weekend. The Bank Holiday meetings usually bring in decent crowds if the weather is good but if the weather is dodgy it will probably be a bad time for most clubs finances.

Probably talking to the fairies or to that other Poole fan that is always there when he looks in the mirror.

Let's not get carried away too soon. A clear win against Leicester is one thing, but Kings Lynn next Friday will be a different kettles of fish. Then Coventry have a side that generally go well at Arena so we'll have a better idea after those matches. Lakeside have taken a bit of a gamble this year by picking mostly riders who have the potential for improvement, but having potential and actually achieving it are different things Lakeside's gamble could pay off big time or it could flop badly. Present state of play is they they are starting to look good but it's a long season with still a long way to go.

Most Lakeside fans I spoke to thought the same, the rest thought a very narrow home win. Nobody expected that result. I suppose it just goes to show you can never judge these things on paper. Kim Nilsson was excellent in defeating the charging Doyle in heat one, three wins in his ten points, Bech slipped smoothly and almost unnoticed to a paid max, hardly troubled by the Lions, but Kennett was just on fire with paid 12 from his first four rides. Must be his best meeting for about 3 years. Pity he got squeezed out in heat 15. For Leicester Doyle was class although a bit hit and miss. Auty had by far his best meeting ever at Lakeside, and although Wosniaks score doesn't look much I thought for a first timer at the track he stuck to his task manfully and looked better in each race as he got the circuit weighed up. Walasek was virtually anonymous but as for Bjarne, well, all I can say is he must have though he was racing against Poole. I Must be the dumbest T/R decision for a long time especially as he was out against Nilsson who had just beaten Doyle

No he is really saying that they have to be a medium sized thing before you can think about them being a big thing. Riders develop at different rates. Going back 4or 5 years I don't think many people would confidently be saying Neils Kristian Iveson would be making the real big time and success has come at a relatively late stage in his career. Bomber has not reached the dizzy heights people were anticipating after his GP win at Cardiff. There is also the question of how a riders body develops. Riders like Greg and PK have had long careers partly because they have constitutions that keep them slim without losing strength. On the other hand, Joe Screen, for all his natural brilliance had a permanent weight problem as his career moved on and it wasn't all through eating pies. As far as Lambert is concerned he isn't even an EL heatleader yet. Not many British riders even get that far, so let's see how it goes.

I would agree with that. You only have to look at Simmo's success on grass tracks before he eventually gave it up to concentrate full time on speedway. In many ways he was the opposite of Mauger. While Mauger had to work at his talent in thoughtful methodical way, Simmo had terrific motorcycle .skills but by his own admission he was somewhat irresponsible and really only got his act together in the latter half of his career. In all walks of life people with natural talent sometimes take it for granted and those who have to work at it sometimes do better in the long run. As to him playing second fiddle to Terry Betts, according to Simmo;s DVD Terry had it written into his contract that he would ride No1 which under the race formula at the time meant Terry met the opposing No1 once while Simmo had to race him twice. As to Robert :Lambert there is no way of telling how far he could go. Its far to early to even guess.

Read SCB's post properly. If the rules allowed 5 d/u riders Richie Worrall is still no good for Coventry because his PL club are a Friday track same as Coventry and he can't be in two places at once.

True about the price compared to other sports. I just did a bit of checking and discovered that to get in to see a crumby second division football match between Southend United and Redbridge and Dagenham costs £21 in the stands and £18 in the terraces so roughly the same price as speedway. Plenty of others par £35+ to see top league football. Personally I wouldn't pay 5p for a football match but the point is that plenty of people do like it and find as much if not more than a speedway meeting costs. If they like the sport so cost in itself is not an issue. The trouble is speedway seems to attract more than its fair share of moaners who bleat about the cost but in reality prefer to spend their money on other things, which fair enough is their choice but you can only spend your money once. Speedway is not cheap but live entertainment of any sort is generally not cheap. At the other end of the scale we have people complaining that 14 home league matches is not enough. By the time you knock off the VAT element. and average out concessions, kids for a quid etc, the promotion get around £13 on average for every punter through the gate. Whether the entertainment value is good enough is debateable but that varies from track to track,

Nor entirely correct but it does highlight a problem with tracks that no longer have rakers. Modern machinery does churn up the tracks much more that in the "golden olden days" and the track staff can't be on to every single rut that occurs but a good tack curator or raker will not always fill the rut but will often try to widen it. For example if a rut starts off roughly the size of a tyre width it can be dangerous if a riders back wheel gets in it and picks up grip but a good track raker , especially under the direction of the track curator can chip away at the edges of the rut so that instead of being a tyre width it will be a few inches wider with sloping sides that wont cause the back wheel to suddenly pick up grip, although there will always be a bit of a bump but far less dangerous. If there are serious holes they need time and sometimes money to repair between meetings rather than between races . Its pretty much an open secret now that Matt Ford didn't want the holes at Poole repaired last year because the home riders knew where the holes were and the visitors didn't, but having said that, its in the nature of British weather that no track man can prepare a perfect track every week. As to the comment about dirt building up round the fence going into bends one and three, you don't want much dirt on the racing line there for the simple reason that that is where the riders are sliding the bikes into the bend, and that has always been the case. Shale shouldn't be clogging up the grader, if it does its usually because the track is too wet. or because the wrong type of grader is used for track conditions. The root of a lot of these problems IMO is lack of track rakers, and or lack of training of track rakers or lack of communication between track curator and track rakers, or sometimes its because the track curator doesn't get to spend enough time on the track maybe because there is dog racing or something going on or because the promotion will not or cannot afford to pay him more than the bare minimum of time on the track.

It will be interesting to see whether he is prepared to put his money where his mouth is and lodges a formal appeal or whether he doesn't appeal but just puts out some cock and bull story that his groupies will swallow without having the factual evidence to challenge the FIM's judgment. Bottom line is whatever ifs and buts he comes up with, if he doesn't make a successful appeal his conviction stands.

That's where a bit of flexibility and common sense is require. For example imagine the start of heat 15 with the scores level and the home No 1 is on his way to the start but is still 3 metres short when the two minutes are up. Are the paying public to be deprived of the excitement of a crucial race for such a minor infringement? I think there is a case for saying that if the meeting has been ticking over fairly smoothly the ref should be lenient about the odd minor delay but if the riders are clearly messing around there should be a warning given to the pits and relayed to the public that no unnecessary delays will be tolerated, but I suppose when we analyse it there is no easy answer.

That's a different point. The fact is that in the SS article Colin Pratt was calling for stricter enforcement of the two minutes by referees.

Read it again. He said exactly that.ie "Colin also believes that referees being stricter with the two minutes will also prevent riders playing psycological games at the starting gate".

His CMA was 6.72, which would put him as second or third heatleader in every EL club except Poole, and even then he was only .03 short of Pawlickis average. He had been out in heat 15, and won some of them. 2nd/3rd heatleader is probably a pretty fair assessment of him at this stage of his career. To say he is no better than an EL second string is a stupid comment that flies in the face of the facts. He is alright, and usually makes time for the fans. As others have said he also seems to have a self destruct button and at times something flips inside his head and messes up. I can't see him changing now but I hope I am wrong

Having an opinion is one thing, having an informed opinion is something quite different. One of the points that Colin Pratt made , very cogently , was that nobody wasted more time messing about on the starting gate than Ivan Mauger, and Colin raced against him enough so he should know. So there is more to it than simply turning the clock back and bringing back second halves. There were a number of other good points made by Colin Pratt who is probably more experienced in the sport and more widely respected than most, not that he knows everything there is to know, but if you think opinions like that are not worth considering and taking on board, so be it.

Its quite amazing really. For weeks with nothing happening the airhead can't keep his trap shut and shoots all;; kinds of stupid comments out to social media and Speedway Star, then when something happens that really calls for a comment from a team manager i.e. his star rider gets a formal suspension, Muddlebrain has nothing to say . Bizarre.