E I Addio

Cricket has probably produced more listenable and knowledgeable commentators than any other sport. Some have already been mentioned and I would add to the list Christopher Martin-Jenkins. You didn't have to know much about cricket to enjoy their well informed commentary. Outstanding as the others were, Richie was the best of the best and set the standard for others to follow. The great thing about Richie was that he somehow pitched his commentary at a level that was interesting to avid cricket fans but also informative to those new to the sport. Only Harry Carpenter comes anywhere near the same class. A sad loss.

Scott sort of blows hot and cold at Lakeside, sometimes very. good sometimes poor. The talented Fricke was highly impressive on his first (and I think only ) visit. Morris is very brave but doesn't always make a decent gate, zengi I can't remember seeing , Morely as we know has beaten a few pretty decent second strings at Lakeside, and its possible he could win both reserve races as he is a decent gater. As far as I can remember Bates hasn't scored at Lakeside unless someone else failed to finish.. I suppose you can never say never in speedway and they might spring a shock but it seems a far cry from some of the really cracking teams Swindon have sent over the years, especially going back to the days of Leigh Adams and Matej Zagar.

On the basis of last Fridays meeting Steve Boxall is staking a pretty could claim and reading between the lines of this weeks Speedway Star he is desperate for a chance.

No excuse either for postponing meetings because the floodlights don't work. No excuse for the promoter lining his pockets by putting in an interval on a late running meeting and on a freezing cold night just so the promoter can line his pockets from the profits at the food outlets. No excuse for disgusting hotdogs in this day and age. No excuse for lots of things in speedway but they will continue for as long as the sport continues in its present precarious financial state. In the grand scheme of things a cold shower once in am while is not top of the list. Not excusable but that's the way it is.

They are trying to get to the root of the problem.

So what's Poole's excuse? He was complaining about no hot showers there either !!!

I think that hits the nail on the head. Lakeside is an aquired taste. I didn't like the place for years and wouldn't go there but soon after the present promotion took over I decided to give it another try on the off chance, someting clicked with me and I have enjoyed it ever since. I think a lot of speedwáy is about perception. P.S. West Ham was the best track in the history of the universe, but being young and seeing the sport through youthful eyes was good as well.

The best reserve on show by a country mile. He would have scored more had he not made a mistake (which he said was his own fault ) and made a 360 degree spin. His win in the second reserve race was excellent, and all this in light of the fact that he had only ridden Lakeside about once and that was a few years ago. I hope we have him guesting again on the basis of this performance. Can't praise him enough.I think he has been a bit scatterbrained in the past but seems to have matured.

In defence of Kenny Bjerre I thought he rode an excellent race in heat 13 right round the fence while AJ was on the white line. Both very close and for a couple of laps I thought Kenny might win it, but it was the Bjere of old. Completely different to his early rides so it might have been down to bike or set up. I wouldn't sack him. He is a class act even if he has his off days.

i Or you could say there are some pretty bad losers up Norfolk. A British rider who came into the sport at a fairly late age from moto-cross, has gone from reserve to a heatleader on an 15 point maximum in the space of barely two years and the best you can do is make snidey remarks. I think anyone who understands what sport is about would say "CONGRTULATIONS AND VERY WELL DONE RICHARD LAWSON, ONE OF SPEEDWÁYS NICE GUYS" .....or you can carry on sulking but still won't get you any points.

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.

Not sure that's necessarily accurate. A couple of years ago someone connected with the stocks told me they weren't do well. They seem to depend a few big meetings a year to make the profit but the smaller ones don't seem to be so remununarative. I can't see them turning substantial income from the speedwáy rent away. We are probably talking £25000+ per year.

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.

I don't know all the ins and outs of the king signing but the thing about Edward is that his contract with Rye House was filed at the SCB after the official start of the season which so to all intents and purposes Rye do not get an automatic first choice. There is quite a long history of co-operation between Len and Jon Cook and it seems that a difficult situation has , on this occasion been sorted out amicably.

Brian Havelock got it wrong. Robbo is a Lakeside asset and therefore his EL club, Coventry get priority. That never was in dispute except in Havelocks mind. Ippo presumably made the same mistake with King. The issue here is not contracts having their status changed, it is that Len Silver delivered the contract to the SCB after .the start of the season, unlike the others mentioned. On the face of it Uncle Len simply honoured a prior agreement. Whether there was more to it than that we can only speculate, but the last thing Len would want is a disgruntled rider. I think it is worth mentioning that when the Garrity/Kennet swap took place there were press statements from Garrity and Horton saying how delighted they both were, a Statement from Len saying he thought getting Ed was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but not a word from Edward himself.

Why did Robson's PL have priority ? I think you need to read exactly what Len Silvers statement says.

According to Fridays programme it's 5.02 !