E I Addio

Jon Cook to make an announcement to the nation on BBC Essex tomorrow 8-30am

Who knows what goes on behind closed doors ? Personally , I like Davey and before PK went off the boil Davey and PK were putting some great heat 15's together, and apart from when he had the odd strop he has been a very inspirational captain, especially to the young riders, so I would be sorry to see him go but the plain fact is that Kim Nilsson is an asset and there wouldn't be room for him and Davey if Richard Lawson comes back.so we'll have to wait and see . Someone has suggested that a come-back for Kim's step-brother is a possibility but I think that's unlikely.

The website doesn't actually say they are announcing a rider, it just says there will be an announcement regarding the team. Maybe I am reading too much into it but it could be some unexpected problem. Jon cook was indeed making it clear at the end of last season that he wanted Richard back but since then Workington have invoked the buy-back clause which possibly throws a spanner in the works for Richards availability with 5 PL tracks having a Friday race night. Jon Cook did say at the fans forum that it could be January before the full team could be announced. We'll have to wait and see.

Imagine the scene in the Poole Control Room :- "Yes Muddlo, what is it now" "It's agent Pedersen sir, he has absconded since you closed the Eastbourne operation down. What are we to do about the League.?" "Ok , tell Agent Holder he will have to go undercover at Swindon, call in that favour the Gordon fellow owes us for the bricks, and see what other assets can be activated. I"ll take care of Coventry. Oh, and get those holes in the track filled in and some fresh ones dug to keep'em guessing" "Yes sir, anything you say sir (slurp, slurp)

That's got nothing to do with it. IF others got away with it there is nothing that can be done about it. If Ward is guilty he should get whatever the appropriate sentence is deemed to be.

Good rider and a nice bloke but don't expect too much too soon. He still has a lot to learn. He has lot of problems last year staying on his bike and has had to,learn that the throttle works both ways. Obviously he is a talent but it might just be that this is a year of consolidation and gaining experience rather than setting the track alight. Well done the Brum for getting him though.

Is it a real rider at all, as opposed to an journalist pulling comments from various riders together and cobbling them into a single account that looks like it comes from a rider ? That's the way it looks to me. Let's face it, there is very little in there that most of us didn't know allready and most riders moan about anyway.

Eventually maybe, but they went a very long time with no money. Not the way to treat struggling young riders.

No more of a disgrace than him signing for a PL club that didn't pay him.

That's is the forum view , I know , but I just thought I would check out the wording of the rule it comes from and on my reading of the rule it seems a bit ambiguous and I was just asking how we get to the point that the "retained list " as specified in the rules actually means the asset list. Not a big deal but I just thought that as this was speedway and it would not be the first time a rule is generally understood to mean one thing then someone says it means something else and the previous understanding goes out the window e' g Somersets team declaration is a case in point. If they mean assets why not say assets in the rule ? I may be totally wrong but just throwing it out for comment / observation./clarification That's exactly why I thought I would check the rules, but not for the first time in speedway they are not crystal clear. Well, not to me anyway.

Can anybody clarify what the rules mean (in relation to D/U riders) when they say the ownership of the rider , for fixture clash purposes , means a rider on a clubs retained list ? There is a general assumption among many fans that the retained list means the asset list but I have looked through the rules and as far as I can see there is no clear explanation. I have heard it said that the retained list means the riders contracted to a club the previous year and used again, which may or not be the case, but at the risk of being pedantic can anyone point me to the specific or official definition of what the retained list actually is, so that we have it crystal clear? The true definition could have a lot to do with who would get first call on Richard.

I can't see him being anywhere but KL either but over a period of several years he has probably been the most popular guest when needed at Lakeside and has probably been the only one that has never let us down ever. That's why every winter you'll see posts on the Lakeside forum from people saying they would like Rory in the following years team.

Don't know about that but he"ll certainly miss the starts much more than Lwason, who is becoming pretty quick of the block theses days so I doubt that we'll see much of Robbo, popular though he is at Lakeside. Until the fixtures come out its too early to speculate on how many, if any home meetings Rich might miss, but I would say Cookies mate Roo Boy (6.22) would be first choice to replace Lawson(6.5) rather than 4 pointer Robbo, especially as Rory seems to be without work in Sweden or Poland at the moment, and he rides Lakeside very well.

A possibility yes, just as Watt and Robbo are a possibility, but I would say not a probability.

Tens of thousands of people pay £30 or £40 to watch a football match over a much longer season than speedway. Personally I wouldn't pay 5p to see a football match but the fact that so many people do shows that people will pay the money if they like what they see. If people went to 10 home matches at an outlay of say £25 per match that's £250 spread over a season. Not a lot of money to spend on a hobby. Plenty of people spend more than that on beer and fags.

Good post. The point about riders going to technical tracks is that it pushes them outside their comfort zone, and eventually won't get phased by any type of track. The other thing is that different tracks have different surfaces and the more tracks riders learn to master the more experienced they will be in getting set ups right .

Obviously there are some issues to be resolved that are not general knowledge yet. To those of us not involved in the negotiations it would seem to be a simple matter of someone signing on the dotted line but obviously there is a bit more to it than that. Maybe some sort of deal is being worked out on availability/avoidance of fixture clashes. We won't know the full picture until there is an announcement.

Whether the rules are a joke or not is not the issue. It was within the rules, and the contract was a legal one. it goes without saying that whenever there is a double up rider one or other of the clubs involved is going to have to use guests, that is a problem that the sport wrestles with and the fans complain about, but once that situation exists promoters are entitled to do what they can to protect their interests. Redcar could have bought Richard if they wanted. It is interesting that you never came on here complaining when the arrangement was well publicised on the Workington,, Lakeside and SCB websites before the season started, its only when you saw the opportunity to take one of your cheap shots at Lakeside you decided to enter the debate. But not to worry, Lakeside supporters have the satisfaction of knowing that in a difficult speedway climate they have a crowd big enough and sufficient sponsors to support EL racing and enough youngsters to form an NL team side for cup and challenge matches, plus they are doing something to bring some youngsters on in the Hagon Shocks Academy. None of your constant sniping about the track, the team or the promotion will change that.

I agree it gets a bit tedious when bigcatdiary keeps turning up with his constant sniping against Lakeside, making himself look a bit stupid in the process, but I think the forum generally ought to wait and see which PL club Richard signs for, before jumping to conclusions, and the picture may then become clearer. A lot of this was discussed at the fans forum last month so those who were there have a pretty good idea what has gone on, and it was said that it could be as late as January before a formal announcement can be made,I think Workington may have jumped the gun with their announcement before everything has been fully resolved.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before the forums Chief Lakeside Hater appeared, putting his negative spin on it without bothering to chech the facts. The facts are that the Lakeside website said quite openly at the start of last season that they wanted to secure Richards services rather than having to use guests when his PL club had fixtures and that was one of the reasons for the arrangement.One of the big moans from fans generally last year was the use of guests and Lakeside took steps to avoid that. How on earth is it a "stunt" if it's a legal,contractual arrangement by both parties ? What seems to have thrown a spanner in the works is that Richsrd, for whatever reason clearly doesn't want to go back and ride for the Workington promotion

You might choose to believe there was no buy back clause but even Worky say there was one so why should they say there was one if there wasn't? Richard has tweeted that he is not going back to Workington, and also tweeted that the deal to ride for Lakeside should get sorted soon. Bearing in mind that he left the Comets last year and went to Redcar, it seems pretty clear that he doesn't want anything to do with Workington and they have used the buy back clause to get him back there but he is not having it.

If they never paid he wouldn't have been at Lakeside last year. It was made clear at the outset there was a buy back clause after one year.

Yeah, but in Horton speak that's probably a euphemism for "Lakeside got AJ back rather than Coventry because he knows he'll get paid on time there"

So the next question then is who are these promoters that won't you say won't change (I.e.names)? The reason I ask is that is that I keep reading about clubs that want a Friday race night but can't get one. Belle Vue for example apparently want to change to Friday but it won't happen until they get the new stadium. Rick Frost wanted Friday in Peterboros EL days but it didn't happen in the ELor PL. Lakeside, Coventryand Swindon are already Thursday or zfridaytracks, so if what you say is corect those refusing to change must be some or all out of Wolves, Poole, Lynn, and Leicester so which ones are they? Even if there was a change to Thurs/Fri meetings what happens on GP weekends and what happens about clashes with the Danish League and lower Swedish league ? The only reason Lakeside got AJ back is because we will now have a fixture list that concentrates on non-GP weeks .even if we could get over all the hurdles and have regular Thurs /fri meetings it seems likely that AJ would not be one of the continental riders here and probably non of the others unless you still had fortnightly meetings during the GP season, so I still don't see how Thurs /Fri would get GP riders back in numbers.

Do you have any firm evidence to support your contention that all existing EL stadiums could be made available on a Thursday or Friday? Have you spoken to any stadium owners ? Unless you can state positively that the stadium owners can make the venues available then the comment remains an assumption, not a fact. If the point is to be taken seriously you cannot just wave these potential hurdles away as if they don't exist. How would you deal with the clash with Danish League fixtures for example? However, the thread topic is specifically about Tai Woffinden. According to his Speedway Star interview Tai is not advocating back to back race nights, he wants a single race night, but more than that he specifically wants the single race night to be Monday so even your idea of back to back race nights would not get him back on that basis. How would you increase the number of EL clubs tp 10? Peterborough , Birmingham and Eastbourne have gone. Who is going to replace them? No PL club wants to come up and it's even touch and go whether Boro can survive in the PL. It's difficult to see any arrangement that would get Tai back to the EL in 2015.