E I Addio

I don't think I've ever seen the words "Auty " and "natural ability" mentioned in the same sentence before. I always thought natural ability had something to do with staying on the bike for four laps, without knocking anyone else off.

Yes, but Rosco and his promotion were part of the decision making process that brought the rule in. As to the second line of your post I think most people would agree that out of all the young British riders Ashley probably has a better case than any one for some kind of special attention or help, considering that at this time last year he was fairly close to Richie Worralls standard at the time, now there is a big difference so one thing that probably wasn't thought out was what to do with riders like him. Its a pity to be getting young riders through the front door and then possibly losing riders like Ashley out the back door. I think everyone agrees on that.

Whether it actually saves money remains to be seen and as you say, depending on how the crowds pan out. The point is that Swindon knew that changes were coming , they were involved in the AGM so, if true, it is basically yet another case of a promotion offering a job and then reneging on their promise. Swindon are not the first club to do this and probably won't be the last.

The promoters have never said otherwise. It was made crystal clear even before the AGM that the over-riding objective was to the save cost per meeting and everything else was secondary to that. Everyone who bothered to read the press releases or this forum knew something like this was on the way. Yet we still have people trying to tell us that it was some clandestine way to cut costs, when in fact we were told in advance that costs were being cut. I have yet to hear anyone complain that they want to keep the ridiculous old method of only 14 home league matches meeting some teams twice and some teams once . Swindon fans were as vociferous as everybody else last season in complaining about the lack of league fixtures but if the number of fixtures had been increased without cutting the cost per meeting Swindon would probably have been one of the first clubs to go under ,bearing in mind their inability to pay riders. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs and there are bound to be inconstancies in almost any changes. Its a great shame for Ashley but he is not the first rider to be stitched up by a club after being told he had a job even before the new rule. Its been happening for years. Rosco knew costs had to be cut at the AGM and if he went round promising riders jobs before he knew how things were going to work out, that's down to him for making promises he couldn't keep.

Bigger points limits ? We had a points limit of 42.5 in 2013 and several clubs were suffering massive losses. How high do you have to raise the points limit to stop massive losses? How much do you have to spend on foreign riders to build a team to 45 ? I take your point about Eastie, but what about Brum who had well publicised money problems, or Swindon and BV who had trouble paying riders ? Where do you draw the line? We certainly need all clubs to put a few hundred on the gate at least but whatever you do attendances are only going to come back gradually at best. Something has to be done in the short term to stop these big losses. All this should have been sorted out in 2010 but it wasn't. Nothing we can do about that now , and no point in crying over spilt milk,we have to go with what we have.

I wasn't particularly pointing at you, more backing you because posters still keep banging on with their own ideas and some are saying its some kind of secret agenda but clearly cards were on the table before the AGM as to the over-riding. objective. Yes a business plan to increase attendances is needed but nobody on here or elsewhere has come up with one. If Rick Frost invested the thick end of a million quid in Peterboro on and off track and still finished up with an average gate of 700 then obviously there is no easy answer. We certainly do need to increase attendances in the long term but a short term measure is needed between now and next season is needed to stop clubs going under. One of the major, if not the major problem last season was not enough meetings and even regular fans were getting out of the speedway habit. That has now ben addressed. IMO the jury is still out on the rest of the package. We will have to see how it goes but people forget that half the time last season we were seeing the likes of Ales Dryml getting lost at the back of the field so some NL races might be tolerable, especially the better lads. I am not over the moon with it all but unless anyone comes up with a viable alternative its the only show in town just now.

Of course its a cost cutting measure. There was never any secret about that . This a section of Jon Cook's statement on the Lakeside site a week before the AGM, making it crystal clear that cost would have to be cut in order to have more meetings . People may or mar not agree with what has been done but there never was any secret about what was the priority. :- "He continued “For our own club and many others, we are now running at too large an expense per meeting and as a result of other clubs wishes, have reduced our league programme to below a level acceptable to our landlords, our riders, who don’t have the luxury of riding in multiple leagues, our sponsors and most importantly our fans. The problem we now have is that expense is too great to add in another half a dozen meetings at the current levels, as we have all got business plans dependent upon dividing our off-track revenues by 14 meetings and not 20. Therefore, real change is required to return to regular Friday speedway, regardless of what future TV contracts bring to the sport. That is our priority over the coming weekend. At the very least we want three meetings a month with the fourth week free for potential rain offs. Team strengths should be secondary to that need. Let the riders that want to commit to British speedway first and foremost and not hide behind the international calendar when it suits, be our priority too". Plenty of people lining up to criticise the new rules on team strengths but I don't see anyone coming up with a business plan to show how we can increase meetings to suit landlords and riders without cutting costs per meeting. Speedway is drinking in the Last Chance Saloon. It couldn't carry on as it was.

What I said was that Lawson is a reasonable gater. No, I am not happy that inferior riders are coming into the EL but I would rather have 2 NL riders in the side and !8 Home league matches with all teams playing each other twice than the old system of 14 matches and playing some teams twice and some teams once.

oh, Sidney read what I am saying in the context of the discussion and the earlier posts. I am simply pointing out that however you frame the rules riders like Auty are going to find it hard to get an EL job at reserve once you lower the points limit. I only mentioned Lawson because he is on a similar sort of average to Auty and has had to go into the1-5. I am not comparing their abilities as riders.

But doesn't that lead to other problems though ? For one thing it means your NL guy won't usually get near the likes of Roynon, let alone Auty, so will spend most matches scratching out 3rd or 4th places with almost no chance of a win and little chance the spectators will see roughly evenly matched riders in the reserve races. The bigger problem though is that to get Auty in somewhere at reserve you would have to raise the points limit to 37 for your 1-6 and then you open the door to teams juggling things around to maybe get a 3 pointer at reserve and another 6/7 pointer in the top 5 and you are defeating the object of the exercise (especially if its a foreign rider that comes in). The problem as far as Auty is concerned is that once they decided to reduce the points limit even by a small amount Auty is going to find it difficult to get a job in the EL because he really doesn't seem to have the abilty to be any more than a 4/5point rider. Richard Lawson on the same sort of average as Auty has got an EL job riding in the 1-5 but he at least is a reasonable gater, with evidence of a years improvement and a reasonable expectation of more improvement but as long as we have a low points limit I can't see many EL promoters wanting Auty unless he really works at his game in the PL and overcomes some of his flaws especially gating. I can see the argument for Birks and Roynon on their lower averages but I can't see how you could accommodate them without opening another can of worms .

http://www.lakesidehammers.co/content/?p=6634

If I am reading his post #350 correctly it seems he does indeed spend his time looking at stuffed birds, on fast broadband apparently

I never said ignore the past but this is where we are now and we can't change what's happened by moaning about it. I never said they have come up with a master plan either. At best it is a transitional arrangement that may or may not be successful in leading to a more tenable arrangement. All I am saying is that the deal is cut costs to give more meetings and people have to recognise we can't have more meetings with last years line-ups and rider costs.. However much we want to we can't turn the clock back to 2006 .

I don't think there was ever any pretence that it wasn't a cost saving exercise. The point is to provide more meetings For the last 3 years we have had this utterly ridiculous league system of only 14 home league matches meeting some teams twice and some teams once. Probably one of the most unpopular decisions ever which caused big gaps in the fixture list and caused fans to get out of the speedway habit. Its been public knowledge since at least last July that the promoters , or at least some of them, were working on ways to provide more fixtures but its clear that something has to give. Do the sums. On published figures Eastbourne were losing £5000 per meeting, Peterborough were losing over £7000 per meeting. Swindon and Belle Vue were known to be losing big money. Now, it stands to reason that if you are losing £5000 per meeting and you put on another 4 meetings you lose another £20,000 so some way has to be found to reduce the cost per meeting. There is no point in raking over past history that led to this situation , we are where we are. The choice facing us is more meetings at lower losses per meeting or sticking with the old 14 home meeting formula with promoters still suffering eye watering losses.. Personally, although I don't like the idea of 2 NL races per meeting but I would prefer that to 14 meetings of the old system. Others may feel different which is fair enough but one thing that is for sure is that we can't have our cake and eat it. , No point in moaning about the draft unless you are content with fewer meetings.

My understanding is that the PL promoters rejected it for geographical reasons. The EL covers an area from Poole to Manchester, the PL covers Plymouth to Glasgow/Edinburgh. There are apparently not enough suitable riders based in the North to make it viable.

I agree. I can't remember when Auty first rode in the EL but I remember seeing him as reserve for Coventry at Brandon in 2009. 5 seasons later he is still reserve/barely second string standard, still can't gate, still taking people off, still very little evidence of him using his head, still nowhere near even Barker or Kennett. What reason is there to believe 2014 would be any different?

You just reminded me of one of Mark Twain's satirical comments--" Why are people happy at a birth and sad at a funeral ?........Because they are not the person involved" (its called black humour). Made me laugh anyway.

Really ? Do you have any idea how many riders in Poland are owed money last season or how many clubs in both countries have serious financial problems ?

In fairness to Lewis I don't think any body could say he his a disruptive team member (Certainly not with Lakeside, I can't speak for Eastbourne), and I don't think anybody could say he is a dangerous rider. I can't remember him being excluded for dangerous riding and I can't remember him even being excluded for being the primary cause of a stoppage, except when his primary chain broke although if he has been it must be very rare. Similarly I doubt whether anyone can remember many (or any) occasions when he has been excluded for tapes infringements. I doubt if anyone can remember him deliberately staying down to get a race stopped. I can remember a couple of occasions when he came to Lakeside with Eastbourne and made big efforts to get his bike off the track after falls. Last season he established himself as a very capable and unselfish team rider. So if you look at Lewis purely from the point of view of his on track activities he comes out rather better than a number of others including some GP riders and including at least one in Team GB rider. So al in all Lewis is not an angel, but as purely an entertainer of the public he does his job as well as the next man and better than a lot.

I understand the point you make which was fair enough back in the days of straight win or lose when a team only had to win get 7points up in real terms on the final scoresheet in order to defeat 2 successful tacticals but now we have a scoring system which to my mind is excellent in giving a gallant loser something from the match. You haven't commented on that aspect but surely giving two bites of the cherry as we now do (through tacticals and league points) is giving a failing team too much ? And does an 8-1 really galvanise a team more than a 5-1 ? If a team is 10 points down and get a 5-1 they only have to share the remaining heats to get something out of the match. If that doesn't galvanise them they don't deserve anything IMO. Above all having t/r's in a two leg match really does seem to be a ridiculous extreme to me, and surely reduces it to a lottery?

No because once you own the stadium your costs of upkeep stay fairly constant whether you run one two or three meetings per week. If you rent your costs increase proportionately for every meeting you run, which is ok if you get enough through the gate to make each meeting pay but history shows that NL meetings rarely get big enough crowds to cover the costs of rented stadiums when shared with EL matches.

It's one thing to keep a meeting alive, but a totally different and a rather unattractive proposition to hand an undeserving team league points. To my mind any possible merit the tactical ride may have once had is negated by the introduction of the present system of league points. In the example you give the T/R rule would have made no difference to the quality of the racing. You do not state the final score but it is clear that even without the T/R rule Glasgow would have taken at least a league point from it which is fair reward for putting up a decent fight and Sheffield get two points for a deserved win but a "must do better" lecture from the TM for not getting all 3 points. For a team to get a 3 league points getting a 7-point win is a reasonable ask but be sure of overcoming two T/R's means they have to achieve what is in real terms a13-point advantage to win by 7 on the score sheet and get all 3 league points. The worst aspect of the t/r rule IMO is that it favours top heavy teams. A good solid strength in depth team is probably going to stay in striking distance and have limited chances of a t/r but a team with a strong top two and a weaker tail can get two successful t/r rides then be able to come on strong in heats13 and 15. For that reason especially I don't think you can ever have a fairly balanced league competition while you have a rule that favours one team against another I understand what you say as a neutral but the fact is that it is the week-in, week-out regulars that keep a club afloat and from that perspective I think there is nothing more demoralising than seeing your team win on the track but lose under the t/r rule. I can see the merit in making the t/r go off 15 metres to add an element of risk in the tactic,

I know about F1 but its got nothing to do with what immediately went before and orions question which is still not answered.

Give up before you make yourself look more stupid. 3 is still not worth more than 8.

Nobody is defending the promoters, merely suggesting you get a few facts straight. The real boom years were in the immediate post war period for just a few years before crowds were driven away by the crippling cost of the governments entertainment tax (passed on to admission charges) and the growth of television.By the end of the 1950's the sport had all but ceased to exist and was only saved by the founding on the cut price Provincial League, which of necessity was in rented stadiums. Whist a few clubs may have been comfortable speedway in general existed on a shoestring from that point on. If you read Len Silvers book he has always led a pretty much hand to mouth existence as a promoter, often subsidising the sport from his outside interests, especially in recent years. Over the last 50 years the promoters have been collectively responsible for many things but being awash with money is not one of them. As usual you again peddle the untrue line about people believing there is nothing wrong with speedway. Those of us that still go (which doesn't include yourself, as you never tire of telling us) are fully aware of the problems because we are confronted with them all the time. The last thing we need is those like yourself, who no longer have time for the sport doing your best to put the boot in and belittling those who still enjoy it by twisting the facts of speedway history instead of bothering with constructive discussion.