macinter

Perhaps I should have said that as I had to go out for a while I recorded it and watched it about an hour later.

As others have said on here the racing was awful but with the added cock up of having Eurosport switch off just as the riders were getting ready for the final makes speedway look more amateurish than Ed Miliband. No wonder the Press can't be bothered with this rubbish.

I think the televised British domestic meetings we have seen so far have provided the best racing we have seen since SKY started to cover speedway racing, particularly the one from Peterborough. Certainly much better than the Swedish stuff on Eurosport. If speedway this good cannot attract new fans then it is difficult to se what will.

Good idea. Mine has also arrived the worse for wear on several occasions this soggy winter.

Well you are certainly not wrong there TWK. Whether anyone likes tactical riders or not, it is and always will be, unfair. But I should think that if anyone involved in making the rules could come up with something better it would be done immediately. The whole problem is that speedway (and other motor sports) suffer more than most, entertainment wise, when runaway wins take place so just chucking it out is not the answer.

I chose to copy and paste as I like reading your posts apart from the last sentence in this one. Speedway and this forum needs people with radical views. Just to make it clear I deleted the sentence I didn't like.

Which sums the whole thing up quite precisely

Apologies if anyone has already pointed this out but the Oxford Dictionary describes sport as :-an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment. Which would appear to put darts and snooker on thinnish ice.

One thing we should perhaps remember is that the contenders for SPOTY were selected by a panel which contained four BBC employees and the other eight from a mixed bunch of sporting people from different backgrounds. So the fault, if there is one in Tai not being selected is not just at the BBC, or the BSPA, it is much more due to the low profile of speedway in general. That is the problem which needs to be tackled. So, when the new season is under way it may be time to write a nice polite letter to your daily newspaper of choice complaining of the lack of speedway coverage. If enough people complain the Press do listen. Remember the Express column some years ago by Nigel Pearson. That was due to a campaign by a group of fans of which I was pleased to be a member. Unfortunately the Express column came to a sticky end when the newspaper was taken over by Richard Desmond.

And this is the panel. (Four representatives of the BBC: Barbara Slater (director of BBC Sport). Philip Bernie (head of TV sport). Carl Doran (executive editor of Sports Personality of the Year). Mark Pougatch (from BBC Radio 5 live ). Three sports editors from 1)The Mail on Sunday, 2)The Mirror and 3)The Telegraph. Three former nominees: Baroness Tanni-Grey Thompson, Dame Kelly Holmes & Marcus Trescothick. Liz Nicholl OBE, chief executive of UK Sport. Sue Barker MBE. All totally impartial of course, but sadly none a speedway supporter, it would appear.

Quite correct. But let's not pretend it is all fair and above board. Never in a month of Sundays were Princess Anne and her daughter the two most outstanding sports personalities in the years they won. Without doubt there is some sort of BBC agenda going on here.

I think we all really know that the BBC give preference to certain sports in this alleged "competition". Remember two members of the Royal family have won. I think that says it all.

That could be particularly crucial as far as attendances are concerned in the second half of the season when some teams will be out of the running for the play offs.

I should imagine there is a whole lot of talking going on behind the scenes and the real picture will only become clear when a possibly much revised statement is issued. The current version does appear to have been rushed through but I certainly don't think that every speedway promoter is a dunderhead and I would expect them to be discussing at length what effect the proposed changes will have, so perhaps best to wait for the second edition. In almost all areas of life those who make the decisions are constantly ridiculed and speedway racing is no different.

Regarding the posts concerning cricket. Yes the County Championship is in a mess but the limited over versions are thriving, although traditionalists still don't like it. Bells are ringing here.

Whilst not disagreeing, I would say it is just as important, or perhaps even more so, to pitch the product at trying to attract possible new fans as the traditional ones, unfortunately, are diminishing every season. Unfortunately this probably means introducing gimmicks which present fans may not like. But sometimes you just have to bite the bullet. Cricket did.

There is certainly some truth in that statement.

I would suggest that the main part of the reason why attendances are dropping is because the product on offer is just not attractive enough. I took my son to speedway when he was a youngster but after a few races he was bored stiff and never went back. But he loved banger racing and still does. So no matter what rule changes are made, unless they tackle the big issue, namely speedway is not attractive enough to youngsters, nothing is going to change. We can blame the "brothers" and Tom Dick and Harry but the real issue is that speedway is not staged to make it attractive, it is staged via track preparation to give the home team as much advantage as possible, as what many traditional fans want is runaway home wins. Understandable maybe to an extent, but unless our sport has a sea change and begins to prepare tracks solely for quality racing a hundred and one rule or personnel changes will achieve absolutely nothing. But, alas, we are trapped in this vicious circle of home track advantage. I recall a few seasons back at Arena Essex watching a terrific speedway meeting which the Hammers lost in a last heat decider. The chap beside me, a Hammers fan, complained loudly about it being a load of rubbish but the following week when they won by a distance in a meeting full of boring processional races he was in raptures.

Fair enough, so I can now stop looking to see where that has been stated officially.

I wasn't aware that any official decision had yet been made on that subject.

Would it not be fair to presume that is part of the reason?

It is interesting that Sweden's Division One will revert to four team matches next season as reported in the Speedway Star. Perhaps this might be an option for British Elite league racing? At least it would improve the chances of retaining some of the top riders.

I agree with pandorum regarding tactical riders, but if double point rides are deemed necessary why not make it a double point heat, (as opposed to a double point ride), for both teams, but only the team behind can choose the heat. Then they have to take the chance that they might be successful if they choose wisely, but could be worse off if it backfires.

If stadium facilities are so important why did Arena Essex get packed to the rafters on both Saturday and Sunday last weekend for bangers, stock cars and such? So much so that people were parking in the motorway service station. This has never ever happened at any speedway meeting held there.

I don't think the state it is in has anything remotely to do with the commentators, nor is it anything to do with the condition of the various venues. Speedway has been on telly for a while now and the attendances are still going down. There must be viewers who have stumbled across meetings on the box but not felt any compunction to witness it live. We really need to admit that our sport is just not entertaining enough in it's present format, GP's perhaps apart.