macinter

? Hello sailor? So all tattood sailors are low lifes too then. What a load of old tosh. It's 2013, for goodness sake. It's fashionable. Remember drainpipes and jackets down to your knees, then long hair and now its shaved heads. Its just fashion. Get over it. It's what's inside that matters. And I'm no spring chicken.

But how well known you are is not how it is supposed to be judged. It is supposed to be about how good you are at your chosen sport. It's just that with the BBC some sports are more "chosen" than others. I agree he will not get a place if you mean the top three but I will not be surprised if he is in the top ten. But win it? No. But the BBC will still try very hard to prove they are impartial.

I think the BBC might just let Tai in to their final ten of SPOTY just to show how unbiased (cough, cough) they are, but just like Phil Taylor last year he will never be allowed to win. As far as sports are concerned the BBC are about as leftie leaning as Attilla the Hun. Now if Princess Kate could just climb on a horse and canter round the Palace garden, or go for a walk wielding a tennis racket it would be all done and dusted.

Totally agree with this. Granted there were a couple of unavoidable and totally acceptable delays on Monday due to fallen riders but, that apart, why for the second week running did it take nearly three hours to run thirty heats? And why did we have so many lengthy discussions and interviews when the racing was clearly falling behind schedule? I found myself yet again shouting at the telly " For ***** sake just get on with it".

Part of the problem with speedway is that people will not turn out for meetings which are relatively meaningless. A possible solution,( I confess borrowed from a friend) could be to include all teams in the play offs. This could be done by making the provisional league meetings solely a means of determining the finishing league positions. When this has been completed it would then be necessary, with a league of ten teams, to cut the number to eight to incorporate quarter finals, semi finals and a final. All teams would be seeded (1 to 10) according to their league position and the number one seed would have the choice of playing off against one of the two teams which finished 9 and 10 or passing to the next round. The second team would then have the same choice, followed by the third and so on until two meetings have been arranged to cut the field to eight. When this has been completed the same format would be used for the next round with the top four teams, in the same order, having choice of opponent from the bottom four left. Same format in the semi finals thus making every single meeting meaningful. And as we have seen it is meaningful meetings which draw in the crowds.

Exactly my opinion. The world championship is the event which is most likely to capture the attention of the National Press. It should be as good as it can be made to be.

The really important thing is that Tai races wearing Union Jack colours, plus he is a good looking lad and a real reflection of the youth of today, tatoos and all, with the potential to give British speedway racing the biggest boost it has had for a long, long time. If he stays relatively free from injuries he could be looking at a plus ten year spell at the very top of the speedway tree.

Perhaps I should have made it clear that I wasn't just referring to those who post on here.

Whatever has happened to those who constantly claimed, and still do, that you cannot be a world champion unless you qualify? Have they gone or are they just resting?

I doubt if the BSPA is all that much different to other organisations, there will be good promoters and not so good promoters, but nearly every man, or woman and his/her dog know how speedway should be run, or not run. Just like I know how football should be run, how cricket should be run, how Councils should be run, how immigration should be dealt with, how the recent floods in the South East should have been sorted, how the European Union should be organised, how repairing the roads should be sorted, how the banking crisis should have been dealt with, what we should do about dodgy builders and plumbers, what we should do about the drunks in our town centres, and the drunks driving cars and those who use mobile phones whilst driving and what we should do with those who break the speed limits, etc. etc. etc. I know what we should do with all of them but I have no idea what to do about sorting speedway racing!!

Banger racing and stock cars overall generally attract much bigger crowds than speedway and often take place at the same venues but get hardly any TV space, although the size of the crowds may be partially down to relatives of the drivers. One meeting at Arena Essex a few years ago was reported to have attracted over 20,000, which is a lot more than most speedway GP's get. And bangers may be just a bit of fun as my son and his girl friend, who both raced, perceived it to be but, as far as I am aware, stock cars are quite a serious and expensive business even though they don't appear to do much marketing. Including snooker and darts in the "class" equation is also slightly misleading as people from all walks of life play both, even if it is in their own games room for some. So maybe we get a better deal than we think.

I have a friend who is a promoter of speedway racing and some of the hoops he has to jump through are mind boggling. It will take someone very extraordinary to sort out the problems afflicting domestic speedway. Guest riders alone is just a total mine field.

Trying to be positive perhaps it would be better to make all meetings some sort of semi-individual event with riders just representing their clubs, as half the time they don't appear to know what the score is in team events anyway, as has been shown several times in televised meetings. This could mean teams fielding more than one rider at their own home events, with the rest made up of riders from several other clubs. Would take some dedicated organising but it might attract more away fans if they all had their own rider to support. This could also be run on broadly similiar lines to the GP's.

I don't think there is much more that can be done to improve domestic speedway attendances, which continue to decline. The plain truth is that todays youngsters nearly all want to be footballers and the training for young lads is so well organised. They have proper coaches at games who run the touchline shouting at the boys to "keep your shape" etc. And all the boys need is a pair of boots. Nor is it a dangerous sport when compared to speedway racing. Most youngsters in our sport come from a speedway background, apart from those who switch from other motor bike sports, such as Craig Cook. Suggestion after suggestion has been profferred, but nothing is changing, nor is it likely to, unless speedway suddenly becomes fashionable again. How to make it fashionable again is the key but the magic bullet has still not been found and I have yet to hear, or see, anything at all remotely encouraging enough to make me feel any confidence about the future, GP's apart. And even they are still shunned by a sizeable number of traditional fans who won't recognise a world champion unless he qualifies.

I have heard from what I believe to be a reliable source that every Elite league track is currently running at a loss.

Well, that's a start anyway. Plus I like the suggestion of a four team tournament as it would be possible to compile teams where all of the riders were of similiar ability, which is not the case in the current EL set up. It might just persuade SKY to carry on a little longer.

So is this the end of EL speedway as I have been told that it is only the income from SKY which keeps it going? One big league here we come?

Young Tai potentially the best ever British speedway rider?

Thinking just about British youngsters does anyone know what went wrong with the Welsh lad Tom Young who had a great season with the Scunthorpe National League side last year? I know he had a few races with the Islanders but seemed to have a lot of trouble with his machinery and has disappeared again.