Daytripper

That sounds like the usual Shovlar spin to me, aimed at stirring, but does anybody have a link to what was actually said, in what context and the words used ? Kelvin is a bright guy and very articulate.. He is also a riders man who doesn't speak in BSF language. I don't believe for one moment that he spoke in blunt terms of "Getting rid" of another rider. I am sure it would have been expressed differently to that. After all he said about building the team last week I don't believe he is so stupid as to alienate riders by saying things as pejoratively and as bluntly as that. as that. I think he is far to astute to give the impression that he disagrees with management thinking when he hasnt been in the job 5 minutes Nobody wanted to see Bjarne go but as we now know he would be missing a total of seven meetings in all then after all that was said about r/r last year the team can't be going into a quarter of the league programme with r/r for the second heatleader, especially against teams like Belle Vue or Poole. The only rider who could be dropped to fit Lewis average in would be Kim Nilsson who not only has done nothing wrong, but he was one of the first riders signed up and is a fans favourite so it would be monstrous to drop him this close to the start of the season. Once again all we have so far from Lewis is talk and expectation. I hope for everyones sake he delivers but he still has to walk the walk. He still has to show he can score well on all the away tracks and he still has to show he has a new attitude. Kim is in much the same position as Lewis, in that he still has to reach his potential and still has to master most of the away tracks, although he has on occasions topped the away scores,which I dont think Lewis has..Plus Kim fits in with the rest of the team , which Lewis has still to learn to do. I'll ask Kelvin at Press and Practice, but I bet the point he was making was not quite as the Poole stirrer in chief would like us to think

Dave Watt would disagree with that. There was a big row when Lewis nearly put him in the fence. I like Lewis to talk to but he did cut a bit of a lone figure in the pits and since Kelvin and Stuart Douglas was emphasising the need for team spirit at the forum its one of the things that will have to be sorted out . The sort of thing Kelvin was talking about was something more than just getting along with people. At the fans forum last week Jon and Kelvin said they had a long meeting with Lewis (about 3hours I think they said) and Kelvin was saying he thought Lewis had sorted out a lot of his personal problems and was in a better place mentally than he had been for a long time. Jon had also met with Revolution Speedway who are backing Lewis B. and Lewis Kerr. They seem to be providing solid financial support and I doubt if they would be doing that unless they were satisfied of his commitment as they seem to be a very professional outfit. I think Revolution Speedway hold the key to a lot of it. When Lewis was really flying in 2014 he had the two best engines he had ever had, one of them was a GM from Peter Johns that suited Lewis riding style of riding the bike very hard, like Peter Kildemand., I think the engines he gets form Revolution will need to be equally as good We shall have to see but they are Jawas which most riders don't favour over here although I think Kim Nilsson was riding one until recently, and possibly still is. That is where the real unknown quantity really lies. It seems Lewis Kerr is putting a lot of effort into his fitness and also practicing all over the place so maybe Lewis B will be joining him on that. One thing that nobody could fault Lewis Bridger on was his work ethic in training. The other unknown quantity is whether LBR will be riding anywhere else. In 2014 he was riding in Poland and doing very well, albeit in a lower league but it was keeping him sharp and keeping his confidence up. We don't know whats happening on that front but its probably important that he gets more racing than the intermittent Elite League. As with the rest of the team so much depends on Kelvin in his "George Martin " role.

Jonsson (as in Dennis not AJ } was only signed to give him a trial in GB. Jon Cook said last week that he contacted Lakeside during the winter more with a view to his long term career than this season. He is not in any particular hurry to start his British career and is not EL standard yet, but according to Jon if he scores a couple of points in the opening meeting everyone will be happy and they'll take things from there.. Maybe the plan is to sign him cheaply, wait till he improves then sell him to Poole at a healthy profit as they appear to be doing with Adam Ellis ( allegedly )

Well, its a pity you never had the backbone to attend the forum yourself and call Jon Cook the names to his face you have been putting on the internet forum and you could have stood up defended your abusive remarks about Neil Vatcher, who, whatever ones views on him as a team manager is a thoroughly decent bloke.

Good fans forum tonight, and a very good turnout. A pity some keyboard warriors are so quick to criticise because a lot of ground was covered explaining why things are the way they are and what is happening. Stuart Douglas was there , over from L.A showing he is still very much involved. Kelvin was very impressive, I thought, and it seems his knowledge and experience will pay off over the season. Jon Cook mentioned a number of changes to the way the club is being run, which I wont go into, but with regard to the squad system he expects there to be another announcement next week giving more information but there are still some details to be ironed out. There may be a few more teams announcing squads but it seems Lakeside are ahead of the game at the moment with one more rider to be announced at the bottom end and possibly an adjustment at the higher level depending on fixture clashes now the Polish league is running mid week meetings. With regard to job sharing for No 1's there are still some details to be ironed out. The position taken by Belle Vue and Lakeside is that if Matej Zagar and AJ can commit to a full season why cant the others, but if clubs do have job sharing No 1's there must be an agreement that between them they will cover ALL the away fixtures so the paying public don't turn up to find a guest at No1 because the signed riders have gone swanning off to some other event. (subject to injuries of course). With regard to fixed race days he wasn't sure if it would ever happen. If it did happen the only likely days would probably be Wednesday and Thursday but it wasn't a simple thing and even with fixed race days he didn't think many of the GP riders would be back. he said changing race nights was difficult because they result in a drop in attendances and when Eastbourne tried changing to Thursday they lost support that never came back. I have the impression that if the squad system is properly handled that will get over much of the problem of D/U riders going missing with fixture clashes. Plenty of other information specific to Lakeside that I wont go into but and I have only put on here a broad summary. More formal announcements are likely to follow in the course of time. In other words you cant tell us which riders the club were lumbered with that didn't want to ride for them because you just made that up .And you don't know what Dave Watt thought about the club because you never spoke to him And you don't know about the squad because if you had read the website you criticise you would know about it.

Er, the announcement on the website today which you apparently copied and posted without reading carries the headline " New Addition to Hammers Squad " . The clue is in the word SQUAD which has been appearing on the website since soon after the AGM last October, if you ever bothered to read it. Idiot. BTW you still haven't told us which riders Lakeside were "lumbered" with that didn't want to be there or how you know they didn't want to be there..

If you are on top of all this in formation on what basis do you make the claim that Dave Watt didn't want to be there ? Watty has been quite open about the fact that Poole is his first choice but that doesn't mean he didnt want to be at Lakeside or didn't put the effort in. How come you ignore the fact that in his first two years his average was as good, if not better than anything he achieved with Poole ? How come you overlook the fact that he was carrying an injury for much of 2014 ? How come you ignore the fact that in the dark months after we lost Rico it was Watty that basically held the team together ? And who are these other riders you claim we were lumbered who didn't want to be there ? Peter Karlsson ? Kim Nilsson ? Kauko Neiminen ? Stuart Robson, ? Richard Lawson ? Edward Kennett ? Jonas Davisson ? Or is Andreas Jonsson who according to Phillip Rising has turned down offers from every EL to ride at Lakeside.? If you are going to make these claims you really need to tell us who the riders are and how you came to know they didn't want to be there otherwise people will think you are talking through your posterior.

According to some? Like who ? A few forum daydreamers ? It is very unlikely that more than a couple of GP riders will want to come back anyway. The fact is that Polish clubs are putting a lot of pressure on Polish riders not to ride in the UK and the one who pays the piper basically calls the tune. try talking to some riders about what the situation is like in Poland these days. A bed of roses it ain't.

You could make the effort to turn up at the fans forum tonight when we will all get it straight from the horses mouth (or at least from the promotion)/ Or you could wait until tomorrow when details will be more widely known, Far someone who supposedly didn't want to be there Dave Watt put a lot of effort in behind the scenes helping riders like Richard Lawson and Ben Morley in particular and their improvement under Davey's captaincy is there for all to see , especially Richards. No denying the fact that Davey has his howlers and. like his mate Adam Shields. goes into one if things upset him. as Poole fans would be the first to agree but the facts are that in Davey's first two years at Lakeside he posted two of the highest CMA's of his career , and in his third year he spent most of the time carrying an injury and on top of that was put into the No 1 slot which he wasn't, and never was really suited for when Peter Karlsson went off the boil.. Unfortunately the perennial moaners choose to ignore the fact that if a rider is carrying an injury it invariably affects his performance. Nine at the last count I think. Is there anything significant in the fact that Lakeside asset Stuart Robson is appearing at the opening meeting ? He is the only rider announced for the Spring Trophy meeting that has not so far been linked to Lakeside in one way or another ?

He hasn't said it publicly in connection with 2016 but he is hardly going to say " I am not coming because they won't pay what I asked for " is he ? No rider says such things, publicly, nor does any promoter say " He was asking too much for his points return " But let's tie a couple of loose ends together. Flag rag says he wanted £4K for a guest appearance. That's a lot of money. There are a lot of good riders guest for much less. One of his mechanics said on Facebook that he left Lakeside "by mutual agreement " because they wanted him to take a pay cut when his scores were falling at a rate of knots and he wasn't justifying his wage. I had heard before all that happened that he was on a big upfront wage. I can't tell you where it came from except that it was from the pits, not from a bloke in the pub . Not that I am criticising the guy because, as I said before at his stage of a brilliant career I wouldn't expect him to be riding fit pin money, but equally promoters have to try to work to a budget. I have more information which I am not going to put on here but you'll have to either accept what I and flag rag say or not accept it.

He isn't interested because, as flag rag says he wants fixed money, and a big wedge at that, which is alright when he is consistently scoring big points from a heat-leaderposition but sadly he can't do that anymore. That was the whole trouble at Lakeside when he went off the boil. I don't blame the guy. At this stage of his career he doesn't need to fly all over the place for small change, and good on him for seeking out the best deals he can get but promoters are not going him pay big him big money if he is no longer scoring big points.

The point I was making is that Larsens demands might not be as extravagant as first appears. Mads, for example probably needs a van and a workshop, as do all other riders who fly in and out. That aspect, as I said often comes down to sponsorship where the big names are concerned. The problem with Larsen is that he is not a particularly big name and not yet established a a big draw in terms of punters through the turnstiles. If Larsen wants more money than he is worth then the truth probably is he doesn't really want to come and you don't want that sort of rider in the side. It's much the same with Kenny Bjerre. I hear that some months ago he had discussions with an EL club but he wanted big money and showed no particular commitment so they signed someone else. As he still doesn't have a job I dare say other clubs have had the same experience with him, because on paper he is a signable rider on his average. On the other hand one has to ask what sort of contact Chapman has with other riders on the continent. He has had a bit of luck the last two years with teams that fell neatly into place but does he know many riders about from those few? We don't really know the answer to that but what we do know is that people like Matt Ford, Jon Cook and Rosco keep in touch with a variety of riders and they were the ones whe had their riders lined up in good time.

That's not necessarily outrageous. Plenty of riders have sponsored vans. For example Mikkel Bech was one of several riders in Rentatruck vans last year and was no better than Larsen. It shouldn't be overly difficult for Chapman to fix up a bit of sponsorship in that direction. It's what promoters do. What did Neils do for a van last year?. I bet he didn't buy his own. Of course he will need a workshop. He can't do his bikes in the street. Quite often with foreign riders the club provide the mechanic and the mechanic has a workshop. Foreign riders usually fly in ride the bikes and fly out again next morning. They don't usually do much to the bikes themselves. Organising those things go with the territory if you are a promoter. So it really only comes down to cash. Riders talk , so Larsen must have a rough idea of the sort of deal NKI was on and plenty of top riders are on a wage so either Larsen doesn't want to come or KL don't want him, but if both sides had the will it seems likely a deal could be done.

Steve you know as well as I do that Matt Ford is one of the promoters that start making their plans and lining up riders from about mid season. It's pretty obvious that Belle Vue were getting sorted early on, lining their riders up and at the Lakeside dinner and dance Jon Cook told us 5 riders were offered jobs at the Coventry away meeting in August and they all said they were interested. Kings Lynn and Leicester seem to have dropped a major clanger in dithering too long. Having said that it's difficult to see how these things can be firmed up earlier than the AGM on October.It is common knowledge that they have a pre-AGM a few weeks before that to sketch out their general plans.

"Someone" might start an unofficial forum. It would be a good thing if "someone" did. But I suspect that "someone" will continue to sit on his backside complaining and hope that "someone else" will do the job. As he always does.

I think the change of TV dates in Poland has probably thrown a spanner in the works a bit. In SS Jon Cook says he expects more information to be available by 16th Feb. Conveniently the Lakeside fans forum will be on 18th Feb so we should get the full picture then

I think that's probably closer to the truth. The Internet Fans Forum was disconnected from the main site in 2008/9 because of the trolling and abuse that was coming from a small number of so called fans then re-connected a year or so later when things had settled down a bit. Since then things have moved on and we have things like Twitter and Facebook where a number of regular fans have moved over. This has seems to have coincided with the appearance of a new chronic complainer/troll and as Bryn pointed out only relatively small number regularly use the site and of those that do the most prolific posters seem to be those that never go any more and whose only function is to stir up arguments as opposed to discussing in grown up manner. As Skidder 1 has said, Lakeside Live is a pretty good site and the Twitter and Facebook pages are accessible from the main Hammers site so its not difficult. Maybe it's time for some ( including myself ) to come into the 21st Century. There will of course be the fans forum at Orsett Hall in a couple of weeks time, the third in just over a year, in which Jon Cook and Kelvin Tatum will take questions on anything to do with Speedwáy. Funny enough those who were always on the Internet forum moaning about this that and the other never seem to turn up at these functions and put their complaints to the management face to face which I guess just about sums up how bothered they really are.

No doubt all will be revealed at the fans forum on 18th Feb. and not before. Be there !

That's a big sum for a little chap!

I think that used to be the case . I remember as a boy going to watch my cousin who rode solos and passenger on a sidecar and I am sure in they were all going the same way at that time. I haven't been to a grass track for donkeys years so I don't know what they do now. I believe they go both ways. If it is the Thames Estuary you can see it could well be on the Isle of Grain , a few miles up the road from Gravesend. Plenty of spare land there especially in the 1960's and not many houses to complain about the noise, not that many people complained anyway back in the day. I rode in a few trials there and it was one of my favourite courses with a really good organising club but I cant remember which one it was now .

....and reduced admission including under 16's free

Holder and Ward were a very unique combination that were worth going to see once or twice in a season. Sayfutinov had, for want of a better expression a novelty value but would people still be flocking to see him if he was riding every meeting every season when the novelty wore off ? I think it also has to do with a winning side. Would Poole be getting good attendances if they had Holder and Ward together inferior riders and were losing at home all the time ? By comparison I draw the comparison with Lakeside who had Andreas Jonsson last season, who is immensely popular there on a personal level, but attendances were the lowest ever under the present promotion because match after match was being lost at reserve. The home 1-5 outscored the opposition on every home meeting except one (and that was when Darcy came with Swindon ) but seven of them were lost because the EDR reserves were being hopelessly outscored. I think there are a combination of reasons why people decide to go or not go to a speedway meeting and star riders is only one small part of the jigsaw puzzle. However history proves that w inning team gets better support than a losing team over the course of a season, and I think the most important thing is reasonably evenly matched sides that can win most of the time in front of their home fans.

Well if it's only two EL clubs then that's tough. Surely they tell their number ones who is running the show or they turn with a PL 6 pointer. I appreciate your information is not first hand but it seems incredible that the fixture list is being held by two riders from two clubs. If it is that simple then it must be capable of being sorted. Presumably Walasek and Wosniac do the trip every home match so it's doable. I was talking to a Polish rider last year who was telling me how difficult Polish clubs are getting, often wanting riders to,practice on a Saturday and if you don't ask "How high?" When they tell you to jump they can make life very difficult for you. Maybe that has something to do with it.

Coventry are coming to Lakeside on a Saturday, as they do most years. Some years Coventry have been down twice on a Saturday. If Coventry are prepared to come to Lakeside on a Saturday then clearly they would go to Leicester on a Saturday and if Lakeside are prepared to field a team to race on a Saturday at home then clearly they can field a team to race at Leicester on a Saturday. How is that Lakeside and Coventry can sort out a Saturday fixture between them but Leicester cant ? How is it that in the past teams have gone to Eastbourne on a Saturday ? From what I hear its Leicester being difficult and wanting teams with GP riders to ride on the Saturday of GP weekends. Maybe that's not the whole picture but its difficult to believe they are all ganging up on poor little old Leicester to drive it out of business when the whole Sky deal would collapse if they do. EDIT : just noticed that Coventry are at Lakeside twice on a Saturday (May and August) so clearly Saturday meetings can be arranged.

How do you know it won't cut crowds? Television broadcasts have increased in Poland and crowds have dropped. Crowds are generally lower in Sky broadcasts so why should they be higher because of some inferior betting broadcast ?