Daytripper

No need for a rumour mill. Only 2 weeks to the Dinner and Dance and some new signings to be announced then.

He was right about Jerran Hart still being in prison when people tried to pull the wool over his eyes. You have to get up early in the morning to catch the ace Speedway Star seller out.

AJ had his 2016 main sponsors lined up before the season finished, All connected to Lakeside not Coventry.

if you analyse the difference in performance between the 1-5's and the EDR reserves the only team genuinely pants are Wolves.. Lakeside and Leicester suffered by losing their top tier reserves at a relatively early stage of the season and not being able to get an adequate replacement because of the fast track shambles. If you look at the scores last night Coventry won by 14 points, but Lakesides 1-5 only fell short by 6 points against Cov's 1-5 which is not bad by any standards for an away team, and that was with Ben Barker in at short notice and understandably only scoring 1 point. If they Josh Grajonek had turned up it would likely have been better . That is a pattern of many matches this season with the difference in scores being mainly at reserve, especially with Lakeside. If it had not been for the ffast track it would probably have been a much closer season all round, especially amongst the middle order teams. Take Poole and Swindon out of the equation and the combines averages of the 1-5's look like this :- Belle Vue 32.56 Lakeside 32.45 Coventry32.43 Kings Lynn 32.00 Leicester 31.40 Wolves 29.56 So in terms of averages the lakeside 1-5 have done a reasonable job. roughly comparable to Belle Vue and Coventry. Leicester have struggled a bit but have been uniquely unlucky with riders walking out and to a lesser extent with injuries. Certainly it was a devastating blow to lose Josh Auty. Certainly I think we could say it would have been a more interesting season if the fast track had been better organised and there is too great a gap between the best and the worst of the fast track riders, when you consider that some EDR riders ride at N01 in their PL clubs and others don't even have a reserve berth in the PL. But whichever way you break it down Wolves have got worse and worse as the season went on. Losing Lewis Blackbird to injury didn't help but for the 1-5 to be nearly 2 points adrift from Leicester, with the problems Leicester has had, and nearly 3 points down on the others is poor indeed.. One has to ask whether there is something wrtong with the way the club is being run.

The TM can put the reserves in any order he likes. According to the programme Stefan Neilson had been booked by Lakeside but he of course was rapidly drafted into the GB u/21 team when Robert Lambert was pronounced unfit to ride .However he would have been riding otherwise. I cant see that Belle Vue have done anything wrong but not loaning out guests to play off rivals. You always need a promoters permission to book one of his riders as a guest.

From Jon Cooks programme notes:- "I have no news to bring, good or bad as the season closes but over a curry with Stuart at the weekend we both felt that the tide has turned somewhat off-track for us in recent weeks and that we now have real hope that in time we along with , with other interested parties can build a club and a facility to make you all very proud." After talking about the riders he then concludes " I hope, and very much expect, to see you all in 2016" So, obviously there are still some hurdles to be negotiated and nothing is written in stone at the moment but we can at least say the door still seems to be open.

First of all, hats of to Adam Roynon for the guts he showed to going out in heat 12 to get that vital point. He didn't complain of injury and therefore didn't see the M.O. so wasn't pulled out of the meeting. I feel gutted for the guy. He is one of the nicest people you could wish to meet but so unlucky with injuries. I spoke to him afterwards and he had been so enthusiastic about being signed by Lakeside for most of the remaining meetings, now this happens. Even the local MP mentioned him in on Twitter this morning The Lakeside reserve berth must be haunted. Birks , Boxall , Roynon,and Ellis, all out injured and the Fast Track Farce means no adequate replacement can be signed. Unless the EDR system is sorted out for next season it will kill the sport in double quick time. A good idea, but as usual poorly applied. Congratulations to the Bees fans. A special team this year with no real stand out stars but no weak links either. I hope they go well in the play-offs. Certainly deserve to. Hans and Bomber always good to watch as far as I am concerned. Lucky for Lakeside and unlucky for Cov that Bomber cant gate otherwise he would be devastating

It appears the Woodroff family are content to sell the stadium and move on. They seem to have had no contact with the Council with a view to continuing to run stock car racing. their investment is a clapped put old stadium in need of extensive renovation and sale of it under a compulsory purchase order would make a handy retire ment fund for them. The speedway promotion on the other hand have had negotiations with Thurrock Council, local councillors have been to some meetings , so I believe have prospective parliamentary candidates before the election. The bottom line is that the developers are only interested in maximum profit which means no speedway, but the Council have to consider provision of leisure facilities and speedway is a big leisure feature. What Jon Cook was saying was a plea for maximum support for the resigning matches to shore up the councils position in backing speedway as it is the Council that ultimately decide planning permission

Groan ..... Give it arrest mate. There are two sides to the story and what you or anyone else believes depends on which side of the fence they are on. Nothing will change that. Richie has already taken a booking at Lakeside in a challenge match, so the divisions are obviously healing. I spoke to him when he was at Lakeside and he is OK. Whatever is past is past. Constantly digging it up wont do any good.

More importantly. a collection on behalf of Rory Schlein raised £745 , a mark of the esteem in which he is held at Lakeside. Best wishes for a good recovery Roo-Boy.

Belle Vue were never going to win this. Six rides from Zagar including a t/r and some exceptionally inspired riding from Scott kept the scores reasonable but the plain fact was that once we got Zagars R/R ride for Cook out of the way in heat 6 Belle Vue just never had the middle order firepower to keep it going and couldn't plug the gaps. Craig Cook has still never ever been to Lakeside in 8 years of riding ! The so-called "man in form " Zengota was unbelievably poor. The highlight for me was the new improved Adam Ellis. Last time Belle Vue came I think he scored an unsteady looking 2, this time it was a confident paid 14 from 5 rides which shows the measure of his improvement. For all the faults of the EDR system has been a good thing for Adam to be riding in a team alongside people like AJ , and Richard Lawson, and listening to them. He is much faster from the gate now and riding better lines. TBF he was shepherded home by Lawson and Swiderski a couple of times but he still had to put himself up there to be shepherded which he wouldn't have done a few months ago, so well done to him. Nice to so Davey and Swiderski back in the Hammers side. Swiderski was everything that Zengota wasn't. a great trier and a great team man. I hope he goes well for Leicester. Davey will apparently be taking a lot of guest bookings for the injured Kim Nilsson so it will be just like old times for a while.

Well said . Most people have no idea of the enormous time and effort Neil puts in behind the scenes to helping young riders, in addition to holding down a full time job outside of speedway. Well done to Adam as well . I don't know what you are feeding him on but he is starting to look a totally different (and much improved ) rider the last few weeks.

Looking forward to seeing my mate Swidders back for this one, even if he will be on the wrong side of the pits. Also good to have Davey Watt back as a guest for the Hammers, in place of Kim Nilsson. Kim has been having a good season and Davey is probably the only rider on his average that can be considered a fairly equal replacement around Lakeside as long as he doesn't have one of his famous howlers. I don't like making predictions on scorelines because anything can happen in this sport but on current form Lakeside should have enough firepower to see them comfortably home, especially if Mikkel and Ashley carry on last Mondays form. Weather seems to be looking good as well. Should be a nice evening.

That's not a fair comment. Its years since a visiting rider was even booed at Lakeside let alone hated. The Lambert camp do themselves no favours though. People have already mentioned him sitting at the back pulling Bridger style wheelies after he got shut out on the first two bends. Last time KL came it was his parents who seemed to think the pit rules applied to everyone but themselves, last night it was Robert who was eventually fined by the meeting referee after ignoring warnings about his conduct in the pits. It was a bit reminiscent of how moody Kasprzak could be when he was younger . He is an undoubted talent but also a moody17 year old who has some growing up to do emotionally. There have been other s like it in the past and we can all think of those who grew up and those that didn't. sometimes throwing a career away in the process. On a more positive note, I thought that after the Greg -v-Nicki controversy in the week some of the cut and thrust between AJ and NKI in heats 13 and 15 and also Neils pass on Kim in heat13 were great examples of very tough, but very fair and very sporting racing by true professionals and true sportsman with mutual respect. Give me a those two against Greg and Nicki any day

I think you are probably right. KL can replace Rory on the track but are unlikely to find another captain like him. No disrespect at all to NKI who is a great rider but he is to quiet to be an effective captain. Rory is a far more outgoing personality

Jon Cook was not the person who physically compiled the fixtures this years or last. He might have had some sort of oversight/supervisory/front man/contact point role but I don't know whether that's the case or not. The fact is that whoever compiles the fixtures doesn't sit plucking dates out of the air. They can only work to the availability dates the clubs submit. The bottom line though is that ultimately the fixture list is the responsibility of the MC to approve just as its their responsibility to confirm averages and everything else. The clue is in the name - Management Committee, although management does not always seem to be their strong point. Nevertheless the buck should stop with them

Very good post. I got to know Lewis a bit when he was at Lakeside. I don't know him well but I probably know him better than any of those on here that are keen to put the boot in. Unlike some on here appear to be I am not a psychologist so I can't comment on the complexities in Lewis' life that brought him to this situation. What I do know though is that the two riders Lewis liked most were Rico and Nicki Pedersen ( Lee and Nicki were very close friends with each other). I don't know to what extent losing Lee has impacted on Lewis but it must have been a big sense of loss. Maybe Lewis could handle the loss to a point but it hit him when other things were going wrong in his life. I don't know how people who don't know Lewis and how much he admired Lee think they can make a judgment on it. I am not defending him and not excusing his lack of responsibility over a long period of time but the bloke has problems that only he can sort out, and to some extent only he knows what they are. I don't think it falls to those who have never met him to pass judgment one way or the other. It's clearly the end of the road for his speedway career.

He pulled out of his Polish meeting yesterday after two rides, scoring 1and 0. Surely for the sake of the paying fans this meeting should be postponed. Up to the Wolves promotion of course but I can't see many punters forking out £18 .

Well, if you bother to turn up at the forum you'll find out. This is the trouble, we had a fans forum last November and Cook was very frank about a number of things, including the clubs future and the future of the Raceway. We learned that he had come off the MC specifically to work full time on securing a home for the club and was negotiating with various agencies including the local council and Sport England who were both being very helpful. Every effort is being made to keep the location more or less where it is now. Unfortunately some of those who either couldn't attend or couldn't be bothered to attend decided that rumours are better than fact and we start hearing different pieces of gossip every week. Someone nwas telling me a couple of weeks ago them stadium had actually been sold but the people that rent the shops are saying they have it from the stadium owners that the stadium will be running in 2016, and they should know but the rumour mangers are not interested in that. One proposed development down the road has just had planning permission refused and needs to be re-submitted and there is not even a builders shovel at theRaceway yet. We have know for years that the stadium was under threat when the Thames Gateway development got going, and it's pretty obvious that the stadium buildings, thrown up in the '70's are more or less life expired so sooner or later something will have to be done, but people spreading rumours damage the club and the sport. It looks like a combination of "if's but's and maybe" at the moment and no doubt more will be revealed at the forum in a couple of weeks time, if the gossip mongers and soapbox merchants can contain themselves for that long.

Oh that was ages ago. I probabably see more of the pits than most who have commented on here. Cant comment on Garrity butquite honestly Edward does seem very much a team man on and off track than people have been saying .Can't speak for his days at Brandon. Until this year the keyboard warriors have had some pretty harsh things about Bombers attitude and been wrong another really nice bloke that has been slagged off for all the wrong reasons. Most riders are much different than the "experts "on here try to tell us. Ed is Ok, as are most of the others. Most of the awful ones don't ride n this country anymore. Ed gets a lot of stick that is OTT. See what I mean about keyboard warriors going OTT with the abuse and name calling?

None of that is the issue in this line of discussion. The point was about Kennet supposedly being in decline when the fact is he has increased his starting avererage significantly. Which ever way you look at it that is not a decline. Silencer gate is irrelevant . He got caught with an illegal silencer and served a ban. No dispute on those facts.

Well come on then, tell us what average he should have come in on. You do know what the attained EL figure was don't you? Or is that just cheap shot based on what someone else has said ?

. Edward has just put nearly two points on his starting average. Not sure how that makes him a rider in decline

More mis-information from the poster with massive chip on his shoulder about anything to do with Lakeside/Jon Cook. The fixtures are the responsibility of the MC. Jon Cook is not on the MC and therefore has no responsibility for anything excpept running Lakeside.

The second sentence applies to probably 70% of riders on modern machinery, but probably only 20% of riders are consistently reliable gaters, so you can't knock Rich for that. Having said that, he has been pulling off some pretty smart first\second bends lately, and if you are in front by that stage overtaking is not always the most needed talent. Secondly, modern bikes are extremely fickle. The bike he rode at Kings Lynn last week didn't do much for him but he rode the same bike at Lakeside on Friday and got a paid max. All he he done in the meantime was fit a new ignition but that was the difference between struggling and flying but it's not an easy thing to find out what is lacking on a modern bike and sometimes riders go for weeks without being able to find out what's wrong while the keyboard warriors accuse them of not trying Thirdly Richard is more well organised and methodical than many. The opposite of Lewis Bridger in fact. He keeps notes of set-ups and gearings and other details from track to track which give consistency. He has listened a and learned a lot from Dave Watt about racing lines and that seems to be paying off on his first bends now, certainly at Lakeside. It's surprising how many young riders don't listen and learn. Maybe he is not world champion material but he certainly has qualities that a lot of young Brits ought to be looking at and thinking about. But the reason he has won Lakesides Rider Of The Year for the last two years is probably more due to the fact that he is a thoroughly nice bloke.