The Pedaler

My memory of what exactly he said is not exact. I don't think he mentioned entry fees, but certainly the cost of getting into the meetings would have included other things and I think that the cost of insurance was mentioned, and maybe the cost to be licensed to compete...or something along those lines, not to mention transport costs. He was making the case for why some British juniors were not entering international competition, when faced with costs involved against the benefits/rewards that they would get from such competitions.

If SVEMO was a saintly organisation, maybe Freddie Lindgren would still be available for selection. But that's another issue. On the basis that he who wants to call the tune has to pay the piper, if a governing body wants its riders to travel to another country to compete in international competition, then the very least it should do is to make and pay for all the arrangements to do so. That will include flights,travel, accommodation, out of pocket expenses, visas (if necessary) and any other incidental costs. If there are additional entry and insurance costs for an event (I seem to recall Phil Morris mentioning the cost of entering a rider into the Euro u21's or something like that last year) then the governing body should foot that bill too. If the governing body is bankrupt and has no money, then that's a matter for the FIM to deal with. If it can't afford to send a team to the SWC, then the FIM shouldn't invite them in until they can afford it. It's unacceptable in my mind for a governing body to tell a rider that they have to pay for the honour of representing their country...sorry NOT "honour", that should have been "compulsion". Jamaica may not have the richest winter sports governing body, but they paid for their bobsleigh team to represent the country at the Winter Olympics, The same principle should apply to speedway riders representing Russia.

Except if your name is Craig Cook and you make out that you can't afford to appear for Team GB in the GB v Australia test series...or your name is Lewis Bridger when you cry off because after laying idle for 5 months, your bikes are still in bits all over the garage floor. The point I think PZ is making is this, and it follows on from the SWC qualifier in Czestochowa last year. When the Swedes, Poles, Czechs etc select their teams, the governing bodies PAY for the riders to attend. They cover their expenses, costs etc etc. Last year, Emil, the Lagutas etc were not going to be paid any money by the Russian authorities to ride in the SWC...so they didn't accept their invitations, and some young Russian juniors were conscripted in instead. This year if Emil or the Lagutas refuse to ride for nothing, and pay their own way on behalf of their country, they will be refused a license to ride outside communist USSR (oops) Russia. Looking at what the Russian authorities have done, it's a step up from any draconian measures anyone else has made of their riders.

The season ticket works out at £13.10 per meeting. Bargain!

And probably on average 20 years older than the typical Polish fan. Remember seeing the aged locals at Leicester looking on with disdain and disapproval at some travelling Polish fans at one of their meetings a couple of years back, and I keep hearing complaints about drunken Polish fans at Cardiff...how dare these people upset the quiet sedate life on the terraces with their rawkus, youthful, boisterous, vociferous and bawdy (oh,and did I mention alcohol fuelled?) support for their team? How dare they enjoy their night out? I'd expect that there will be similar complaints coming from the KL regulars too.

Guys, you are right...this is speedway. Let's just do everything half-cocked. Just like everything else in the sport. It's not the getting it right, it's the making the attempt that matters. That's what we love so much about the sport and that's what's bound to make it succeed again.

So the prices for the Selco Classic are: £15.00 - on the gate £13.10 - as 1/19th the price of a season ticket £7.00 - if bought via Amazon Local £6.50 - if bought as part of a pair of tickets via Groupon £6.00 - if bought as part of a 4-ticket purchase via Groupon £6.40 - if bought as part of a 10-ticket purchase via Groupon (work that one out) And as with anything to do with speedway, it's a cock-up. Not only is the 10-person price a cock-up but as Kitten2502 pointed out, the Groupon promotion does not feature a photo of speedway or anything to do with the Brummies, but one of some MotoX'er doing MotoX stuff instead. How many feet have they got left, that they haven't shot themselves in yet? Where's Brian the Confused.com robot when you need him to save you (ta-dah) pounds? Oh, sorry I forgot...mustn't moan, must one? Sorry, this is a really good promotion, done really well...honest!

Slap in the face for season ticket holders again (are there any of them left any more?) - a season ticket costs £13.10 per meeting, based on the 19 fixtures pre-play-offs, but you can now get in for £7 instead. And it's not the first time either. Last year someone buying tickets from the telephone hotline with all the 10% discounts and taking advantage of all the promotional offers on Groupon etc would have saved over £50 during the course of the season compared to the 2013 season ticket price. No wonder that the season ticket offer was extended, no-one was buying them, and who'd be surprised at that?

By "nonsense" you mean it's happening in Poland and an EL team will probably be disgraced by the outcome, if they have the balls to compete at all? Well, boo hoo! By that, you might as well look at how many of them started in the Premier or National Leagues...which by your reckoning will make those into top quality products that the world of speedway couldn't do without too?

Very odd. I'd have thought that the riders would have been finishing up and wanting to get showered / changed by 3.45pm. Without any decent organisers and decision makers there now, you have to expect odd things to come out. Any news yet on who's accepted their invitations to the Selco Classic Individual meeting yet?

Seems it's not just the Poles, but the Danish national team have had a few days of training too - Now let us guess...who are the top two nations in world speedway at the moment? Still, we're British, we don't need training. Heck, we don't even need to get our bikes built yet... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYrnaJD9YOE#t=13 Not wishing any accidents or illnesses on Bridger, but if he ever had need of the BEN Fund's assistance, I'm sure that they wouldn't tell him that he wasn't getting any money, "because their cheque book wasn't ready", or whatever.

I suggest that one Sunday morning you go to somewhere like Handsworth, Aston, or even Sparkhill (Capital of "British Pakistan", according to Citizen Khan lol) and see if you hear any church bells ringing. Gather your own evidence rather than casting aspersions on others.

Once you have the appropriate decoder and motorised dish installed...going to certain web sites can cut your costs of TV subscription down to about £100 per year in total, for all of Sky UK, all the Polish stations, all the Swedish stations, Italian TV, German TV, French, Spanish, etc...AND many of those stations carry multi-lingual commentaries too, just like DVD's have choices of languages. I've often watched a Premier League football match, live on (e.g.) Al Jazeera Sports, with an English commentary, on a Saturday afternoon when UK stations aren't covering the match. And this thing about not hearing the commentary in English anyway...you don't get that on the terraces when you are at the track either...or don't you go to live speedway?

Indeed it is, which is why in certain inner city areas you won't hear church bells ringing on Sunday mornings any more, due to non-Christians moving into the area and succeeding with their objections about the noise. Why should speedway be any different?

"Tickets From £17" - it says on the front page relating to the Coventry fixture (and the same principle will apply to the rest) It's very unfortunate that this is somewhat misleading, because click on the "get tickets" button and you are offered up a page with all the discounted ticket prices. In other words, it's not "From £17" at all. £17 is the maximum price. The problem is, if you are a pensioner, or a student, or under 16, you may never find out that the cheaper options apply because your expectation, reading "From £17" is that the prices will be £17 and upwards. A bit of an own goal I suspect.

Bridgers reply is a pile of Tomasz Piszcz. He's had all winter to prepare his bikes. In the season, he might only have hours between meetings to sort his equipment out between fixtures. In Poland the riders already have their bikes ready and are in training. In Australia, Darcy Ward has been in training, even with Jason Crump! There is no excuse for several weeks notice of an event, many months after the last time the equipment was needed, for the rider and the bikes not to be ready. I don't buy into the Bull Street excuses off Bridger or the "everything's hunkey dorey" spin from Rosco either. If Bridger is asked to ride for Team GB, he should be asking "where and how often?" NOT coming up with limp lettuce leaf excuses why he can't be ready when everyone else can.

In Poland Patrik Dudek races his first year this year as a senior, having been in a protected junior slot in his team in the way described above. The Poles are using his match average to give him his worth in the team, gained from his rides as a reserve. The question is, what happens when Jason Garrity, etc etc progress beyond the National League? What if he becomes an out and out PL Heat Leader, and is ripe for a PL/EL doubling up spot? Will he have his PL average used to assess his EL value, or will his non-reserve races at EL level or all of his EL races be used to calculate his worth? EDIT: Come to that, what happens to a NL rider who is an EL reserve, when he wants a team place in a PL team? Will his assessed PL average be based on his NL or EL exploits?

But Richard Lawson was promoted ahead of him instead of (as was predicted in the Polish media) Barker. I don't care if it's "unofficial". It's Team GB. Either that means something or it doesn't. Just because it's the BEN Fund doesn't give a license to riders to take liberties. Wearing the Union Jack should be a privilege to be respected not a thing to be pooh-pooh'd. The time to set an example is now. If some discipline isn't installed now then by the time the next (official) time that Team GB come together, for the SWC at KL, it'll be too late, and just as happened in Prague, riders thought they could do what they wanted, any way they wanted. Get a grip Rosco. Ban Bridger NOW.

All your answers and more besides ought to be contained within the SCB regulations for speedway, which can be downloaded from here http://www.scbgb.co.uk/download_regulations.asp ..one day.... (useless organisation and communication seems to be endemic even at the SCB)

Didn't he retire from Team GB, full stop, I don't recall it being a one-year sit-out. He's retired. End of! And for the reasons why he retired, I don't blame him for doing so. British speedway is a farce from the top levels of the BSPA to the attitudes of the riders that ride under the BSPA's Team GB banner. If the people at the top treat the sport in a haphazard way, how can you blame the riders for inheriting similar sloppy attitudes? If Rosco wants to have any chance of creating a strong Team GB for the future he needs to start with a clear message now. Something along the lines that Bridger will be suspended from international call-ups for at least the 2014 season. Then if any other rider wants to try his luck, follow it up with a 2 year suspension. About time British youngsters learn the meaning of discipline! If it means some "key" riders being sat on the sidelines, so be it. The team won't be much the worse for it in the short term and a lot better off for it in the long term. EDIT: Seems that Richard Lawson gets the call up to replace the unprepared one, ahead of Ben Barker. Seems that Barkers antics in Prague haven't been forgotten then!

No, but there seems to be an expectation that there are riders out there wanting to ride here if offered the chance. This belief that seems to sit in people from the top of the BSPA to the lowest steps of the terraces that somehow British Speedway is "special" or "irresistible" and the holy grail for riders to race in, is what's really perplexing, bearing in mind the incompetency in which it is organised, the low rates of reward, the need for industrial action or the threat thereof to get the money out of promoters, the mediocrity of the competition and the low levels of interest in the sport in this country. If I'm seen as knocking the sport, then that's the least it deserves. If you ask me, the whole sport needs a huge kick up the backside at the very least. British Speedway is the Betamax tape in a world of 3D and HD Video on Blu-Ray's, SD Cards and Hard Drives. It's about time that the old ways are kicked out and a fresh start is made.

Bloody shoddy performance by the promoters if they took a lackadaisical attitude towards the presentation of their case. Shoddy performance by their legal advisers to allow this to happen as well. Bearing in mind the costs of taking things through the legal system all the way to Supreme Court level, you'd have thought that they'd have made every effort to secure their investment in the proceedings. Worryingly, again bearing the costs in mind, it shows that these neighbours must have some cash behind them to pursue this case, as it could cost them a pretty penny if they lose, and the even if they win, they will have had to fund the case to the n'th degree to get that far, before they get any costs awarded to them by the courts. This is no ordinary Mr & Mrs Smith that Mildenhall are up against.

I love this expectation that riding in the EL is so important to riders that those not in work here are somehow queuing up to sign on the dotted line with the first promoter to approach them. Perhaps this thread should read "Riders without a Club, who would want to ride in Britain at all, given an approach at some point in the season" - or something similar. So you can knock out Freddie Lindgren, don't bother with Chris Holder (unless it's Poole) likewise, AJ, Jarek Hampel, Greg Hancock (unless his Polish club this year goes bust again) Emil Sayfutdinov, Jurica Pavlic, Martin Smolinski, the Laguta Brothers, and a whole raft of others.

What's the situation about all those people who donated to buy bricks? If the stadium doesn't get the go-ahead, do they get their money back?

Birmingham's last junior rider was back in 2007, a certain Paul Starke who rode for the Birmingham Bulls in the Academy League, in that era...and he's still Birmingham's promising National League junior this coming season. ummm, actually, would Jack Roberts, Ben Taylor and Ludvig Lindgren have fitted the bill? Maybe Paul Starke isn't the only junior rider that Birmingham have had then. Maybe Birmingham's long term interests would be better off with junior fans in the late teens and early 20's being sponsored! You can pick up riders from anywhere, Young fans aren't so easy to come by.