The Cheese

I genuinely had no idea who she was before reading this thread so can't comment on that side except that it would be interesting to know how they came to the decision to choose her for it. It just looks so amateur though. Cameo is to wish people happy birthday or see who's dumb enough to say hello to Mike Hunt, not for what should be a serious competition in a professional sport. You even have the final two sides picked out at the same time! Getting 'a name' to do the draw is a solid idea but surely there were better ways of going about it. As an example TNT commentator Darren Fletcher has some history with the sport, could he have been asked and maybe got someone like Ally McCoist to help out, if I remember correctly he's mentioned Glasgow on his radio show in the last year or so.

If you're changing to one league then that has to be prepared for well before the end of the previous season so at this stage there's no real alternative. Only 5 teams is clearly not good but it was obvious to everyone that the problem was coming so they only have themselves to blame. They just need to somehow get through this year now whilst getting a proper plan in place for 2027 and hope that it's not too late. They've missed several opportunities for a reset and they won't keep coming, time will run out eventually. Planning for a KO Cup with 5 sides doesn't give any confidence they're capable of it though, at the very least you would think they could come up with a fresh idea to replace that.

Can't blame any rider for not hanging around waiting, it was inevitable really that they would start to look elsewhere rather than wait until January for any guarantee. Hopefully not the last we've seen of Doyle over here, but if it is then thanks for the 20 years or so he's given to the sport in this country.

It's fairly obvious that if you go to one league now then essentially all signings made so far are void. There are a few others along with Pickering who you would expect to prioritise a current Premiership side and no doubt several more amongst those agreed but not announced. And for all the criticism of the Premiership being selfish etc, it's clear that the bulk of the Championship will have no intention of allowing those five clubs in for that reason.

Disappointing news. I thought Louis was one of the few promoters that had the ability and professionalism to help dig the sport out of this mess. Big loss to British speedway as well as Ipswich.

Exactly that. All this 'your league' stuff is the reason there will never be any progress. You can't have the two competing against each other, if they can't work together then they're all doomed.

Rather than asking what is there to gain for clubs attending this, maybe they should be asking what is there to lose? At the very least you would think that the costs should pretty much be covered by sales of merchandise. Hand out some free/discounted tickets for next season. Your track might be miles away but we're heading into the time of year where people will be travelling to see family, maybe they have relatives close by who haven't attended before. They might have a friend at work who holidays in that area every summer. And who knows, maybe there's a potential sponsor there or someone who could introduce you to one?

Might work for anyone interested in trying to cop off with a senior citizen.

If they want someone with links to Sky then they've probably got the wrong Redknapp involved.

Betting on points scored by a rider is there now so in theory you could already have fixing. Realistically it's probably such a small market that anything looking even slightly dodgy would be flagged immediately.

Premier Sports have an estimated 300k subscribers, can't see that helping to grow the sport. Sky by comparison had 6m from the last figures I can find, and 26.7m people watched content across all their platforms in the last year. One of the worst things about TNT's coverage is that a big deal was made about it including the free-to-air highlights, only for them to be shown once a week at 2am or something ridiculous. I doubt that it attracted even a single new fan.

I can agree with that, it's a far bigger issue than doubling-up. R/R should be mandatory if one rider in the top 5 is missing for a start. In the top league it should be easy enough to replace a reserve with someone who only has a Championship spot or even unattached which would be a good opportunity to put themselves in the shop window. The term 'guest' should be dropped in that scenario as well. Something like 'injury loan' or 'emergency loan' sounds better.

I don't think I've seen any complaints about it. And it's not really to do with money, just a way of helping players get more games. Each round is heavily featured on the BBC Sport page with live updates, commentary etc. Every game is also streamed live for free on YouTube.

Depends what level of football. A squad player in League 1 for example could be loaned out to a non-league side but still play for his parent club in reserve level matches. And sadly that's probably a more relevant comparison for speedway than Manchester United or Real Madrid. If you dig deep enough into any sport you'll find rules and regulations that look odd or stupid to anyone else. Again with football, we have one of the worst countries in the world in San Marino who are potentially 2 play-off games away from qualifying for the World Cup despite being bottom of their qualifying group with 0 points. Depending on other results, it might even be in their best interests to lose heavily in their last match of the group! Cricket's county championship in this country is decided by a league where teams randomly play some sides twice and others once. Several rounds of games in recent years have been played with a completely different ball which in speedway terms would be something like having to use a 250cc in some meetings. Overseas players can be brought in for one match only which could be seen as guesting. Similarly it's also becoming more common for players to play in one competition for their county side and be loaned elsewhere for another, effectively doubling-up.