Piotr Pyszny

My first - and almost certainly last - 2017 grasstrack meeting yesterday. The Peter Maddison Master of Midshires, near Ashorne, Warks, proved to be a fiasco. It was abandoned after 40 of 46 scheduled races owing to rider safety concerns about dust and inconsistent track watering. The only final staged was the 250cc solos, won by Henry Atkins. The Midshires Grasstrack Club proved wholly incapable of providing the necessary water provision. The action started an hour late, at 1.30pm, and it took almost five hours to get through 40 races. Pathetic. I'd say a third of an estimated 1,500 crowd, bored with the delays and fed up with the dust, had departed for home well before the enforced end. Still, at least the amateurishness of grasstrack continues to make similarly shambolic speedway appear vaguely professional. Plans to attend next month's Lincolnshire Poacher now scrapped. I'll go to cricket instead.

Here's an example: I barely watch any speedway nowadays (for most of the same reasons outlined by others many times on this forum), either live or on the telly. In this country, it's no longer value for money. Now, this season, I've had to be over in Cumbria (I live in North Yorkshire) on consecutive Saturdays, and thought 'I'll go to the speedway at Workington in the evening'. What did I find? On neither Saturday did the Comets have a meeting. It's a joke. When I was a speedway regular, more than a decade ago, you could count on every team having a fixture on virtually every one of their race days/nights.

Quite liked this season myself (though, at the time, I was watching a former National League team). IIRC, virtually every home match against a former British League team went to a last heat decider. Worryingly, however, the crowds barely increased. It meant for the promoter a big rise in costs yet barely any additional income. Away from home, on the track, it was an entirely different matter. The team I watched suffered numerous defeats by 30 points or more. Most matches, decided after a handful of heats, were a dismal spectacle. As a journalist on the local evening newspaper, at least I got to watch them for nothing. As you say, a return to one division seems inevitable because there aren't enough clubs (or riders) to make viable a two-division set-up.

What are Speedway Star's (ABC) weekly and annual circulation figures? How do they compare to, say, 1980?

British speedway is dead in the water, and still the BSPA thinks it can do no wrong. When the sport's crumbling stadia are actually empty - an eventuality not too far distant - maybe the penny will drop. Has any other sport endured such incompetent governance in the last 30 years? Is any other British sport (grasstrack apart!) declining at a faster rate than speedway?

Yes, I was sorry to hear this news. At 35, given his injury record, Luke (Clifton) may well decide to call it a day. I wouldn't blame him.

Sorry, it isn't (and never has been) the media's job to be a cheerleader for speedway - or any other sport. The media should always be objective.

Tough season for the Bears, 1994. It went belly up from the very first meeting, at Long Eaton, when No 1 Graham Jones, star winter recruit, was badly injured. He piled into the back of Neil Collins, whose bike had packed up on Station Road's back straight, IIRC. Jones didn't ride again all year. It meant a heavy reliance on guests. Never satisfactory. Paul Whittaker was a shadow of the rider he'd been at Hackney before sustaining a serious arm injury, and fellow long-distance traveller Alan Mogridge was hit and miss. The wild Mark Burrows was always likely to either crash himself or endanger a team-mate. As I remember, the heroics of Paul 'Banger' Bentley kept the show on the road that season. A young Stuart Swales did well in patches, too.

Bit out of touch with modern speedway. Why was Schlein allowed to ride in this meeting? Was my view when visiting Belle Vue last week for the league match with Poole. Very few under-40s in the crowd. Doesn't bode well for the sport's future.

Always liked Brendan Kearney (since disgraced) and Tony Coupland (his gravelly tone, I suspect, the product of a lifetime's smoking) at Cleveland Park, Middlesbrough. And, having grown up with speedway at The Shay, Doug Adams.

Peter Craven. I was up at Meadowbank Stadium a few weeks ago (watching Edinburgh City play Annan Athletic), and asked a chap, who turned out to be City's chairman, to tell me where the Craven memorial was. Very kindly, he led me through a maze of corridors to the plaque. Having been moved from the foyer, it's now at the end of a particularly gloomy corridor. Whether it will survive the redevelopment of Meadowbank remains to be seen.

The first word of a story in many magazines and newspapers is in capitals. It's a style thing. Probably the habit of a working lifetime.

As a journalist for 30+ years, I found that report fairly amusing. Kent 'Hyperbole' Kings, anyone?

Nowadays, sadly, circa 700 is a good crowd for most of the clubs in the bottom two divisions. But 700 fans in a stadium with a nominal capacity of 6,000 is not packed, by any stretch of the imagination.

Just read the match report on Kent's website. It describes Central Park as "packed". A crowd a tenth of capacity is packed? Eh?

I attended this meeting as a neutral. Would describe the speedway as 'Mickey Mouse'. From what I've seen of this development league (in its various guises) over the years, the racing was pretty much as I expected. As for Cupitt's antics: I once saw Andrew Silver do the same thing at Swindon, though having scaled the safety fence he actually reached the spectator who had offended him. Equally daft from Silver but (unlike Cupitt, on this evidence) at least he was a top quality rider, merely going through a bad patch.

Drove over from York (as a neutral) to watch this. Despite being a fan of the sport since the Seventies, I see very little speedway these days, mainly because I no longer think it provides value for money. Absolutely no complaints about the entertainment in this excellent meeting, however. First visit to the NSS. Will definitely return, though a Friday race night and M62/M60 traffic isn't a great combination.

My experience of speedway, which goes back to the mid-1970s, indicates quality of racing has relatively little effect on the size of crowds. For example: between 1991 and 1996, a spell in which I worked on Teesside, I watched Boro Bears most weeks at Cleveland Park. During the last couple of seasons in particular, the racing was superb - and many meetings went to last-heat deciders. Yet the crowd, certainly in 1996, averaged only 850. The promoter told me every home match cost him a grand. It's why he pulled the plug on Cleveland Bays after their one and only meeting at Cleveland Park attracted a 'crowd' of 150. Unsustainable! The Redcar-Ipswich match I saw last month had an attendance of about 450. As you say, speedway in Britain cannot possibly have a future with crowds that small. It's not all bad news, though. My wife, a solicitor from the posh part of Surrey (so, probably not what you'd term an average speedway attendee), accompanied me recently to meetings at Redcar and Berwick. And loved it! She'd never seen speedway before (we met nine years ago, a little after the point at which I decided to stop watching because I felt the sport no longer offered value for money), but described it as "exciting" and a "fun evening". Indeed, the other day she asked: "When are we going to speedway again?"

A source close to the Redcar promoter told me the crowd for the recent Peterborough cup-tie was 581. And she described that as "good". Enough said! I was at Berwick last month and I doubt the attendance topped 350. The locals told me crowds had dropped off alarmingly after a promising start because of the team's on-track failings. "Berwick people love to vote with their feet," a regular informed. Can any regular supporters (I haven't been one for a decade) estimate which speedway clubs still attract 1,000-plus attendances?

You're joking, right? Hull Vikings more successful (in any terms) than Hull City FC, Hull FC and Hull Kingston Rovers RLFC? You really need to give your head a shake. Compared to football and rugby league, speedway in Hull lasted about five minutes.

You're wrong there. Speedway became (past tense) farcical years ago.

Had thought about attending this meeting. Not now! Either cricket or football will get my money instead...

A lapsed supporter of several years, I made a 'comeback' last week, accompanied by a newbie. Had to explain (as best as I could remember) the rider replacement and guest rules. Oh, and why a team called Halifax is based at Scunthorpe. As you say, a crazy sport...

Sounds about right. Like so many people, I stopped watching speedway (for various reasons), in my case about a decade ago. Since then, I met a woman I eventually married. She's as middle class as they come: grew up in a posh Surrey town and is a solicitor. I mention speedway now and again. Last week, she was on leave and, out of the blue, I took her to meetings at Redcar and Berwick. The size of the crowds shocked me. About 450 at Redcar and circa 350 at Berwick. The Redcar promoter's wife told me they'd had a "good" crowd the previous week for a match with Peterborough, adding it was 581. How do these clubs survive on such tiny attendances? I saw very little, at either meeting, to convince me speedway isn't dying on its arse. Incidentally, my wife described her two speedway experiences as "exciting" and a "fun evening". A convert in the making? She did think it was expensive, however, for the entertainment on offer. We'll certainly go again this season, probably to a few of the other northern tracks.

Rugby (by which I assume you mean rugby union) has never been particularly open when it comes to divulging attendance figures. The professional and semi-professional teams (ie not the numerous amateur clubs) playing rugby league, on the other hand, have published attendance figures through the sport's history.