Piotr Pyszny

As the longstanding Bears fan next to me remarked: "The meeting was better than the racing." Who would have bet on a home win - let alone a home win by six points - after heat 10? Great to see Bears have opened (this season, I was told) elevated back straight standing. It's a superb vantage point. Do speedway clubs really need to be issuing glossy Curtis Sport programmes costing three quid?

Most stadia in Super League, certainly. Few below the top tier (and even some in it - e.g. Belle Vue, Wakefield; Wheldon Road, Castleford) could be described as either modern or comfortable! Compared to British speedway venues, however, almost all are palaces. :-)

Some would say Pearson's rant is designed to deflect attention from his shortcomings as a club owner. Interestingly, Barrow Rugby League Club (in a town that once had speedway), who play in rugby league's third tier, have grown their crowds substantially this season, simply by giving away season tickets to children and offering free admission to those entering the ground two hours before kick-off. 'Secondary' spend has gone through the roof. No tinkering with the actual game! https://www.rugby-league.com/article/35202/barrow-raiders-in-crowd-boosting-initiatives On the subject of speedway's need to reinvent itself, my wife (a speedway novice) accompanied me to Scunthorpe (last Friday) and Belle Vue (on Monday). First time I'd been to speedway in four years. A solicitor (hardly speedway's target market), my wife described the spectacle as "engaging" and is keen to go again. Maybe part of the answer to speedway's dire attendances is to provide racing worth watching.

You were probably forced (as I was) to play turgid old rugby union at school. League is much more interesting - to play, to watch and (in my case) to report on.

Having attended on Monday, shortly after going to Scunthorpe on Friday (my first meetings since 2017), I couldn't help marvelling at how unlikely - not all that long ago - it would have been for a British Final to feature second tier riders. Several of those who appeared in Friday's Scunthorpe-Redcar meeting rode at Belle Vue on Monday. Imagine, say, Kevin Teager or Steve Wilcock making a British Final! No disrespect to those who rode in the 2021 British Final but the quality of the field is a clear indication of British speedway's decline.

I gather those who knew him well called him 'Mars Bar' Dave. For years, he did the track shops at places like Buxton, Middlesbrough, Stoke and Wolverhampton. He was a well known face in speedway.

Les Collins, Neil Collins, Martin Dixon, Shane Parker, Piotr Pyszny.

During the time I've been watching speedway, 1976+: Boston, Canterbury, Ellesmere Port, Leicester (Blackbird Road), Newport (Somerton Park). Pre-1976: Glasgow (Hampden Park), Nelson, Norwich, Sunderland, West Ham.

Edinburgh (Powderhall), Halifax, Middlesbrough (CP), St Austell (CCMP), Scunthorpe (NR).

Our party of three sat on the second-to-back row of the main stand. Second visit to the NSS. I haven't seen an attendance announced. Any idea what it looked like? How much bigger than Belle Vue's usual turnout?

Went to Scunthorpe-Redcar last Friday - first speedway meeting since 2017 - and was a little surprised to discover there is no longer a track shop at Normanby Road. I was told, by a regular, Scunthorpe couldn't find anybody willing to take on the concession. With respect to the likes of the late Dave Rattenbury, it's always bemused me why speedway clubs (unlike the majority in other team sports) don't source and sell their own merchandise.

The other aspect of reconfiguring The Shay that hasn't been mentioned is the football/rugby pitch being moved circa 20 yards closer to the Skircoat (west) Stand, thereby covering the site of the starting gate and home straight. It was done to free up space for a new, larger east stand, part of which now occupies what was the speedway track's back straight.

I seem to remember Dukes promoter Eric Boothroyd saying the 1985 average crowd at The Shay pushed 3,500. I've got a copy of the 'Memories of Halifax Speedway' DVD. It's a while since I've watched it, but I recall Eric dealing in some detail with the move to Odsal. Pretty sure Eric reckoned he lost a thousand spectators overnight then another 600-800 on Kenny Carter's death.

The closure of all terraced areas at The Shay in 1985 lasted just three early-season Halifax Town FC games. By January 1986, Halifax RLFC, hiring the ground on a one-off basis for a First Division game with Widnes, because of problems with the Thrum Hall floodlights, attracted a 6,385 crowd to The Shay (more than double any crowd Halifax Dukes attracted during their final season, 1985). The speedway club, incidentally, were sub-tenants of the football club, who chose to hike the rent circa 1985 - one of several factors in the Dukes leaving for Odsal. £25,000 is the figure that sticks in my mind. The Shay was reconfigured quite a few years before the rugby league club began sharing the stadium in 1998. The first and second bend area was removed circa 1990. It was replaced with a gently inclined open standing area. In 1996, a stand was built on the site of the third and fourth bends. Later that year, an identical stand replaced the open standing area at the opposite end of the ground.

Thanks for posting! For those who CBA to listen to the whole thing: an opening meeting is planned for April 3 (Easter Saturday), with 2,000 tickets - stadium capacity to be decided - on sale from January 1. Promoter Steve Rees is asked about speedway. He believes 2022 is a more realistic prospect than 2021.

Step seven non-league football on Saturday (5/12): leaders Dunnington v Rawcliffe (1-0) in the York League Premier Division. Noticeable how everybody - players and spectators - seemed happy simply to be out in the (tier two) fresh air. Little else available north of the Severn-Wash north-south divide.

He's probably thinking of, say, Norwich and Yarmouth. Wasn't such a huge number of years between closure and reopening at Birmingham and Redcar (Middlesbrough, in reality).

Are you confusing it with rugby union?

I sympathise with Comets for being 'left out' of the proposed new Workington stadium. Once again, it's speedway's decades-old problem: too few clubs own the venue at which they race. When you're a sporting tenant, your rights are limited and your prospects at the whim of the landlord.

Didn't Comets win everything in sight during their final season - yet struggle to pull in 500 punters? How many thousand spectators did Comets somehow lose between 1999 and 2018? Of course, in speedway's case, we're all guessing because the sport, at club level in Britain, has never released attendance figures. Why is that? Incidentally, Workington Town Rugby League Club's average attendance for the 2019 season was 1,013. A hundred more than Reds? Fake news. All west Cumbria's semi-professional sports clubs are poorly supported, partly because of the population's size. Does such a sporting backwater merit a decent stadium? Mind you, I'm sure the Recreation Ground faithful (Whitehaven Rugby League Club's 2019 average attendance was 1,012) will welcome you with open arms. :-)

National League North 2019-20, average attendances ranged from York City (2,705) to Curzon Ashton (376). Three clubs (Hereford and Chester the others) averaged more than 2,000, 10 (including King's Lynn Town, 1,417, and Boston United, 1,304, communities with speedway links) more than a thousand. For National League South, the range was Dulwich Hamlet (2,200) to Hungerford Town (334). Seven clubs (including Weymouth, 1,108, a former speedway town) averaged more than a thousand. The eighth tier contains divisions immediately below the Premier Divisions of the Northern Premier, Southern Premier and Isthmian leagues. A few clubs (going on the 2019-20 averages) will equal or do better than some speedway teams. For example: Bury Town (400), Corby Town (400), Halesowen Town (400), Hastings United (400), Prescot Cables (400), Ramsgate (400), Workington (398), Herne Bay (384), Clitheroe (391), Belper Town (385), Chertsey Town (383), Felixstowe & Walton (373), Melksham Town (363). Apologies for the detail. Rather bored today!

I think a combination of switching to Bradford, and Kenny Carter's death soon after the move, cost Dukes upwards of a thousand supporters.

Ha, ha. Some, I grant you, are more dilapidated than others.

The match, however, was the usual barely watchable, overhyped dross - scrum follows line out follows kick follows pick-and-drive - one expects from modern international rugby union. The backdrop to rugby league's Super League Grand Final, the previous evening, the KCOM Stadium, Hull, was pretty impressive, too. And the action on the pitch rather more interesting. On the point about grants for football clubs: much of that money was generated by football itself. Plenty has been made available to non-league and grassroots clubs. In terms of the quality of facilities, compared to other sports, it shows. The local authority-owned Shay, Halifax, track removed and rebuilt on one side and at both ends, is now a very smart stadium - something I'm afraid it never was when the Dukes were in residence. The town's football and rugby league clubs, co-tenants, are the beneficiaries. Sadly, most of British speedway's facilities are stuck about the period - mid-1980s - speedway finished at Halifax.

During Halifax’s last season (1985) at The Shay, the average attendance was circa 3,500. Bradford never got anything like that. After 20-odd years without speedway, there is a danger what interest there was has evaporated.