Hacksaw Jim Duggan

I’ll be taking a pass on life advice from you

Ah again, mistaken - you just aren't that important or worth debate....

Oh not at all, you are talking guff, that was never an argument to be lost - I just also think you are a tosser.

Aye sure, if it is low to call you a bit of a boring auld tosser than I suppose the shoe fits.

Using Ivan Mauger as a reference point - a guy who retired about 40 years ago, Christ some speedway fans are archaic dullards.

Spending your time moaning about a race format that has been in place for about 30 years, oh aye you're a winner....

Why waste my time...you have been making this point for kicking on 30 years and no one actually cares....

They should just fire out a game of soggy biscuit after a race each eh? I mean that seems far more logical then actually racing a speedway race to decide a speedway meeting…that oh so indefensible thing It’s great we have moved on from dated, archaic mind-sets of 30 years ago though, why don’t we also bring back gollywogs and racist folk music as well? I mean f*ck evolution and development eh? It’s indefensible - them good old glorious olden days Top trolling from the sport!! Must be the best part of 200 odd meetings decided this way and each one will have pissed you off a bit...awesome stuff.

Emm it hasn’t - that’s why they run a final, it’s the format of the meeting it has been for about 30 years….if the winner had already been decided they, well,.....they wouldn't then run a final.

A speedway race seems logical in all honesty.

You are getting uppity and upset about a thing the actual competitors in the meeting won’t care about – given the format has been in place since they were about 2 years old, it's quite well....it's quite tragic actually.

Yeah.....it isn't - it's a speedway meeting mate, there are actual things and issues in the world - having a final in a speedway meeting isn't one....

It always humours me how it is made out like it is some recent development and a new era thing that riders win a riders Championship by winning the Final - Nick Morris would have been about 2 years old the last time that didn't happen. We are nearing the stage where more riders will have won the meeting in a final than over the course of 5 races yet even now it is made out like a recent development - it is just about the tradition now.

The only real thing to point at between the league play-off and last night is the score from Josh Bates. Bjerre scored more last night than he did against Sheffield, Sheffield were without their top 2 – and faced Newman and Heeps at reserve rather than 3 and 4. It seems pretty natural Leicester would score a lot more than Ipswich given Leicester are a lot better than Ipswich.

I don’t think many clubs, and just as importantly fans care about GP riders anymore. How many clubs in the top flight even meet the criteria now of one GP rider? The implementation of that rule would solve nothing, and alter little in terms of team structure - Swindon, Wolves and Belle Vue albeit not till next season, 3 teams impacted, but not really because they have 1 GP rider as it is anyway. So as it stands, Poole would have the same top 5 with the possible and likely removal of a rider like Lahti and replaced by a rider like – in theory Kim Nilsson, and thus an already weak as it is Leicester are left having to look around for a replacement for Nilsson and in turn become weaker. The creation of a rule where sides have to sign Under 21 riders at reserve would only serve to freeze out the likes of Bates, Newman, Starke, Kerr etc and drive a market where sides would have to give Under 21 riders excessive wages because there are so few who are actually ready for top flight speedway. There is also such a disparity in Under 21 riders, that one side, and likely league winners would have Lambert, and at a push Ellis and other sides would be left looking at Danny Phillips and Josh Bailey – again, more than likely the weakest and sides who are skint. It isn’t like Poland where there is a far wider spread of talent and a wider pool of riders to pick to solve weakness issues in sides. If a step is taken back and the idea is looked at, analysed and assessed it is genuinely quite ridiculous. The addition of averages has been good, the removal of it would actively encourage the rich to get richer and the poor to become poorer.

The Thursday and Saturday split night, set night sounds great until Sheffield, Redcar and Ipswich are the only sides who get council planning permission to run on Thursday – the rest don’t, and if they are lucky enough to get planning permission - have to run on Saturday and you then have 5 or 6 teams racing on a Saturday, losing 5 Saturday nights before the season even starts, drawing a Saturday night side in the Cup at least once, giving up a Saturday for the GP and then factoring in the weather and before you know it they have went months of the season without a home fixture.

No, absolutely not If a lower league side draw someone like Liverpool or Arsenal in the Cup this year they will take with them more fans than they would for a league game most weeks. If a side who doesn’t regularly win the FA Cup makes the Final, they will take more fans with them than they typically would to league games. When Liverpool won the Champions League hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets to welcome them home Huddersfield and Reading played in the Play Off Final last year in front of 76,682 people – each sides average attendance added together came to under 40,000. The reasons these same people don’t attend their football clubs matches each and every week isn’t because of rules in the sport they don’t like, just as that isn’t the sole reason attendances differ in Finals compared to league meetings, and as hard as some on here might find this to believe it is nothing to do with the rules of speedway either!

Oh please! Nothing more i wish for than validation from a man who spends all day on the forum of a sport he doesn't even attend!

I'm not the kind of man to mollycoddle people and place them on a pedestal just because they ride a speeday bike - the two riders I mentioned are both crap, saying that isn't deplorable as mentioned by another poster - christ grow a back bone.

And of course the best way to get crowds flocking back to Workington is removing local hero Craig Cook and Thomas Jorgensen and making them sign utterly sub-standard junk the likes of Jakob Bukkhave and Coty Garcia, be lucky if they got 200.

Imagine a sport where 2 teams can meet in a Cup draw the first game 1-1 then draw the second game 2-2 – both score 3 goals over the 2 games but 1 one side goes through and the other doesn’t…..ow wait. All sports need their own alterations and modifications to add to the value of the product, the additional points for a competitive meeting is one of the good ones speedway has come up with, and in all honesty is about as basic and simple a rule as you can get.

Oh loads of people have “arguments” it doesn’t mean they aren’t talking sh*t..

Why? A side who are 3rd and miss out on promotion to a team who are 6th and 20 points behind them surely have every right to feel as irked as a team who were 1st and miss out to a team who end the season 2nd and 1 point behind? Even removing Football from the situation a sport with credibility like Rugby Union does have Play-Offs to crown their Champions, the idea it is exclusive to joke sports, or sports without credibility is just not true.

Zzzzzzz

It appears most of the people who don’t like them don’t, and haven’t attended for the best part of 5 years plus so who cares and why pander to them. I rarely read a point about scrapping them that I can agree with and people saying they just don’t like them is definitely not one of those points. That just patently is not true - that is the kind of stigma and lie some attach to Play Offs and hope sticks The lower leagues in England have Play-Offs that have generated huge amounts of interest globally and boosted the leagues profile so much so that they just signed a TV deal in excess of 600 million. A “Play Off” for promotion seeing a side ending 3rd and missing out on promotion and the glory of the EPL to a side finishing 6th doesn’t differ that much to a side who end the table top and don’t finish Champions - if you wish to play the credible and morally correct card it surely applies regardless of league position? But then again credible sports that attract millions of paying and attending fans, viewers and interest locally and globally like Football, Rugby Union, Rugby League, NFL would never have Play Offs because they aren’t credible and utterly destroy the sports…..is what isn’t said when these sports play out Play Offs at stadia like Wembley and Twickenham in front of crowds of 75,000 +/