Fortythirtyeight

Newcastle's respected track curator will not be available as he has a ' proper ' job so that rules it out.

And some need to grow up.

Looking toward to this one. Three of us coming over from Cumbria, hotel booked and hoping to see both legs without any weather interruption. Whats our chances Bears fans?

I'll ask it again and I don't care who the rider was. Justify a £100 fine for a ' dispute' , if that's what you see it as, in the refs box compared with £65 for an assault?

Absolute rubbish based on nothing. The excluded rider is a young kid and yougsters react differently to adults especially when the injuries looked serious as the other rider was down a long time leading to all sorts of rumours in the pits. The team had nothing to win anyway and the manager concerned is not the slightest bit interested in winning or losing he and his club just want to get kids racing speedway bikes. Not everyone has a 'win at all costs' attitude.The concern was that an innocent rider was being blamed for something he was not responsible for. The manager wanted to keep the riders conscience clear so he wouldn't give up racing, what is wrong with that? So the S.C.B. are right to fine him £100 and that is justifiable when an ASSAULT attracts a £65 fine??? Justify that for me please?

I haven't named names as I don't wish to embarrass the manager , whom I know and the ref, who lives close by and will no doubt officiate again against this junior team and sees the person concerned quite regularly. There is no more to this than is stated. Just wanted to point out the terrible standards applied by the S.C.B. and their arrogance in not even replying to correspondence from the team manager or his club. Why should he lose even more money by appealing , yes he would be entitled to his ' fees ' back , if he wins but he would lose his days pay and travelling expenses. It is my opinion that the S.C.B. Is, like the B.S.P.A. , unanswerable to anybody and so behave how they like.

A short while ago a ' junior ' fixture took place at a northern track and a young child was excluded by the referee allegedly for causing another young child to crash. Not an unusual occurance you might think but the race was filmed and the alleged offender was extremely upset that he may have been the cause of injurys to his friend that he didn't want to race again. Upon review of the footage it was clear there was no contact and the faller had crashed due to lack of experience in a race situation. The excluded riders team manager now had a traumatised rider not wanting to race ever again so he decided to show the referee the footage in the hope that the ref would speak to the accused rider , after the meeting, to reassure him that it was just a racing incident and he should continue riding his bike in future. The said manager was invited into the refs box by another official , having knocked and asked to speak with the ref. The ref was told about the footage and asked to view it but refused in no uncertain term and demanded the manager leave the box post haste. ok, all fine and well, just a team manager and a ref disagreeing you might say, happens all the time. But.... the S.C.B. ( Neil Vatcher ) has now decided the team manger has breached rule 3:2:8 and has been fined £100 . Failure to pay leads to an automatic speedway ban. lets get this in context. A certain Premiership ( and former G.P. ) rider was find £65 for ASSAULT on an official at the Fours event at Peterborough. Where is the level playing field here? The manager is an unpaid volunteer who travels far and wide at his own expense and pays for the privilege of helping our future riders. He has not previously transgressed and is well thought of within the sport. Surely an official reprimand at most would have sufficed but no, £100 fine and Vatcher will not reply to any discussion on the matter. The Premiership riders fine was based on £65 being the average payment a rider of that calibre should be paid per point ( yes, that's honestly what the S.C.B. said!) In that case why is the team manger being fined at all? He doesn't get paid! In this country even a criminal is given his 5 minutes in court to put his side of the story but not with the S.C.B. it seems unless the unpaid team manger wants to pay another £150 to appeal, take time off work, travel to Rugby and go before other S,C.B. officials in the hope they vote against Mr.Vatchers decision. So now the sport will be a £100 richer but the poorer for losing an enthusiastic volunteer who gave his all to help the speedway kids in his area. Well done the S.C.B.

Like your beloved Newcastle do? Even they have to appeal for help to assist the junior riders to remove covers before and after meetings and the juniors were told if they didn't help they wouldn't get a ride. Your asking for a minimum of six/eight able bodied ( not old folk as it will be heavy work) people who have time during the day ( assuming they don't work ) to graft for a couple of hours in the wet shale for no pay ( possibly free entry ?) in the hope of getting a meeting on , if it stops raining? When that doesn't work you will be saying its unprofessional and they should have cricket style covers, and it will go on and on and on. The sport has trundled along for nearly a hundred years without covers and whilst the theory of covers is good, in practice it just hasn't worked to a level to justify the outlay and effort.

I'll take them but can we meet up with you outside the stadium?

There has been no official approach by Eurosport as yet. Until that happens BT has no opposition. Bearing in mind the low fee BT paid , Eurosport , if interested, won't be offering much more and what will there be to televise? A Buster Chapman sponsored Premier Division???

BT only want to cover speedway as it currently costs them pennies due to the B.S.P.A.'s incompetence in dealing with TV rights. This has to change and it was discussed at the A.G.M. last winter about going to a ' streaming ' channel with a committee set up to look into it. Pubicly nothing appears to have been progressed. BT will still want the coverage for nothing , or the peanuts they paid this year, certainly no where near the 1.2 million Sky paid. As speedway has no bargaining power ( i.e. BT has no opposition wanting to televise the sport ) it's anyone's guess where the B.S.P.A. intends to go next.

A referee rarely calls off a meeting as they don't usually arrive at the track till 2 hours before the start. Meetings are called off by the promotion and if called off late in the day the host club can have some bills to pay ( ref, medics , away teams travel, etc)

I have several old stock blank red ones that you would just need to slide your picture into. Send me a private message with an address and I'll send you one .

Let's say the legal people might say they are an ' unreliable source'.

Retainer? BSPA guidelines say a club wishing to employ the services of a ' guest ' must approach the club utilising that rider as their own for permission to approach said rider. Thats not to say that some promoters do not follow guidelines. Riders don't get ' retainers '. They may get advised not to ride for certain clubs ( and perhaps given an unpublicised incentive) or, as I have witnessed, told not to score highly for said club whilst guesting. Yes, this goes on!

Controversy follows Mr.Barker where ever he goes but do you believe absolutely everything you read on Facebook? Whilst I personally wouldn't lend him a second hand elastic band I also believe key board trolls do love to add fuel to a fire. If he is as guilty as they make out I'm sure the Police would have been involved and then we all would have read about it. Barker is a talent on a bike. He may be a bit of a rogue off it.

To quote some blinkered diamonds fan from earlier.... "No, just have a different view than you ".

Being negative? I said it was not a good spectacle, it wasn't , plain and simple. I've been to Belle Vue, Redcar , and many other tracks where it wasn't a great meeting.We even had poor meetings at Workington. They happen, it's speedway!

Thank you Leander, Yes, I'm aware of that rule but my point was he didn't have to stop the race at all and then the announcement quoted the disqualification was for taking his line ? If it had said unfair riding no more would have been said. I very much doubt that Bjerre was ever going to catch Wright in that race, he was already well ahead and crossing the start line.

You really are brain washed Dave. I was with two longstanding diamonds fans and two fellow comets supporters and even they said it was a poor meeting from a racing point of view. Racing is where competitors continually overtake each other, not when a rider makes a mistake, heads for the fence and the rider behind is able to get infront when he never looked comfortable enough to attempt the pass in the first place. I've seen decent meetings at Brough this season, this was not one of them.

Last nights crash has robbed Redcar of any real prospect of beating Leicester over two legs, especially as the Lions have brought in Lawson , a Redcar specialist , to replace Worrell. The match itself was a bit of a bore fest, ( never mind the inevitable delay ) only two genuine overtakes , whoever led from turn two won but the best team won on the night with S.Worrell back to his best and Østergaard looking like the rider he once was.Solid back up all round. Good that the crowd were kept informed by the centre green announcers. Wright and Riss did what was expected, Greaves and Palm Toft were doing ok and Andersen surprised me with a battling performance although surprised to see him in heat 15. Stewart looked like he wanted to be back home. Some strange referring , didn't understand why he stopped the race when Andersen touched Bjerre and put himself to the back of the field . He could have simply disqualified him after the race as the result would not have been effected . No such offence as " moving another rider off his line"! His claim that the tapes were faulty was a joke. He let a few flyers go ,from both sides. Going to be an interesting cup final if the Bears can find a good pair of replacements and with Ostergaard being the key man for the Diamonds.

My mistake. Wasn't clear in the press release. I know they dont get big crowds but hoped it wasn't that bad!

So Belle Vue next??? The 'National Stadium' that was going to be the pearl of British speedway? This will send shivers down the rest of the British speedway.

Having travelled the 3 hours to watch this meeting I was thoroughly entertained. Talk about a match of two halfs! Meeting all but won by the Scorpions by heat 10 having out ridden the opposition some of whom just didn't know where to put themselves. Out come the tractors and back come the Bears. Not seen a finish like that by an away team for quite a few years so they deserved their consulation point. The match had everything, dubious decisions, hand bags after races and good racing. Travelling support were very vocal , if a little course at times, which created a good atmosphere, although the speaker system wasnt very good ( intermittent ). Scorpions were solid enough but Auty wasn't his normal self. Riss and Douglas were very good and kept the Bears in it till the rest woke up. Godfrey stated his intentions to run in 2020 which is most unlike him but there's time for him to change his mind several times as he tends to do before running again. Must say the Ice cream was the best I've tasted at any track so the return trip wasn't too bad.

Sensible? Not a word associated with the rules of speedway I'm afraid. Doesnt have to be a ' rule ' the BSPA committee simply say ' no' and that's it , it seems. Open knowledge at Plymouth and Redcar that it was a done deal until the Mafia said no, their reasoning being a Friday night track can't sign a rider from another Friday night track in a lower division and leave them short of a rider of that calibre as the selling club would have to use guests or R/R for the now absent rider as no suitable replacement was available, or some such none sense.. Not advertised as the move was not ' sanctioned ' so it never happened. The Mafia don't like to advertise their decisions incase of criticism. Got to assume that the rest of the promoters from all divisions were advised of this in their copies of minutes of the management meetings, issued monthly, which just goes to show how good the communication is at the BSPA.