Noelinho

Might make the trip if the weather looks ok. I'll wait and see how the Bandits look tonight before making a prediction.

On second look, the home straight is a bit wetter than I thought. Might need a bit of work in places.

Damper than expected - I wouldn't call it pissing down - but track looks good. Skies are dark but I'm hopeful it they don't leak too much.

Rain in the area but likely to be mildly annoying residual dampness rather than consequential.

Ben’s a bit mental, but I don’t think he’s mad enough to put himself in a metal fence on purpose. The poly fence is a different story…

I didn't have a problem with the crash itself. It happens. We've all seen it countless times. What made it worse in the moment was Bickley collecting Basso's bike, and that it happened after the end of the poly fence, so Basso went into the metal fence. But still, that kind of crash happened more than once at Ashfield just last year. The fisticuffs was funny. Panto at the speedway. Nothing massively wrong with that either tbh. The problem is simply the tweet. Does Craig really mean he did it intentionally? We all make our own minds up. But the fact you can interpret it as intentional is problem enough. You can't have riders even giving the impression they did it on purpose and leave it be. It's sport, not war.

Rory had a roller there.

Robert Lambert’s sending it in for them.

That’s what they said.

Nicholls got a knock in Poland, apparently.

Should be a great evening at *checks BSN notes* Owlerton Stadium!

No final, no trophy. No pity parties. Gotta work for it!

We should give the trophy to the aggregate winner of this year’s league match between Poole and Glasgow.

So are we discovering Leicester were the problem all along?

Looks like they’re ignoring it. They’ve arranged a rematch of the 2012 elite league final instead.

I hadn’t realised his starting average was that low, so I guess that will help. But I guess the question is, should he really be expected to do any more than he did this weekend? So maybe the issue is, the number 2 isn’t strong enough. As a 7, I think he’s fine. Bickley at 6 is on a hiding to nothing.

Not many teams have a top order combo of Craig and Josh though, so I think it will balance out. And I’m sure the boys will only improve.

Overall, it was a good meeting. I counted 15 passes, including the first staging of heat 9. Chris Harris doing exactly what's expected of him, and riding a fantastic line through turn four. He definitely moved the boards out more than once tonight. Ben's not quite firing yet but a good enough start and I'm sure it'll come. Claus looks exactly like I remember from 2019. Cami seems to think we shouldn't expect the 2019 Vissing this year, so maybe he'll raise his expectations a bit having seen him this weekend. 17+3 over the two legs left him with more points than Tom and Ben. Marcin is definitely missing a bit of speed but he won heat 8 both times, so that's a good foundation. His partnership with Harris is looking strong (Harris was brilliant in heat 10), as is Vissing + Basso. Complin is entertaining, although quite untidy, and Ace just needs time, I think. I think Edinburgh will be good at home, but I think the combination of Bickley and Fredriksen is too weak. I think they could carry one of them (as every team will need to at reserve), but I'm not sure they'll get away with both, and I'm not sure I'm seeing much room for improvement. Jacob Hook, on the other hand, I think is a good one for them. 8 rides, 10+2, only two last places. The best reserve of the four on show. Unfortunately, my guess is he'll end up at 2 and struggle. The Tigers had issues at 2 all year last season - one thing that our team for this year will probably resolve.

Not saying you can't be angry at the move, just a bit less of the ad hominem, that's all.

I was on the terracing at turn four and yeah, some of the comments were pretty bad. Some were coming from a Berwick fan, so maybe they still hold a grudge from heat 15 a couple of years ago at Shielfield?! Craig nearly started a riot taking someone (Jye Etheridge?) into the fence.

Just to clarify, it was on the exit of turn two, and Ben was on the outside. What Craig is saying bears no resemblance to what happened. It was a tough move, he deserved to get excluded, although Ben surely knew that was what Craig would do. I'm guessing they weren't the best of friends last year, having seen that. Of course, because it's Craig, it naturally created a lot of aggro, and because it was on Ben, I think that particularly made it worse. He's such a fabulous rider, but he really is his own worst enemy. The tweet makes it sound like he planned to put him in the fence though, which whether he did or not, it'd be a bad look if he didn't get a ban. Not what I want to see, but you just can't let people say things like that. It's a dangerous enough sport as it is. Lost in all of that was Kyle Bickley crashing straight into Ben's bike and going for a horrible tumble. I was glad to see him walk away from that, because he was just collateral.

Josh Pickering is such a class rider.

Race two was five laps!

Three passes in heat one...

30% chance of rain at 3pm, then clear until 9pm. We’ve had a few days’ good weather - it’ll be fine.