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I guess it depends if he gets through the British qualifiers !!!

The Australian Speedway Board should be investigating the process and advising the riders. They are the rules of entry to the UK and shouldn't be an overhead to the BSPA. Obviously if individual clubs choose to invest in the process that's fine; but as a collective (i.e all Australian riders) then their own board should be making sure their riders understand the process.

TV coverage is really important to a sport, especially one where sponsorship is so core to its finances. So my only reservation is whether a long term tie-in may impact league sponsorship. With Sky no longer sponsoring the Elite League, the annual 1 million income needs to be at least partially recouped via new league sponsorship. Separating the TV coverage and League sponsorship is probably a good thing. However, if a big player like BT Sport were interested in a TV plus sponsorship deal, that wouldn't be possible. The TV coverage looks a done deal. The big challenge now is to find a replacement League sponsor. I think that could be a far harder task, particularly to get anything in the range of the current deal.

Gary May in his statement said: “It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do when informing Nick that he was no longer a part of the 2014 team, I had spoken to his dad beforehand who understood the reasons as to why we were letting Nick go, but that doesn’t make things any easier.” He also said that the BSPA said Kurtz could ride in Denmark and a black and white regulation would be ignored. Makes you wonder doesn't it.

Like to see this correspondence that Somerset and Kurtz senior state confirms Kurtz was allowed to ride in the Danish Elite League during 2013 and then ride in the PL in 2014 on a 3. I'd be very surprised if it exists. It will be the old 'we spoke to some guy on the phone who said yeah that's fine'. If it was verbal only, then that shows total naivety and suggests maybe Kurtz needs to change his advisers.

So if he's ridden a dozen meetings in a professional league you are agreeing that 5 doesn't fit with the rules?

That's good to hear. Well deserved. Liked the bit about the improvement from his zero podium finishes in 2012.

And there we go, the typical compromise that doesn't meet the rules. He comes in on a 5 despite the reason he's not a 3 is due to riding in the Danish Elite League. Mind you it's a great precedence for future acquistions. Pick a category that in isolation a rider is eligible for. Kurtz qualifies as Category 4 if you ignore all other categories. So Emil Sayfutdinov (who I don't believe gained a UK average) is now eligible on an 8 in the PL as a Category 1 rider. Just ignore the Grand Prix category.

Excellent analysis. I find it difficult to see how he can come in on a 5. He has been ruled ineligible for a NL (Cat 5) spot despite having/being eligible for a British Passport. That rules him out of Cat 4 (Commonwealth Rider new to British Racing), because if he were eligible for Cat 4 he'd equally be eligible for Cat 5. Cat 3 (riders in a non-professional league) would get him a 5, but if he were eligible for that, the surely that makes him Cat 4 and 5 eligible. So that takes us to Cat 2 (encompassing all riders in a Professional League outside of Sweden/Poland). And with that comes a 7 average. I have a feeling we will see a 5 average, with no actual justification as to him getting that. The Cradley NL decision suggests only a 7 is applicable.

The software needs an intelligence boost me thinks !!! Supervising ? I guess we could include this forum on the list of dodgy sites, not great for future support mind. Writing back to front and using a mirror?

What about all the older generation though. Have you seen the recent demographics of speedway supporters !!!

Alphabetical?

That was quite neat. I guessed the outcome; not that it was that difficult to do !!!

Whilst this sounds good in isolation (and to an extent is) and actually highlights a potential problem with the initiative. Rider A gets lots of extra help and has minimal personal costs. Rider B gets no help and everything is a cost to him. Rider B decides that much as he'd like to continue in the EL it isn't economically possible. Rider A is riding GP standard equipment, and although there skill levels are similar is financially able to stay in the EL. For Rider B he decides he's better continuing his education at NL (or PL) level which is more suited to his ability and finances. We can argue all day about the lack of ambition of Rider B, but the system won't survive with too many Rider B's. Then when it goes all wrong we can all blame the Rider B's lack of ambition for turning down an 'opportunity offered on a plate" and causing British Speedway to take another step back. Yet the blame will lie at the feet of the BSPA. This initiative needs to be centrally funded and managed. If not and left to promoters to do what's best for them, the recent history tells us all we need to know about the next level of mess this sport will reach. I plead with the the 10 promotions to work together on this initiative this season. You've got an opportunity for all of you to reap the benefits going forward. Don't destroy through your individual ego's.

In the end isn't the crux of this how income is viewed. The sport has been receiving 1 million a year from Sky. So what does it do. After deductions (i.e. Terry Russell, but at least that's an agreed cut), they divide it 10 ways between the promotions to do what the want. At this point I haven't really got the will to continue the discussion, because the mistake is already evident. Where's the investment? Do you know what, each team could have benefited from the investment with a little bit of management control. Hand your kids a windfall to blow as they wish in a year, or provide them a windfall that they must invest sensibly. And each year you get the windfall, repeat the process. Then the windfall stops. Now compare the kids who blew it, against those who invested. Only one group will be reliant on more of the same.

Both ? !!! I'd assume it was given to all the promoters at Tuesday's meeting. You do have to be careful with Sky. They don't suffer fools gladly. I remember about 10 years ago when British Basketball had a great set-up with Sky. Live Saturday evening matches, fully paid by Sky, strong viewing figures. Then the BBL in their wisdom thought the sport was bigger than it was and basically gave Sky notice to go to ITV Digital and a pot of gold. We know what happened to ITV Digital, and for years they tried to get back the TV profile without success. One year a high profile final was featured on Milton Keynes TV (!!!) - it was accessible on a Sky dish. There was a lady at Sky (I forget her name at the moment) who worked tirelessly to get the BBL some incredible coverage. They were not happy and basically from then on the BBL had to fund their own production costs with TV companies. They did go back to Sky for a couple of years, but delayed coverage (by days) for the majority of matches and I believe (but I'm not certain) the BBL teams were contributing to this cost. They are now the latest of Eurosports new additions (Speedway, NFL etc). But just a one hour weekly programme featuring a match from the previous week. In the end Sky are a business first and don't make emotive decisions. But at the same time they will negotiate hard and won't take kindly to anything negative. That is why the BSPA fired off their apology e-mail so quickly; it put them in a really awkward position. I'm sure Sky will have left the BSPA negotiators with a few sweaty palms, although I doubt it will make any difference to the outcome. Probably will change things at the BSPA though. I suspect confidential information will now be shared on a need to know basis, rather than with the 20 odd promotions it does currently. The downside of that is may return to the closed shop of previous years when some promotions had an advantage over others virtue to being privvy to information.

I'd assume Emil will simply be entering both competitions, and I suspect Pedersen will as well. The ball is then in the authorities court once the ride in the SEC. If they ban them at the point from the SGP, apart from the embarrassment (SEC wins that one), then I'd suspect a big court battle in which I'd favour the riders. I'd only see one loser in this confrontation, and its not the SEC.

Agreed. Glad you recognise this wasn't right. I'm very interested in Skidder1's response. He thinks ford was right in what he did. Ford you could argue suffered from misjudgement and being let down. Skidder1 though. Seems incapable of recognising any mistakes at Poole. So will we see this time if he will accept that he was wrong?

Don't know if Ford has sourced it, but you do agree that he would be wrong to don't you? Whoever has done it has put the BSPA in an awkward position and forced them to publicly deny anything has happened. Sky aren't the organisation to play around with. Hopefully this is just a rumour, and nobody within the sport has released the info.

Have to add that the Wimbledon programme Parsloes produced was first class. Was always very very impressed by the level of detail. It's a shame that so much conflict exists at Kent. I think there is an awful lot wrong with British speedway, yet if I could choose the best bits of Parsloes, Nikko and Len Silver I wouldn't hesitate to select them to a 'dream team' for a speedway club. They all offer a lot of strengths, and were the chemistry there and the ability to leverage off each others strengths it could be very successful. In fact I'd suggest that it did start that way at Kent, but the cracks were obviously there before it became public.

100% the reason I became interested in speedway. It was the excellent local newspaper coverage. The modern day equivalent is, as you rightly state, social media.

This is all getting a bit tight now. The draft is on Tuesday and I don't know what channel I will be able to watch it on. Stayed up all night to follow this years NFL draft, so quite excited to be able to watch this one at a more sociable time. Will the riders be there and called up onto the stage when their pick is announced?

TV exposure should be a massive plus to a sport, but I suspect that the BSPA or more interested in sponsorship. There is a million pound hole that needs at least partially filling. I don't expect that to come from Sky (getting them to cover production costs will be a great success). The sponsorship worries me as I don't really believe the clubs expect to run without a replacement for at least a good percentage of the million pounds.

Wow, if true this is going to cause chaos at EL reserve where I suspect (although I stand to be corrected) most of the eligible riders will be owned by PL clubs. And even if I'm wrong there, the fact that there is going to be a mixture of riders with EL priority across the 1-7 isn't great for the sport. If this is the rule, then the asset base of each club really needs to be put on public record. I know not everyone agrees, but I do feel strongly that where spectators invest in a sport, they should know whether or not a participant is eligible for a match.

That's fine. One photo of you, and one of your mate !!!