SpeedwaySlider72

As the sport barely runs 6 months of the year now, 'semi-pro' could mean 6 months pro and 6 months working to fund their semi-pro speedway career. Riders may cry about this but if the sport keeps heading in the direction it is then their speedway career will become an amateur hobby. Everyone needs to wake up and realise this. Unnecessary costs must also be cut so that riders and clubs have a chance at survival.

The vast majority of sports are amateur or semi-pro, including olympic athletes. Those competitors make it work but you say speedway riders cannot?

You have posted much recently saying that the Premiership must be maintained at its current level. If these 'couple of Danes' and a handful of GP riders disappear because of this Polish rule then what level is the Premiership left at?

With their new found spare time, the riders can seek additional work outside of the speedway and the sport can return to a sustainable semi-professional level. Full time speedway riders on crowds between 500 and 1000 can't be sustainable.

Maybe financial considerations. Sounds like most teams lost big bucks this year and with rumours of no tv deal must be terrified.

Maybe British speedway can exist without these riders and focus on the ones that want to race in Britain as a priority? This opens up opportunities for young riders to establish themselves and clubs become more stable as they don't live beyond their means by paying riders who don't see Britain as a priority.

Perhaps such riders will need to find a different vocation.

Team building averages balance things up as you know ...and the teams won't be losing spadefuls of cash as many are right now. That's the main point of the shake up.

For a sport that is virtually unknown in this country that looks like a sensible level to run at with guys that are fully committed to riding in UK. Start from the bottom and build it up. Invest in marketing and presentation and watch the sport fly. Joe Bloggs on the street doesn't know Saifutdinov from Simon Lambert but will love Simon's commitment to his team. It's a team sport after all and needs sold on that. Back your team.

It's a catch 22. With riders injured at the last minute would fans prefer a last minute cancellation or for a meeting to go ahead with guests? What about sponsors or hospitality guests? Catering that has been arranged? It is bad enough with rain offs but adding more call offs will soon become problematic. Finding a better system than guests is the only way forward but is a challenge in itself.

There are very clearly a number of NIMBY falsehoods that the speedway campaign needs to meet head on with real world examples from other existing speedway tracks.

All riders who are good enough manage the next logical step into Championship racing without issue. The step to Premiership proved tougher for many, as well as many Premiership clubs showing no interest in British riders beyond the superstar youngsters, so a rising star system helped. There is not one NDL rider who is stuck at that level struggling to break into the Championship.

Well done to all the kids and to Iwade. A great day of racing.

How do you define improve? The sport is restructured into one league at a sustainable level and the clubs make money that can be reinvested into the sport - is that an improvement? Or The Premiership reaches further and strengthens the league but the crowds don't improve and the clubs lose even more money - is that an improvement?

If crowds were good enough to support having the top riders then why would the leagues have been watered down? Do you not think it was that even with 'top' riders they still didn't attract crowds big enough to sustain having them so the leagues had to be weakened to keep clubs alive? The quality of riders on show will have little impact on new fans as they won't know any of the top names anyway.