RoundTheBoards

A good point that I missed in my summary of why 70s top riders had higher averages. You hear stories of so-and-so being a top rider and always letting his junior partner have gate choice. Those were a rarity (if they existed at all). 99% of the time, the top rider had the best gate. And with no need to sit still at the starts, the referee would often allow the superstar to get a flyer.

My favourite era was the 70s. Crowds were big and the atmosphere due to the big crowds was incredible, even for run-of-the-mill, very ordinary, bottom of the table matches. The racing is far better now than in was then. But today's racing in front of 800 people just can't match the atmosphere of a league meeting in front of 8,000.

Back in those days, bonus points were included in the Green Sheet Averages. This made a huge difference to averages. (remember there are on average 10 extra bonus points in a 15 heat match). Also then, matches were 13 heats so the top riders likely met only once in a meeting. Nowadays with 15 heats including a nominated, top riders will meet at least twice. And with the 4 top riders all meeting in heat 15, someone is going to finish with a zero and take a big dent on their average. In the 70s, a top rider would go into every race with a reasonable expectataion of finishing second at worst. Also back then, leagues had 16 - 18 teams. They met only once all year. Nowadays with fewer teams and fewer riders, teams meet more often, so top riders clash more often. If was also quite common to turn up on a Saturday night in the 70s to find Peter Collins isn't riding tonight or Ivan Mauger isn't riding, because they had a lucrative Grasstrack meeting in Germany on Sunday afternoon. So riders might even miss their only league head-to-head of the entire season. (with no internet. no one knew they were missing until they'd paid their money, and no one seemed bothered). With just one bike strapped to the back of a car, no lower end rider had the equipment to challenge a top rider who may have a workshop at the track. If you want closer racing with a more level playing field, and riders meeting more often, then the current day is for you. If you want a few top stars for publicity purposes with the top stars artificially inflated to appear more dominant than they are, then the 70s are for you.

In that case, need to ask Jack what he had for dinner last night.

We can't read, and we can't write, but that don't really matter. Because we are from Ipswich, and there's no blade on our tractor.

Leon Flint guests for Kildemand, whilst Jye Etheridge is the no-facility replacement for Iversen.

Great news. Would love to have been there for the first meeting, but not possible. Will be there in the coming weeks.

After that, I'm certain you don't know what development means!

Didn't take long for the retired Trigger to re-retire. Middlesbrough have moved to replace him with the upcoming youngster Jade Mudgeway. Can't knock Middlesbrough too much. I doubt very much that they are one of the "win at all costs" teams who pushed the points limit up to a ludicrously high and unsustainable 42. They've just got sucked into it, as the NDL slowly moprhs into the National Veterans League.

Lawson did score 6... but 4 of those points came from beating his team-mate. (Nicholls 3 times, Edwards once). In reality he scored 2 points. One from one of his 2 meetings with Kildemand, and one from beating the 16-year-old RS. Surely having Brennan and King paired together was a waste of the two best riders, when they both could have been winning races separately.

I can see a fairly comfortable home win. 54-36 Ipswich missing Doyle and Sayfutdinov is a hugely different team. Brennan, Musielak, King and Lawson can all perform OK at the N.S.S., but they will all need to be on form togerher. Hellstrom-Bangs could be a big scorer at reserve. He really wanted to be riding for Belle Vue ahead of any other British club, so tonight is his chance to show them they were wrong when he was begging them for a team place.

Who is Jaimon Lidsey going to talk to in the pits? The rest of the top 5 have a combined age of 160.

All you posted is these broken links

Not sure what effort is in 3 broken links that lead nowhere!

Based on this, I'm not holding out a lot of hope!

Good to see some new riders coming through. I hear Cairnds is quite useful too.

There's no such licenced rider called "Bewdley"

Credit to Belle Vue. A couple of last minute drop-outs due to injury and personal problems, but they've replaced them with decent quality Premiership riders, and not just stuck the reserves in.

Next Sunday? Before the season starts the following week

Great News. Obviously the war is a long way from being won, but it's a battle won. Who is this Stev Park D***head? What is his agenda? If he was on the supposed save Swindon bandwagon with Terry Russell, why has he suddenly swapped sides?

Good luck to all at Swindon. Planning meeting just started (6pm) but Blunsdon is item 8 on the agenda, so a while to wait

I saw him at Scunny at weekend. I tried to take a photo, but my phone was stuck on zoom and I only got his arm

Going twos up on Agnetha does have a bit more appeal than with Charles Wright.

He didn't mention police. If there had been CCTV to alert everyone on night one of the vandalism, it might have been possible to have some dubious lads with iron bars on standby for day 2 to avoid a repeat. I know of 2 tracks in the past where this has been an effective solution.