IanBrannan

As has been mentioned the first one is King's Lynn v Oxford on April 28th. The full schedule I believe is imminent but they will be going to each track once initially, and then on from there seeing how it pans out. Plus playoffs and British Final.

The simple answer, as someone who works in speedway, and in media in general including the BBC, the whole media landscape is incomparable to how it used to be even 5 or 6 years ago. Did the media lose interest or do they have hardly any staff left to write anything? However many people you think work in sports departments in newsrooms for either print or broadcast media, the reality will be a fraction of that, and really (as already happens) it’s down to those within the sport to lay the content on a plate in order to get coverage. Loads and loads of old long time journalists have left, been made redundant, taken retirement, died etc. So the people who used to bang the drum for speedway on the inside are no longer there. British Speedway sends news reports out on a daily basis, and even in the off season whenever something happens it is released directly to the media to hundreds of places. The way newsrooms work, you have certain sports guaranteed to take 90% of the coverage (mainly football etc), all other sports from Speedway to every sport in the Olympics and beyond are battling for that remaining 10%, and for the most part I’d include domestic rugby and county cricket in that. We also need personalities with a story. You mention Kenny Carter and Wiggy always being on the TV, they would not have been on the TV regardless of how good they were as riders if they were dullards. They were on because they were good value & entertaining. Results are at best going to get a passing mention, I would say the pre hype or some kind of human interest story would more likely get decent coverage, but to do that we need the personalities first. Chicken and egg I know, but that’s the situation. So I’d say it’s a mix of everything, but also don’t lose sight that a lot does happen, you may not see it yourself but it is there. We have regular stories in national newspapers such as The Sun & The Star & Mirror via Peter Oakes & Phil Lanning, we have many local BBC sport shows running speedway features and even live commentaries, we’ve had big coverage of the GB Youth training camp on the north east ITV News recently even in the closed season as such, coverage on ITV on the south coast of Kent I think too. We don’t quite have the resources of other sports at the moment but, people are trying to gain maximum coverage with the resources and contacts we have, and what we have now is undoubtedly better than what we’ve had in recent years. A way to go but we’ll get there.

Tonight at 7pm on the Redcar Bears Facebook page, a Bears Talk Live returns chatting to Erik Riss! It will be available to watch again after the event, but if you want to ask a question, you can on the Facebook post once the stream goes live.

I'm intrigued to know the names of the 7 Australian Premiership standard riders not currently racing in the Premiership, as is every promoter..!? 😅

It will be at the start of the season as normal..

On the podcast he explains he’ll not be racing for Leicester while his dad owns it because he doesn’t want people saying he’s getting any special treatment. He suggested at this moment he’s still weighing up the Premiership options.

Back in the clink last I heard

All smart TVs have a web browser, go to watch.britishspeedway.co.uk You will see a QR code, open your camera on your phone, you will be prompted to log in via your phone, your TV will then show the BSN site! Some other top tips: the square icon bottom right makes it full screen. On the race card under the video panel if you click on a heat it will take you to that heat. Right at the bottom on the left there is always a link to download a free race card in case you want to print it off and fill it in as you go! Thanks for the nice comments all and enjoy the playoffs!

He was defo 7th on countback until Masters was taken out of the meeting by the medics.

Fair enough, either way what happened today was correct as per the rules of the actual federation running it..

Once the semis are confirmed yes. If Zmarzlik is leading the meeting and crashes in heat 18 and is withdrawn, they won’t run a semi final with 3 riders only?

It was confusing but Drew Kemp did qualify, with Sam Masters no longer in the meeting he moved up to 6th. if a top 8 rider in the GP got injured in heat 20 you wouldn’t have a track reserve in a semi, it would be the next top scorer so this was the same and as per the rules.

A heat can be awarded after 2 completed laps.. 012.1.16 Awarding a Heat If the leading rider has completed at least 2 laps, then the Referee shall have the sole discretion to either order a re-run or award the heat based upon the positions when it was caused to be stopped; riders, other than the one disqualified being advanced one place. The heat was re run as with Sam Masters withdrawing it left the final semi final place undecided between Jason Edwards and Drew Kemp, both of whom were also in the heat. Drew’s win in the re run did indeed qualify him for the semi.

That will be because we anticipated it would be around 9:30, but was around 9:55 in the end which obviously we can’t count down to a time we don’t know. So apologies for the delay but it was always approximate depending on Eurosport and did go live at the very earliest opportunity 👍🏻

There were and indeed are no issues with the stream, it dropped the second Eurosport came off air, as advertised. This was slightly later than the anticipated 9:30 but it can only go live once Eurosport had finished.

Teams for Monday are: KING’S LYNN: Adam Ellis, Benjamin Basso, Jan Kvech, Niels-Kristian Iversen, Chris Harris, Patryk Wojdylo, Anders Rowe.LEICESTER: Max Fricke, Richard Lawson, Sam Masters, Luke Becker, Ryan Douglas, Craig Cook, Sam Hagon.

Certainly possible, although the train is faster..!

But also to suggest as you are, that they didn’t try hard enough is very wide of the mark. The East Coast Main Line was actually CLOSED for a period today due to person being hit by a train.

The trains were knackered as well..!

I drove from Newcastle to Luton airport last Friday, it took 7 hours with all the constant roadworks on the M1 and the traffic wasn’t even that bad, but going north was worse. Edinburgh is a further 3 hours away. She would have not got there for 7pm, more like 9 or 10 in reality.

I like the notion that a speedway rider is doing maths while hurtling around at 60 mph inches from a fence. Many riders don’t know even what the score is there’s too much going on.

I think they’ve seen what Steve Lawson has done for Bewley and working with him may turn him into a Bewley 2.0 (the kid is going to be world class no doubt), and that he has pretty much unlimited track access for practice etc has a lot to do with it, plus why wouldn’t you it’s a superb place.

The schedule is not chosen on what will be the best meeting of the week, although obviously we hope that will be the case..! BSN is visiting every championship club 3 times at home excluding playoffs and cup finals etc, and each Premiership club twice plus KO cup final for whoever makes that. So if there is a rain off we still have to visit that club at another time of year, and that needs to be agreeable to the club and not clash with other TV commitments or agreements, which can lead to some compromises to get everything in. What people wouldn’t want is to have a situation where we get to the end of the year and run out of meetings and short change anyone & there’s no guarantee any club will have much to race for after August, and so sometimes there will be some occasions where some clubs feature more. Hope that explains it, originally everything was more spread out but with the rain in the south it’s been a bit of a thing for everybody..! I am happy to say that June will feature more variety than you can shake a stick at in the first week alone. Come back to me on June 8th and tell me about the variety

The meeting on Saturday at Plymouth just gone was inserted into the schedule at fairly short notice to make up for a rain off on March 30th. The fixture next week was always on the schedule. With having to do a minimum amount of fixtures for each club, but of course Oxford have 2 teams featured at different levels so Premiership and Championship have to be looked at in isolation. There is also logistics to consider, doesn’t make sense to do Plymouth, then Belle Vue then Poole for example.

But what is the point in granting a facility to get a guest rider, when the test takes place 1 hour or less before start time. Who is going to turn up? Ask any team manager, they struggle to get guests with 3 days notice let alone 30 mins Glasgow could have named a number 8, but if they don’t have one there they can’t. This is also intended as a team punishment for that fixture too, with any subsequent penalties on the individual concerned rather than team league points for example.