DaveWayne

I was forgetting the additional 5% only applies at home - Fricke at home and Iversen away then. Or fingers crossed his average slips over their 4 remaining matches.😂

With the terrible news about Jack's injury, it looks like the only hope Sheffield now have of a decent tilt at the playoffs is if Kings Lynn fail to qualify and we can persuade Fricke to guest for us at number 1. 😉

From where we were stood on turn 3/4 it looked like Etheridge realised Fricke had beaten him to the outside dirt line and he tried to cut back inside onto the home straight but he turned too tight and locked up causing him to slow and giving Cook nowhere to go. There was no intent to cause a collision and had he not locked up he would probably have got away with it. But, even as a Tigers fan, I immediately said that Etheridge has to go as he was the cause of the accident. Was very surprised to see Cook's light come up.

Coventry had greyhounds from 1968 to 1986, then intermittently from 2004.

But that can happen without guesting as well, due to riders in multiple leagues, doubling up, GPs, etc. The year that Sheffield won the playoffs they lost 6 riders to injury at some point during the season, and only one of them was injured riding for Sheffield. The comparison with football is irrelevant whilever riders are allowed to compete in 2 or 3 countries. They are never riders for your club exclusively.

I wasn't suggesting that you have to accommodate every eventuality, just pointing out that the proposal of home meetings once a fortnight could completely exclude someone on a 2 shift system for a whole season. Can we afford for that to happen ? As some have already said, once people get out of the habit they often don't come back. Shift swaps are OK but I'm not sure you could do it every second Thursday for 5/6 months !!

But what about shift workers ? When I first went with my uncle in the 80s we only went every 2nd week as he alternated between days and afters. If you went to a rigid 'once a fortnight' people on shift patterns like that could potentially miss a full season if it fell wrong for them.

I'm not sure you can claim Kurtz as 'one of your own'. He had already been riding in the UK for 6 years, with 4 years in the top flight at Poole, topping their GSAs in his final year with them. Yes he has improved while he has been with Belle Vue but that would have happened with age and experience wherever he was riding. His improvement is not much different to Jack Holder who left Poole at the same to join Sheffield. Both have been loyal servants since then, but neither club can claim to have nurtured them to the extent that you may have done with some of the others.

But the same could be said of the R1 fixture which was 44-34 after heat 13, and a last heat 5-1 the other way would have made it 48-42. The fact still remains that over 15 heats Ipswich only scored 1 point more than their previous visit, despite Sheffield running R/R for one of the best riders in the world. That suggests to me that they performed worse than their previous visit.

1 point more than their previous visit when Tigers were at full strength. Not sure it's that decent ?

Tai has retired now so we should be OK. 😉

Fact or gossip ? The latest accounts published on companies house (up to September 2025) show an improved financial position compared to the previous year.

It's very reminiscent of what was done at Long Eaton as well. The 'save the stadium' campaign was strong, but obviously with speedway fans being more regionalised and stock car fans following drivers rather than locations, the speedway side was far stronger. When the developers were not making any progress, they came up with a new plan which would rotate the track through 90 degrees, freeing up land that could be developed for industrial purposes. This development would generate the funds for the new track. Of course, this was never going to happen, but unfortunately the leaders of the campaign group were speedway fans and they bought the lies. Obviously, without pit space there was never going to be any stock cars there again, so a wedge was immediately driven between the two factions as the stock car fans felt like they were being sold out. This 'new speedway track' at Brandon will have exactly the same effect on the campaign groups at Coventry if the speedway side show any signs of weakness towards it. There is no way that a new stadium could survive purely on income from speedway and the developers know this.

Can anyone who has been before advise as to whether the best option is advance ticket or pay on arrival ?

Another subtle dig at Sheffield ? Maybe you never saw how much Tai was helping the other riders, even when he was injured and still turning up to the matches ? Or Chris Holder, or Picko ? Look at Flint last year compared to his previous few seasons. Team spirit is very high at Sheffield and all the younger riders comment on it.