arthur cross

One very ignorant comment regarding the current weather circumstances, then a much more realistic one. When will loads of speedway supporters who've followed the sport for donkey years finally grasp the basic fact that if the temperature's struggling to ever get above 11 or 12 celsius on a still day or (at a pinch) a blustery 9 or 10 celsius, it doesn't matter how gloriously dry or even sunny the weather is on the day, an already saturated track is going to be a devil of a job to dry out satisfactorily for a proper speedway meeting to be held ? !! I've been following the sport since 1988 and I can't recall any spring like the one we're currently enduring with the weather since late-February so overwhelmingly dominated by chilly winds from the east and north-east instead of the usual majority of helpful warmer breezes from the west and south-west. There are large parts of northern England and eastern Scotland where there's barely been any single day yet in 2018 reaching that all-important 12 degrees, albeit that should change tomorrow and Sunday judging by this weekend's forecast. Contrast that with 2012 when there was almost continuous 16-celsius sunshine for the last fortnight of March when a house I was having decorated was done in record time because the paint was drying beautifully quickly - it would probably have taken twice as long if that same work was being done now. Once we're consistently into mid-teens weather, then of course dry conditions on the day of the meeting should be enough to ensure it goes ahead even after a day or two of rain beforehand because there's enough warmth in the air for Mother Nature to be truly helpful. But that's nowhere near what we've got now or, even more importantly have had relentlessly for the past 6 weeks or so (the first and most vicious wave of the Beast From the East reached our shores on the evening of Tuesday 27th February). If Rob Godfrey and his crew at Scunthorpe, well known for running in just about any borderline conditions, can deem this evening's action worth a call-off with several hours to go, that should be seriously appreciated and understood rather than stupidly criticised.

Patiently waiting for some actual confirmation of who (if, that is, anyone at all) will be promoting Belle Vue speedway in 2017 to the satisfaction of Manchester City Council given the council's increasingly awkward position when it comes to justifying its multi-million-pound investment in the National Speedway Stadium project. All my previous scepticism about the medium/long-term financial viability of the National Speedway Stadium still stands but, as I've had some delicate family matters to deal with while waiting for any new promoting details at Belle Vue, I haven't made commenting on here a top priority. Thanks for wondering about me anyway ... rest assured, I haven't wondered about you in the slightest beyond taking this trouble to reply fairly promptly to your curiosity about me. Still wouldn't let either David Gordon or Chris Morton anywhere near the day-to-day running of a speedway club (or, indeed, any other business) because even if it turns out they were trampled upon by either the council or the contractors, their incredible naivety in running up the size of the club's debts while at the dog track made them an obvious target for any such trampling, never mind the pressure of those previous debts dominating their decision-making as they tried to settle the Aces into their new home. Mind you, I could easily transfer the phrase "incredible naivety" to the majority of folk trying to run speedway in this country rather than attaching it to just those two Mancunian clowns.

You want a very modern but simple reason why publishers aren't queuing up to produce books galore about Tai Woffinden, Chris Holder etc ? So much of the material (probably enough for 2 or 3 books) that they would have included in autobiographies or rivalry-reviews had they ridden in the 1960's or 1970's is out there in the public domain already thanks to their own daily tweets and website blogs !! ... these days, such material is far more lucrative to them for keeping sponsors happy and keeping their fanbase ticking along day-by-day by being put out immediately rather than storing up 250-pages of it for a book ready for publishing between the end of the season and Christmas. I'm sure Ivan Mauger with his tremendously sharp business skills would have played 2016's world of social media just as profitably as he did the bookshops and souvenir stalls during his actual career plus the worldwide travelling years of his retirement ... but he would have had to adapt those skills for this digital age. Much harder these days compared to a couple of generations ago to save enough gobsmacking stories to fill a book with new and exciting material because even if you hold back your side of the story, other sides will still be tweeting and blogging their versions to dilute the impact of your version once it's finally published. Take the infamous Nicki Pedersen and Greg Hancock crash and fight in Sweden in June 2015 but compare if it had actually taken place in 1975 ... today, just by tapping "pedersen hancock fight" into a google-search, you get immediately 4 different chunks of youtube coverage ... 40 years ago, it might well have been shown live on Swedish-tv but the public's ability at home to make video-recordings of that tv-coverage was in its infancy and the chance to copy such recordings for their friends was virtually non-existent. So while that crash and punch-up might well have had as much fuss surrounding it 40 years ago (probably a lot more given speedway's higher media profile then), its 1975 version would have had a different type of fuss, full of mystique and curiosity because it was so much harder a few months later for the general public to watch what really happened ... it's that mystique and curiosity that would have created much of the demand not just for lengthy versions in a book by both Pedersen and Hancock but also the inclusion of plenty of pages of "I was there" eyewitness accounts from teammates, mechanics, fans and promoters because all of that material would be filling-up the readers' imagination of what happened instead of today's instant computer access to the actual footage. It isn't so much a speedway phenomenon that its current riders aren't publishing as many books as their predecessors ... it's actually a general sporting phenomenon for the twitter/blogging/youtube reasons I've explained above that far fewer sports books are being published ... what's more, the ones that are being published are often using elements of the digital age in book form, notably the Fedegrafica book that combines a biography, photo-album and deep statistical analysis of tennis superstar Roger Federer's career into just one extraordinary volume. And if you're still wondering how tough it is to sell books or even get potential books published, how about a general mood this autumn within the comedy circuit that dvd-sales of their top stars' tour performances have crashed through the floor because it's now so easy to either copy illegally those dvd's or watch box-sets of other tv-shows for a much cheaper price than buying the comedy dvd's for a good home-entertainment night ... if as modern a concept as a dvd is in a business nosedive, what hope is there for something as ancient as a book ? !!

And clearly no idea either about skimming through the previous posts on a forum thread to find out the answer to a question you don't even need to ask because the answer's there already !! ... post-331 would have required you to go just a few pages back for plenty of information. Some folk on this thread have greatly appreciated the depth of info I've been able to provide as this saga's developed. In contrast, despite me still taking the trouble to answer a question you didn't even need to ask if you weren't so lazy, you choose to think you're oh-so-clever by twisting my name instead of showing any appreciation of your own. In case you're wondering, I both hate and pity any people who wallow in their own ignorance.

Long since built upon, which you'd be well aware of if you bothered to read through this thread before asking such a question, not least because I've provided plenty of the background information within it. To sum up fairly quickly, the confined landscape of Wimbledon FC's ground at the west end of Plough Lane (hemmed in by main roads, housing, railway lines and the River Wandle in a much smaller patch of land than Wimbledon Stadium at the east end of Plough Lane) meant it couldn't house more than 6,000 fans under the all-seater redevelopments required for high-level football after both the Bradford fire of 1985 and the Hillsborough tragedy of 1989 (its capacity was only around 12,000 despite standing-room in front of the south-side seats as well as standing-room only at both ends). Hence Wimbledon FC shared Crystal Palace's Selhurst Park for first-team games from August 1991 with both clubs' reserve teams using Plough Lane for a few seasons until Safeway bought it for a supermarket development that was never built, leading to the site being used for residential apartments that were built in the mid-2000's. Meanwhile, Wimbledon FC remained just about financially viable as Selhurst Park tenants thanks to TV-money plus many thousands of away fans regularly outnumbering the home support providing they could stay in the Premier League ... but relegation in May 2000 wrecked all that and led to the controversial go-ahead a couple of years later for the club's survival via re-location to Milton Keynes as MK Dons. That triggered the formation of AFC Wimbledon at non-league level within Surrey by diehard fans hoping that one day the London Borough of Merton Council would be far keener to have high-level football compared to its very underwhelming attitude to Plough Lane's impracticalities in the 1980's & '90's ... sure enough, helped by six promotions on the pitch and re-building a fan-base at Kingstonian's ground in the next door borough, the current Merton Council have overwhelmingly backed football's bid to return to Plough Lane, albeit on the current greyhound site rather than the old football site. Throw in that the present greyhound owners have no intention revamping it for that sport's larger oval floorspace when they know they can build more apartments within a football revamp requiring a smaller rectangular floorspace and now you're reasonably up-to-date (even more so if you finally read this thread in full).

Thank you for that answer which I shall keep in mind for any future reference.

As you've replied to one part of my previous post, are you finally going to deal with the other part of it ? !!

Better get used to having your own name sarcastically abused around here if you're going to start doing that to other members of this forum. No wonder your journalistic credibility has been shredded by some on this forum if your true standard of debating is to resort to kindergarten name-calling when you've so little else to offer (or, more accurately, so little that you're spinelessly prepared to offer in case it rocks a boat that's barely afloat anyway rather than utterly watertight). By the way, the silence of your reply to the above question on this same thread six days ago has been predictably and gutlessly deafening.

But how many times did you write (either in print or on this forum) what you were recommended to write rather than accurately reporting on the hopelessly chaotic goings-on or the increasingly inevitable crash ? !!

From various speedway dealings I had with him a few years ago, plus his part in the abysmal handling of the various chaos (both organisational and financial) surrounding the first season of the Natinal Speedway Stadium, I continue to regard Chris Morton as one of the most hopelessly naive people I've ever encountered when it comes to the business side of running a speedway club.

At least a few months (probably a couple of years) too late, never mind how many thousands of pounds such a delay may have cost him personally. Says he hasn't "given up hope of having some part in the future of the club" ... as a wonderfully experienced and successful rider, of course, that can still be the case by means of advising/coaching current and future riders. But in terms of having any part in the business side of the running of the club, dream on !!

If you're talking about the American Football NFL, basketball NBA and baseball MLB, then you're talking about a totally different concept of promotion and relegation based far more around individual players. Yes, all the major league franchises can't be relegated as a whole club but, instead, there are extensive feeder systems serving up a plentiful supply of players ready for "promotion" into the top level and, therefore, making it easy for struggling players to be "relegated". Both the NFL and NBA stock their teams primarily from college (university) superstars where the colleges themselves have multi-million dollar tv-contracts that get top tv-priority over the pro-teams at certain times (college football gets autumn Saturdays to itself while the NFL's main day is Sunday, college basketball dominates the last two weekends of March and the opening weekend of April for its 68-team national title knockout). Hence the fans and the sports-media over there don't need a narrative of any team being promoted/relegated because they've always got plenty of stories relating to which college stars are going to make it in the pros plus (always good for headlines) which party-daft college stars will crash horribly under the major league spotlight, All the MLB teams have a string of minor league teams directly affiliated to them covering Triple-A (sizeable cities with not quite a big enough fanbase for MLB), Double-A and Single-A, even going down to leagues just for rookie (first-year pros) and warm-winter play in Florida and Arizona ... that all makes it very easy to "promote" or "relegate" players within an MLB franchise up-and-down that franchise's ladder of teams, even for just a few days at a time in the frequent case of an injured superstar spending a week or two at his club's Triple-A or Double-A side both to regain match-fitness and boost those minor-league attendances. British speedway's caught right in the middle of this "promotion/relegation" debate as it's based in a land that's very used to the club-style promotion/relegation but it's actually a sport that's probably far better suited to the North American model of settled levels for each team supported by a clear framework for individual riders to move up-&-down those levels.

Craig Cook's a very good rider but I'm still not going to lose any sleep over whether he has a different view to mine regarding Chris Morton. Meanwhile, "horrific" is another appropriate word to attach next to "naivety" regarding my view of Chris Morton's business and financial ability. Time and time again, both Morton and Dave Gordon have proved wretchedly unable to listen to constructive advice or criticism from all sorts of angles, whether that be the council, the BSPA, speedway fans or anyone else with a strong connection to the sport. Hence it's become increasingly inevitable that the council and BSPA would act together in tandem in the way they did yesterday. Morton, Gordon and their apologists can bleat all they like about being unlucky or unfortunate or victimised. Yesterday's steps against them were richly deserved, long overdue and, very importantly in my view, not just related to their hapless handling of so much that's gone pear-shaped with the new stadium.

More than 2 years ago ... 5th June 2014 to be precise ... I posted the following inside the opening 30 posts of this thread ... "If the clowns that run Belle Vue are getting so excited about this basic step, no wonder they're going to be so far out of their depth if they ever have to actually run this project should it ever get completed." The basic step in question was the chance for the general public to view the plans for the new stadium at their local library. SInce then, various Belle Vue apologists (as well as Philip Rising and others from a more general background in speedway) have often challenged my attitude towards Dave Gordon and Chris Morton, an attitude that was based on several dealings with that duo a few years ago. They've also brushed aside my fearful contempt for the whole financial structure of the National Stadium project despite my grateful acknowledgement of Manchester City Council's up-front payback-later funding of the stadium's construction. Among further posts on this forum, I've noted how much extra financial pressure was put on the project when it was confirmed the repayment schedule was being cut from the original 60 years to just 24 years, thus requiring far more of the gate-money each year would need to be diverted towards that speeded-up schedule. I've always been sceptical about the ability of this stadium to attract anywhere near as much off-track business (weddings & other functions, corporate days, etc) as seemed necessary to secure its cash-flow ... that scepticism was based on both the location and mismanagement angles. As for the opening night fiasco and the several weeks of "not quite ready yet" snags afterwards, it was a spectacular reinforcement of the clowns' wretched inability to run the speedway side of the new stadium successfully. Chris Morton was a fantastic rider and, I'm sure, is great at passing on that experience to help other riders in the pits but when it comes to financial matters he is cluelessly naive. How riders kept waiting for lumps of money year after year have still remained involved with the Aces into following seasons while Dave Gordon has still been involved as well has beggared belief. I repeat now what I've said several times before on this forum that I've always welcomed the idea, the building and the concept of a National Speedway Stadium and, indeed, I've welcomed its location in one of this country's biggest cities that has such a proud heritage within the sport, I also feel very sorry for the loyal Belle Vue fans who've had to put up with their beloved Aces being run so deviously by these clowns for so long. Manchester City Council continue to deserve support, not just for their part in building the stadium but, clearly now, their willingness to try to find a way of not being left with a "white elephant" on their books. I hope there are speedway folk able to match up realistically the stadium's potential to that support from the council. But. albeit many years and months too late, at least now those clowns are out of the way and I look forward to anyone who's defended Chris Morton and Dave Gordon against my criticisms in the past having the guts to admit maybe they shouldn't have been so supportive of them when being so dismissive of my observations. To sum up, I rest my case very sincerely.

More than 2 years ago ... 5th June 2014 to be precise ... I posted the following within the very early pages of the "Belle Vue National Stadium" thread within this forum's general discussions ... "If the clowns that run Belle Vue are getting so excited about this basic step, no wonder they're going to be so far out of their depth if they ever have to actually run this project should it ever get completed." The basic step in question was the chance for the general public to view the plans for the new stadium at their local library. SInce then, various Belle Vue apologists (as well as Philip Rising and others from a more general background in speedway) have often challenged my attitude towards Dave Gordon and Chris Morton, an attitude that was based on several dealings with that duo a few years ago. They've also brushed aside my fearful contempt for the whole financial structure of the National Stadium project despite my grateful acknowledgement of Manchester City Council's up-front payback-later funding of the stadium's construction. Among further posts on this forum, I've noted how much extra financial pressure was put on the project when it was confirmed the repayment schedule was being cut from the original 60 years to just 24 years, thus requiring far more of the gate-money each year would need to be diverted towards that speeded-up schedule. I've always been sceptical about the ability of this stadium to attract anywhere near as much off-track business (weddings & other functions, corporate days, etc) as seemed necessary to secure its cash-flow ... that scepticism was based on both the location and mismanagement angles. As for the opening night fiasco and the several weeks of "not quite ready yet" snags afterwards, it was a spectacular reinforcement of the clowns' wretched inability to run the speedway side of the new stadium successfully. Chris Morton was a fantastic rider and, I'm sure, is great at passing on that experience to help other riders in the pits but when it comes to financial matters he is cluelessly naive. How riders kept waiting for lumps of money year after year have still remained involved with the Aces into following seasons while Dave Gordon has still been involved as well has beggared belief. I repeat now what I've said several times before on this forum that I've always welcomed the idea, the building and the concept of a National Speedway Stadium and, indeed, I've welcomed its location in one of this country's biggest cities that has such a proud heritage within the sport, I also feel very sorry for the loyal Belle Vue fans who've had to put up with their beloved Aces being run so deviously by these clowns for so long. Manchester City Council continue to deserve support, not just for their part in building the stadium but, clearly now, their willingness to try to find a way of not being left with a "white elephant" on their books. I hope there are speedway folk able to match up realistically the stadium's potential to that support from the council. But. albeit many years and months too late, at least now those clowns are out of the way and I look forward to anyone who's defended Chris Morton and Dave Gordon against my criticisms in the past having the guts to admit maybe they shouldn't have been so supportive of them when being so dismissive of my observations. To sum up, I rest my case very sincerely.

Certainly hope Hall Green remains a greyhound venue after Thursday's planning session. But surely the biggest obstacle for any speedway at Hall Green to overcome is finding anyone willing to invest the money in designing and laying a completely new shale track inside the greyhound's sand track at a venue whose owners clearly have the bulldozers on their ideal horizon. While appreciating the Brummies managed to introduce a new speedway track into the city's other GRA-run dog-track at Perry Barr a decade ago, that's the one GRA venue operated in conjunction with the local city council rather than on what was effectively a GRA-freehold (up to 2014 at Hall Green) or is now a GRA-leasehold basis (the last couple of years at Hall Green).

Salty's much more up-to-speed than most on this forum regarding the saga of the Greyhound Racing Association being bought around a decade ago by Risk Capital with Galliard Homes lurking in the background and the purchase being heavily funded by multi-millions of loans from Irish banks that were made a year or two before the 2007/08 global banking crisis hit the Irish economy even harder than the UK economy ... hence why the collective debt-agency for Irish banking known as NAMA came to be regarded as the effective owner of the GRA. If you've a lot of spare time, you can catch up with a lot more of this saga on both the Oxford and Wimbledon stadium threads on this forum ... however, I can fully understand extremely clued-up West Midlands folk like Brian Buck are only really getting to grips with all of this now that a GRA track near them is on the brink of redevelopment. So to sum up umpteen posts on the Oxford/Wimbledon threads quickly while also bringing things right up-to-date ... ... it's appeared for quite a few years that the GRA's dog tracks are profitable on a day-to-day basis but aren't making enough of a dent into either the multi-millions of loans (or the interest payments linked to them) to cover medium/long-term investment in things like stadium facilities ... hence why the freehold of both Hall Green and Belle Vue have been sold off to keep NAMA at arm's length as reported in this March 2014 article from the Racing Post, http://www.racingpost.com/news/greyhounds/hall-green-freehold-is-sold-for-3m-to-packaging-firm/1630159/ and on a wider GRA basis than just Hall Green's situation ... ... Galliard Homes finally get the chance to start showing in a few days' time what they can do with the urban regeneration of a landmark sporting venue once West Ham round off this season at Upton Park's Boleyn Ground and move to the Olympic Stadium ... Galliard have long planned to showcase what they do at Upton Park as a marker for what they could do at either Oxford or Wimbledon if given a similar chance. ... Perry Barr isn't in similar danger because it's the only track in the GRA's modern-day portfolio that has always been run in partnership with its city council with the GRA never having had anything to do with its freehold or the ability to cash-in on that angle.

Don't hold your breath waiting for any constructive answer to your excellent question because ... ... there has been no attempt whatsoever by any of Belle Vue's apologists, excuse-makers or journalistic lackeys to answer my rather similar question posted 30 days and 375 posts before yours on this very same thread !! !! If my post is the one you were leaning back towards, then I can assure you it wasn't frivolous at that time (the Wednesday pre-Easter when Wolves, Cradley and Edinburgh were accurately planning their respective Good Fridays while Belle Vue bleated in vain that their meeting that lunchtime at home to Wolves was still on) and it remains a serious post now, just like yours deserves to be. Just don't use phrases like "botch-job" or "cock-up" in any of your comments because it gets folk like Philip Rising very upset and he questions your credibility to have any say at all ... even though there's clearly now been yet another botch-job or cock-up to force both Sunday's Colts action and Wednesday's Aces meeting to be called off.

Crazy comparison rather than what you think is a simple one !! ... if I'm buying that new house, I'd be using people who'd already built loads of other houses before to build my one ... hence I'd know (and they could show) past examples of what they'd built for others to prove they were up to doing my particular job. But how many speedway tracks have anyone from Manchester City Council built before to use as a guide to their ability to get Belle Vue's project right ? !! ... not many, and most likely none at all ... so now it does become much more appropriate for Belle Vue to have more of a guiding hand in the building of their track than I'd expect to have in the building of my house ... and, what's more, surely it's in the city council's interest to seek out Belle Vue's expertise because ultimately both the city council and the speedway club want to reflect in the same glow of a successful project. The whole project continues to stink of botch-job after cock-up after careless/reckless naivety.

For the time being, I'll note both the comments quoted above, pending what actually develops over the next few days and weeks. I sincerely hope both of those comments don't prove to be breathtakingly naive.

10 days in the middle of summer with plenty of warm weather in the forecast during that spell would still be a tight squeeze. 10 days during what we're actually getting - one of the coldest, yuckiest mid-April spells for many years - is a hell of a gamble.

But, most importantly Philip, is Colin Meredith still confident everything will be fine in a day or two like you so wretchedly reported in the midweek after the Peter Craven fiasco ? And maybe you as a journalist might like to find out just how much speedway expertise there is within those involved in this project among either the city council or the contractors because it seems that they're both as clueless as each other about what they're supposed to do to resolve this farce. Overall, we currently appear to have a clueless city council dealing with an equally clueless bunch of contractors who've been given the specifications of the track by the two clowns in charge of running Belle Vue. Still wondering why the National Speedway Stadium is currently such a laughing stock ?

The past 24 hours on this thread have relentlessly reinforced my long-held opinion to laugh at any comments reported on behalf of Colin Meredith or written by Philip Rising. The moment that joke of a track curator says he's confident about anything, it's well worth reckoning that all he's doing is crossing his fingers and hoping for the best. But he knows his confidence will be faithfully reported by someone who claims to be a professional journalist but instead provides great comedy with his latest desperately poor attempt to cover up the shocking incompetence he ought to be highlighting in the first place as a routine part of his job.

Firstly, more respect for the general public from those two clowns for the frustrations they've already caused. Secondly, any single shred of evidence from either of them that they'll really learn from this clanger (or any of their previous ones) to avoid plunging into another humdinger in the future. Both those requests won't cost them a single penny in cash ... all they cost is some humility and effort to improve on their currently gormless standards and they're perfectly achievable but only if there's a willingness to do so.

I haven't mentioned at any stage that I'm looking to claim compensation so you've got that end of the stick wrong. What I do know is that I'll think very very carefully before ever devoting any of my time, fuel or food/drink costs, never mind any admission money into Belle Vue's coffers while either David Gordon or his fellow clown Chris Morton remain in charge.