arthur cross

Once it became clear there was no immediate solution to reviving speedway in Exeter, at least the option of diverting any of his legacy towards Plymouth could be regarded as propping up speedway within Exeter's home county of Devon.

Easy to jump to that conclusion but it's probably nearer the truth to note that nothing much can happen while Galliard Homes so stubbornly refuse to consider selling the Oxford site (and Wimbledon as well) for others to develop or restore ... it appears their prime tactic at the moment is to simply drag out the respective situations at both those stadiums for as long as possible. Perhaps that's so that they can showcase what they could do with either site once they've got stuck into the current West Ham United ground at Upton Park in about a year's time because football's Hammers move into the Olympic Stadium next summer, leaving Galliard to build over 800 residences at Upton Park which will be nearly as many as they've proposed for the Oxford and Wimbledon sites put together.

Great to see there's still enthusiasm for speedway in Exeter ... but frighteningly naïve if they're reckoning they need only £100,000 in start-up money !! Just the most routine of planning permission fees, then an air/foam-fence, the initial building of the track base and the shale for its racing surface, the BSPA-bond and the SCB-licences will rattle through at least half (and probably much more) of that 100-grand and that's before you add in anything like the most basic of pits or spectator facilities !! At least £200,000 would be a much more realistic start-up target, especially (as far as I'm aware, like "SCB" above) that Plymouth have absolutely galloped through whatever was still left from the legacy of former Falcons promoter Colin Hill after his death in 2004.

Both any stadium announcer and any centre-green mic-man are licenced officials ("announcer" is one of the categories of SCB licencing just like "timekeeper", "starting marshal" or "pits marshal") ... and yes, there is room for referees to warn or even fine such announcers if they deem it appropriate. Glasgow's centre-green announcer for many years, Michael Max, had a spell of several seasons where he stayed away from that duty if a particular referee was in charge at Ashfield after he was fined by that ref for having the nerve to correctly quote the rulebook over his microphone to the crowd to prove the ref had just got a decision wrong !! !!

Thanks for the informative reply. Still think you're going a bit over the top by reckoning one illegal but allowed-to-stand ride makes a mockery of the sport given speedway seems to have an inexhaustible supply of ways to make a mockery of itself !!

Hopefully Thursday's clanger finally spells the end of Dave Dowling's refereeing career ... he's been a loyal servant to speedway for many years but that's not enough on its own to justify him having been allowed to remain a referee way beyond his sell-by date for that important responsibility. I've seen him provide holiday-cover as Scunthorpe's Clerk of the Course so there's no reason why he (or speedway as a whole) couldn't channel his enthusiasm into being the roving holiday-cover for that role at several tracks within easy reach of his Bradford base. He baffled absolutely everybody (riders, managers, spectators, the whole lot !!) with his handling of the Newcastle-Redcar League Cup meeting a few months ago and he's always been utterly hopeless when it comes to crossing his fingers and hoping the weather stays ok for a rain-threatened meeting when it would make much better financial sense to call it off ... I've even seen him abandoning a meeting after one bend (yes, not even a lap or a race !!) after being ridiculously optimistic that the weather would work out fine. I don't often disagree with "racers and royals" (and we've swapped notes on various incidents in the past) but on this occasion I think the right decision has been reached to let the result stand because any protest came well after the several windows in which it could correctly have been made (firstly pre-meeting, secondly once Kus was declared on a tactical for heat 8 and thirdly once he'd put the 8-1 on the board but before the tapes rose for heat 9). There'll be plenty of football matches in the upcoming season where the ref and his assistants make what's easily proven by replays to be a clanger (striker at least a yard offside when he scores, foul committed a yard outside the 18-yard box but penalty awarded, handball awarded when it's clearly only hit the defender's chest or face, etc) but everyone accepts that unless there are very exceptional circumstances, the clanger stands unless it's immediately corrected before the game continues into its next phase. Indeed, both NFL and rugby league regard it as a normal aspect of the game for the attacking team to hurry into their next play and get it underway if they reckon they're getting away with something dodgy on their previous play ... once that next play's underway, the previous dodginess becomes irrelevant and it's totally accepted that it's the defensive team's responsibility to get the ref to delay the action in such situations. Somerset had ample chances to avoid being on the wrong end of that illegal 8-1 and didn't take them ... that's their lesson to take from this omnishambles and given how easy it is for the general public to look up the current greensheets on the BSPA website, it's not much to expect every team manager to double-check the opposition's figurework in the final moments before a meeting even when there's a late and unexpected case of r/r like Jan Graversen's absence on this occasion. If you can't cope with controversial results occasionally skewering what you think should be the correct league table, then don't get involved in any sport in the first place because you're bound to end up crying at some stage. Finally, a question for "lucifer sam" ... if Scunthorpe (or Oxford in the past) innocently benefit from a refereeing clanger, how quickly do you insist the scoreline must be corrected to reflect the situation ? !! By all means whinge about other results affecting your team providing you're also keen to hand back any presents you've similarly received !!

Just two National League meetings today claimed 7 potential stand-ins between them for Benko !! Former Berwick reserve Liam Carr was Buxton's number-5 at home to a Stoke side featuring Teessider Danny Phillips (#4) and former Belle Vue reserve Lee Payne (#5) who guested for Somerset's Benji Compton on Friday plus Ryan MacDonald (#6) who's also made the odd Premier League appearance on northern tracks. Meanwhile,recent Newcastle guest Luke Riddick along with Berwick's regular number-8 Stefan Farnaby were both busy for Mildenhall at home to a Cradley line-up including former Scunthorpe reserve Matt Williamson. That little lot would have wiped out at least half of Plymouth's more realistic options for covering the deeply unfortunate circumstances of the Benko bereavement.

It's been bought by Galliard Homes for a redevelopment which they'll also use as a showcase for what they could do with the Wimbledon Stadium site (which they've effectively owned for about a decade) given the right planning permission.

Top marks to Paul Burbidge's effort to report on the repeated "excessive moisture" problems of the dodgier temporary tracks over the SGP years, even if plenty of major football stadia groundsmen could have said much the same as far back as 20 years ago or longer !! Once it became more fashionable for new sports stadiums (or revamps of existing venues) to wrap their seating round the whole playing arena (instead of having four separate stands along each side/end with relatively open corners), the groundsmen soon discovered how much tougher it was to keep the more sheltered parts of their pitch in good condition because it was now so much harder for the breezy and sunlight aspects of their pitch maintenance to help out with the temperature aspect of it. It's why many stadiums built from the 1990's onwards have either a clear panel built into the southern roof of their stands (to refract more sunlight onto the pitch) or a couple of ground-level large ventilation shafts that double-up as emergency exits for on-the-pitch fans at rock concerts ... for example, Sunderland's Stadium of Light which opened in 1997 has both those features (clear southern roof plus south-west & north-west shafts) which is why it's allowed a 55,000 capacity for rock gigs despite the stage reducing its seating capacity from 48,000 to only 40,000. But as soon as you try to put a temporary speedway track into a modern football or rugby stadium you're automatically putting one of sport's most weather-dependent playing surfaces into one of sport's most climate-regulated locations ... that's ok providing the temporary track is in ideal condition as it's installed but, as Gelsenkirchen proved (and Cardiff 2013 very narrowly avoided), a damp/dodgy track has almost no chance of being salvaged given the stadium architecture into which it's been plonked !! Next time Tottenham are at home you'll see how hard they find it to maintain any grass on their pitch along its whole southern goal-line (left end as the tv-coverage shows it) ever since White Hart Lane became all-seater and fully-enclosed because that area misses any sunlight ... if they can't do any better with all-year-round access to that area of their pitch, it's no wonder any temporary speedway track is going to struggle to bed-in properly in just a few days !! If Ole Olsen or BSI or anyone else involved in SGP meetings is always going to ignore this crucial aspect of the pitch-level climate of most major stadiums, then you're inevitably going to get more fiascos in the future to add to Gelsenkirchen, Warsaw, etc.

It was mentioned a few posts earlier on this thread that Steve's partner has gone into labour, prompting the request for "rider replacement" that's been granted. In recent years, the BSPA have usually granted a facility when requested to cope with either an impending birth or a family bereavement ... in a case like Steve Worrall's where 2 different league titles are still at stake with Edinburgh & Cradley (and a 3rd title chance via Swindon ended only a few days ago), I suspect either Steve himself or his various promoters would have done the preliminary work of notifying the BSPA a few weeks ago of the baby's due date (ready for actually applying for any facility when it became appropriate) rather than waiting until just a few hours before Steve becomes a father to start requesting anything !!

I'll stand by what I posted earlier today based upon my family's deep financial background, my own degree in Economics & Statistics, over 20 years involved in all sorts of aspects of speedway and over 10 years working professionally within a combination of greyhound racing and the bookmaking industry. One other point worth adding on this thread (as opposed to the mentions I've given about it on the Wimbledon and Oxford threads on this forum in recent months) ... It would be far harder for the GRA to close Perry Barr than any of their other dog-tracks even if they reckoned the greyhounds at Perry Barr weren't profitable because they run this stadium in a leisure-economics partnership with Birmingham City Council instead of still owning freehold-rights (Wimbledon) or having recently privately-sold the freehold-rights (Hall Green & Belle Vue) to make a dent in their multi-million-pound debts from a decade ago to various Irish banks. That's why the Brummies' demise under the Phillips-regime is arguably even more appalling than any other recent speedway closure because it's happened at a track that's just about as safe as possible among rented-stadiums from any redevelopment threat !!

Even allowing for a speedway-tinted view from a speedway fan, you've come up with an absolutely staggering misjudgment of the revenue balance between greyhound racing and speedway meetings at Perry Barr ... I've quoted one post from you when I could have also quoted several subsequent ones that have betrayed your total ignorance of the situation. Perry Barr's BAGS greyhound meetings every Sunday lunchtime & Tuesday lunchtime bring in at least £6,000 per meeting in betting-shop picture-fees, perhaps even as much as £8,000 per meeting ... what's more, with only the very occasional bad-weather abandonment in mid-winter, those fees are coming in all 52-weeks of the year so that's at least £600,000 to £800,000 per year into Perry Barr's coffers without a single person needing to stroll through the turnstiles. The GRA are notoriously poor prize-money payers so they're only spending about £2,000 of each BAGS-meeting's picture-fees on the prize-money for those races ... the rest comfortably funds the day-to-day upkeep of the stadium & the wages of the few full-time staff with the bonus of the Sunday meetings attracting a modest number of spectators for a bit of extra profit from any food, drink or tote-bets they enjoy. All of which means the evening greyhound meetings only need to attract enough of a crowd to cover each night's prize-money and the extra costs of the part-time staff needed for the extra demand for food, drink and tote-service and that's where greyhound racing has accepted in recent years that the public will only tend to turn out in profitable numbers for that business plan on Thurs-Fri-Sat nights, hence the reduction of midweek nights of greyhound racing across the country. It's not what you suggest as a "whittling down" of the number of nights of racing ... it's actually an economic common-sense move by the dog tracks to concentrate their efforts into marketing and running their meetings on the nights their customers actually want to come and enjoy them. Now let's have a look at what speedway generates at Perry Barr ... the rent's around £2,000 per meeting (if it gets paid) but that's only once-a-week and only for 7-months per year and, even then, it's weather-dependent so it's effectively only 6-months per year ... meanwhile, speedway attracts a crowd that mostly like to stay outside while buying only the occasional burger or drink instead of the dog-racing crowd mostly staying inside guzzling far more food and booze throughout the evening plus having plenty of tote-bets on their night's action on the track. In other words, for the finances at Perry Barr, a night's speedway is somewhere between the handy bonus of any Sunday-lunchtime crowd-expenditure topping up that day's BAGS-fee and the standard profitability of a weekend night's dog-racing so without knowing the exact figures, I'd put it a bit nearer the "Sunday" end of this equation than the "standard" end. There is absolutely no way that, in your words, " ... the GRA probably needs the Brummies now, more than they did 7-8 years ago ... ". In fact, please tell all of us from where (other than your own chronic ignorance) you've got that view of this situation. Instead, bear in mind the GRA's 21st-century record of how important speedway's been to them at Wimbledon and Oxford, leaving them with only one of their tracks (Belle Vue) currently hosting speedway and that's not going to be for much longer thanks to the Aces' new stadium rather than any GRA decision. Much though it's encouraging to see Tony Mole arranging efforts to revive the Brummies in 2015 and beyond, I've yet to see or hear a single word from either him or the GRA about where things stand regarding the Brummies' rent-debt left behind at Perry Barr by the Phillips-regime. Until that debt is tidied up to both the GRA's and speedway's satisfaction, any revival surely can't go forward. Anyone thinking the GRA are "hoping and praying" for speedway's return is living in a land even the cloud-cuckoos wouldn't dream of entering.

Almost certainly a very simple answer to all of this. The brief report outlining how busy the Comets would be in the next few days while still falling two fixtures short of completing their fixtures before the play-off cut-off fails to include any phrase along the lines of "... these will still be staged before the end of the season but won't have an impact on the play-off qualifiers". Perhaps that sort of phrase was included by whoever sent this report to the News & Star sportsdesk but got sub-edited out to make the report fit into the right space on the newspaper page (and wasn't then re-instated when the report was put online where there's far less pressure on how much space is taken up by any particular article). The headline, including the all-important word "scrapped", would only have been added by someone at the sportsdesk in Carlisle where it can't be guaranteed that whoever's on duty has a useful knowledge of speedway given the nearest team's 35 miles away. All it needs is for that headline-writer to see no hint in the article of the missing fixtures still being fitted in a few weeks later and, hey presto, the word "scrapped" is an obvious one to use within the headline ... and, also hey presto, you've got nearly 60 posts on this thread. But what remains daft is that no-one from several different angles has done anything to correct this misjudged website headline for more than 2 days !! ... all it would surely take is anyone connected with the News & Star with good speedway knowledge, or anyone officially connected with the Comets, or even a couple of Comets fans ringing up the News & Star sports desk to query the headline and get it changed to get rid of this confusion. Very few (if any) other sports have a habit of staging regular-season fixtures that don't count towards post-season qualifications ... the moral of this article (for any team or paper rather than just the Comets and the News & Star) is to make sure whoever supplies any fixture-update like this makes it abundantly clear about these meetings' unusual situation.

I'm pleased to see the planning permission hurdle has not only been cleared but, by all accounts, comprehensively sorted out which is a great achievement in the current planning climate for any speedway club whether it's new, old or moving along its local road. But given it's taken just over 3 years from the August 2011 Belle Vue fans forum to secure this planning permission when even the more cautious speakers that evening were hoping for permission in March 2012 and stadium-opening by the end of 2012, I'll still reserve my full congratulations until the stadium's successfully up-&-running. I hope the amount of facilities and spectator-capacity being built (or temporarily accounted for on big-event days) will generate enough money to keep on top of the 24-year city-council loan but the figurework still looks tough to me, hence my overall reservations despite today's big step forward. In one respect, today's news confirms perhaps the biggest challenge of all for Dave Gordon, Chris Morton and everyone else at Belle Vue involved in this project because (albeit much delayed) they've been able to obtain the planning-permission and building-loan plenty of other speedway projects elsewhere in the country have found so difficult to secure. Now they've got no-one else to blame if they can't go on to deliver a successful finished product.

Right rider, right track, right sequence of events and right colour of flag (although he ignored it the first time he went past it because he seemed blissfully unaware he'd done anything to deserve it, never mind both leaving/rejoining the track and being lapped !!). But given he was at least in his mid-30's at the time, it certainly wasn't during an under-21 qualifier !! ... probably he was riding in the Conference League half of a Buxton double-header that also featured a British under-21 semi-final or a round of the British under-15 series. Talking of which, also at Buxton during one of their British under-15 meetings. a very determined 12-or-13-year-old Josh Auty missed the gate but scythed into the lead on the 2nd-bend between two far less confident riders who were so scared out of their wits that they promptly wobbled into each other and then into a heap with at least one of them being excluded for being the primary cause of the stoppage when, arguably, the real cause of it was already well clear down the back-straight by the time anyone fell off !! But I'll give top marks to the time at Newport that referee Dave Watters excluded Mark Lemon from the re-run of a heat for failing the 2-minutes despite the fact the pair of them had been chatting on the pits-&-ref phones (about why the original version had been called back) for at least the first 40-seconds of the fresh 2-minutes without Mr. Watters ever telling Lemo the fresh clock had started !!

Err, umm ... they haven't done much work yet, regardless of what anyone was saying at Alf Weedon's funeral. This is what was reported in the Racing Post back in mid-April, clearly identifying sometime around now (rather than any time around that funeral) as the starting-point for any work and aiming for about a year from now for completion. http://www.racingpost.com/news/greyhounds/swindon-reveal-plans-to-build-new-stadium/1638343/

I can understand anyone aware of the Towcester greyhound project wondering if it could embrace speedway as well but in all the Racing Post coverage of the project over the past year there's never been any hint of any other sport also being involved and from a speedway perspective there would be a couple of particularly awkward problems. Firstly, the racecourse is less than a mile south-east of Towcester town centre which already has a population of around 9,000 as a still-expanding commuter town that's handy for both Milton Keynes and Northampton so it won't be the easiest place in which to secure noise-permission for speedway bikes. Secondly, if you already think it feels a bit remote watching speedway at somewhere like Monmore or Sheffield with a greyhound track separating you from the action then be prepared to feel very remote if speedway's ever tried at Towcester because (like Dundalk in Ireland) they're building the greyhound track inside the home straight of their horse racing track but still using the horse racing facilities for the crowd. It'll be distant enough for greyhound fans in the stands at Towcester with separate chase and hurdles home-straights for the horses separating themselves from the dog racing ... how many of you would want to watch speedway separated from the action by 3 widths of other sports' tracks ? !!

By all means have any agreed cut-off mark for when a meeting becomes "official" whether that's heat-8, heat-10 or heat-12 ... speedway's such a weather-dependent sport that some sort of cut-off is a necessary evil and the vast majority of fans understand that. Where any concept of "necessary evil" to help clubs' cash flow falls apart is that when a British meeting is abandoned after heat-10, there seems to be no attempt by any club to give just a little bit back to its fans' cash flow to reflect the fact they've paid full price for what turned out to be only two-thirds of the action. Instead, the overwhelming attitude from the clubs (and the authorities around them) is that because this truncated meeting is now officially in the record books, there's no need at all to offer anything back to the fans because those fans saw everything that involved getting that meeting into the record books. After the last few years of credit-crunch economics turning so many more of the public into value-hunters in any of their spending, such an attitude from the clubs might as well belong to the dinosaur world. In any business (not just a sports team) where mostly the same loyal customers are coming along to pay for the same type of product around 20 times a year, surely any business with any sort of customer-friendly perspective would make at least a modest effort to make those customers feel they were at least slightly included in any cash flow implications of a truncated product. So, for example, it shouldn't be until heat-12 that the fans get no rebate for their limited amount of entertainment with their rain-off tickets entitling them to £1 off in the future if the result's been called after heat-11 or £2 off in the future if the result's been called after heat-10. While the fans in such an example still haven't had as much value-for-money as they would have had during fair weather, at least they go home feeling their wallets have been included during the abandonment process rather than going home feeling ripped off. Trouble is, far too many of speedway's decision-makers appear to have long forgotten what it's like being a fan deciding whether to spend hard-earned money in a dodgy-weather situation, either in the hours leading up to a meeting or while reflecting immediately after attending a truncated one.

There were significant easy-to-spot drawbacks about a Fast Track scheme for the PL beyond any basic "bad for business" viewpoint. At the time the EL's scheme was being devised last November, it needed 20 riders to be drafted across the 10 EL teams and we've all seen what a wide range of abilities that proved to embrace ... at that same time, it would have needed 24 riders to be drafted across 12 PL teams with the consequently even wider stretching of abilities and, as it turned out, Peterborough's later inclusion as the PL's 13th team would have required a 25th and 26th drafted reserve at this level. But the biggest drawback was how far flung the 13 PL teams are across the British map compared to the much tighter-knit range of either EL or NL clubs ... don't forget, 6 PL clubs (Glas/Edin/Berw/Newc/Wkgtn/Redcar) are well north of the EL's northern outpost at Belle Vue and the NL's northern outpost at Scunthorpe. Drumming up a big enough list of suitable draftees for the EL was a tricky enough task ... now try drumming up a bigger number of suitable riders with the extra proviso of them being able (perhaps affected by other work commitments outside speedway) to guarantee devoting enough travel-time to reach whichever PL club drafted them despite most of these suitable being based inside or close beside the much tighter-knit NL map. Probably a 12-rider (or as it proved 13) for a PL draft for one reserve place in each side (with the other reserve place still fluctuating on the month-by-month averages around the other 6 riders in each team) would be as far as you could realistically attempt given the supply of riders set against the amount/location of teams ... but then, how do you rank the PL clubs fairly for just a single pick each compared to the EL's double-pick that had the more obvious parity-guideline of 1st pick-&-20th pick, 2nd-&-19th, 3rd-&-18th, etc alongside any clubs being able to protect their own eligible assets.

Ronnie Russell gets his share of the gravy train by being Sky's liaison man (hence the headset you saw him wearing tonight) between the Sky tv-producers and the host club's track staff regarding any circumstances where lengthy delays (either crash-related or weather-related) force the meeting to deviate plenty of minutes away from its ideal way of fitting into the 2-hour slot Sky allocate for the 15-heats. if the weather's good on a night of few crashes, each heat and advert-break neatly take place within just as couple of minutes of Sky's ideal template. Whether Ronnie Russell has ever had a sensible clue about track preparation is debatable and probably overlooked when he was first appointed to this post. But as far as Sky are concerned, he'll have properly earned his wages this evening for a good night's work because the programme filled its allocated 2-hours without ending really early or spilling into the next programme and it also produced a result which officially counted towards the league table. As it neatly filled its 2-hour live slot, it will also need minimal (if any at all) editing to be shown in the various 2-hour repeat slots overnight and tomorrow. For Sky, that's all way more important than any consideration for the paying public. Add in neither club wanting the expense of bringing their riders back for a re-staging while the home club don't want the hosting expenses (the ambulances, etc) of a re-staging and that pushes the paying public even further down the priority list. Given that it was mentioned several times tonight that there appeared to be hardly any more rain on the way once the heat-6 downpour eased off, I'm sure that without Sky's presence there would have been a longer mopping-up operation to create a much better chance of getting the meeting the full distance once it could safely resume. A few years ago (with no live tv-coverage getting in the way), I saw a meeting have a 1-hour 51-minute rain-delay between heats 5 & 6 but then safely go its full distance when the riders, knowing there was no further rain forecast, all willingly preferred to let the track staff have the extra time they required to reach the ideal solution to a heavy downpour. We'll never know whether that long a delay would have been the best way towards all 15-heats this evening but that kind of solution was never likely to occur with Sky around ... instead, we had just a 41-minute rain delay between the two versions of heat-7 with the re-run taking place just over 1hr-20mins into the 2-hour live tv-slot. Allowing about 7-minutes for Sky's end-of-meeting musical montage and the final ad-break, that meant the heat-7 re-run began with marginally over half-an-hour in which to show 4 sloppy heats (and the inevitable pits-debates in between them) before the official result could be declared ... in other words, a tidy amount of time to work through what still needed to go ahead without too much more presenter-waffle before the result could go into the league table. And then you've got a world-class whinger like Davey Watt on hand to play his part about 7-minutes before Sky were aiming to roll that musical montage anyway so that was rather handy timing as well !! Most of the time, it's good for British speedway that Sky Sports still want to show it on their channels but there's undoubtedly also the awkward trade-off that when the weather behaves the way it did tonight, you'll end up with the kind of sequence we all saw tonight for the reasons I've just explained ... it's then up to everyone individually to decide whether it's worth the skewed priorities we've all witnessed amid this awkward weather this evening.

Scores up to and including the 23rd of the old month count towards the averages that will apply from the 1st of the new month ... the gap of the last week or so at the end of the month allows time for all the figurework to be done, ready to publish the new month's full set of averages around the 29th of the old month. Go to the speedwaygb website and probably by Friday (29th) in the declarations and greensheet chapter of the Premier League, you'll see the up-to-date issue of September's averages marked "effective from 01-09-14" ... once you open that file, it'll show each team's current 1-to-7 for the final days of using August's averages next to what their averages will be in September. All you have to do yourself is then work out where those September averages will alter any team's number-1 or their reserves.

One referee's already been informed after what was rated as a poor performance in a Sky meeting earlier this season that he wouldn't be getting any more Sky meetings. Hence on tonight's evidence that could well be the last time you'll see Dave Robinson officiating at a Sky meeting for a while. How he ever qualified as a referee in the first place is a total mystery except for the fact he's also on the FIM clerk-of-the-course international list so perhaps the ability to bluff his way through officialdom tests is his only real skill. Just be thankful it was a dry night this evening ... he's even more clueless when he's required to discuss damp conditions with riders/managers.

Given they don't seem to have declared a number-8 rider, Workington began the night with their reserves needing to fill 10 spaces on the racecard between them ... their 4 scheduled rides each plus 2 of the rider-replacement slots. But with any single reserve only allowed a maximum of 7 rides (in this case, Simon Lambert), the other reserve has to remain responsible for the other 3 rides, regardless of what state he's in. So whether Luke Crang suffered a fresh injury in heat-2 (permitting him to be withdrawn from the meeting and a reserve to stand-in for his remaining rides) or aggravated an old one (requiring him to be a non-starter for his minimum-required 2nd and 3rd rides), Tony Jackson was left with the same dilemma as Comets team manager if Crang wasn't able to ride beyond heat-2. He could only give Lambert his maximum-allowed 7 rides and, as Crang had ridden only once, there would have to be two blanks on the scorecard because there was no other Comet eligible to fill those gaps. The textbook theory for a manager with that problem is to weigh up in which early races the opposition are at their strongest (as well as trying to avoid your busy reserve needing to take several rides in a row) and swiftly sacrifice those 2 blanks against those strengths to speed up getting your own team into tactical-ride territory ... bang goes that theory when the team needing to find those blanks is also rattling up a 22-7 lead !! By the way, even if Workington had declared a number-8 last night, there would probably have still been one blank on their scorecard because Lambert had already taken the opening r/r turn in heat-1 before Crang's exit ... as the number-8 is limited to just the remaining r/r slots, using him twice to avoid any blanks would have meant either Rene Bach or Mason Campton not getting their r/r turn from the main body of the team ... more likely, Bach and Campton would still have both been used with the knock-on effect of only one number-8 ride and, therefore, still one blank elsewhere while using up Lambert's maximum 7 rides. If you think what I've just explained was awkward for Jacko, spare a thought for Plymouth boss Lee Trigger at Newcastle two Sundays ago who started off with 6 riders plus r/r but racked up casualties galore ... when it came to heat 15 nominations, he was down to just 3 fit riders and 2 of those were his reserves who'd both burnt up their 7th ride by one of them being his only rider in heat-13 and the other one being his only rider in heat-14 ... hence Pepe Franc had to go it alone in heat-15 as the only Plymouth rider left who was both healthy and yet to run out of rides !!

By the looks of it, certainly a few years ago, Birmingham can comfortably generate enough supporters to keep speedway going. The only baffling bit is why the Phillips regime couldn't understand that a city as big as Birmingham will also have plenty of other activities ready to attract the leisure money of any Brummies fans who became disillusioned with the way their speedway team were being run. In any big city, you don't just thank your supporters for turning up ... you also thank them for choosing your brand of entertainment ahead of anything else they could have picked instead.

Don't know where "sidney" has heard about West Ham United moving into Wembley ?? ... they're moving into the London 2012 Olympic Stadium in a couple of seasons' time !! Like Wembley, the Olympic Stadium doesn't have a roof over its playing area which is such a useful aspect for speedway's biggest capacities at both Cardiff's Millennium Stadium and Copenhagen's Parken Stadium. Yes, the athletics track will be staying at the Olympic Stadium but the lower deck of seating is going to be adapted so that for football matches it can be moved over the outside athletics lanes to bring the crowd closer to the football touchlines (a simple concept that was built superbly with big hydraulic jacks into the initial construction of the Stade de France in the mid-1990's, nearly a decade before London even won its Olympic bid, but why that wasn't copied by Seb Coe and his chums is another story entirely). As it's expensive enough to lay a temporary track of around 280-metres at either Cardiff or Copenhagen, I doubt BSI would want to also pay the cost of the extra materials needed to lay a temporary 400-metre track directly over the Olympic Stadium's athletics track so any attempt to stage speedway there would almost certainly be with another 280-metres track. In any case, especially after past shambles at Gothenburg's Ullevi Stadium with a Cardiff/Copenhagen capacity but no roof, BSI's policy seems to be very much based on only going through all the cost and upheaval of laying a big stadium temporary track if there's the luxury a roof to avoid all the hassles of a rain-off (and even that luxury almost wasn't enough at Cardiff last year !!)