arthur cross

Swindon would be the main beneficiaries if all the Brummies' results so far are expunged from the Elite League table as two mid-meeting abandonments mean the Robins haven't completed any meetings yet against Birmingham and, therefore, get the rest of the borderline playoff teams brought back towards them. Leicester haven't met Birmingham at all while everyone else has 2 results against them except King's Lynn who have 3 results (including 2 away wins) but are so far clear at the top of the table that they can easily afford to have 10 points cut off their total. Currently (Birmingham results still included) it's ... KLynn 20 meetings 56 pts, Lake 19-36, Poole 15-30, Eastb 16-27, Cov 17-27, Wolv 18-25, Swin 15-20, BVue 17-15, Birm 15-12, Leics 16-10 If Birmingham's results are taken out, it's ... KLynn 17-46, Lake 17-29, Poole 13-25, Eastb 14-24, Cov 15-24, Wolv 16-21, Swin 15-20, BVue 15-12, Leics 16-10

Tonight's meeting, along with last Wednesday's at Poole, was immediately guaranteed by the BSPA to buy a few days for sorting out the Brummies' financial woes when Alan Phillips wanted out so abruptly last Wednesday morning (probably on the back of someone with speedway connections - track staff or Brummies management - being denied access to their usual area within Perry Barr by the GRA). At that stage, I doubt the BSPA anticipated such deep or awkward debts would become so clearly and quickly obvious, prompting this Wednesday's home meeting with Leicester to be called off over the weekend before the 2nd of those guaranteed away fixtures had even taken place and, therefore, creating what may well be a rather ghostly atmosphere this evening at Belle Vue. There's also the snag that for various reasons, weather-related and stock-cars, Belle Vue have had only 5 home Elite League meetings so far this season so any sort of home action for them this evening will help their cashflow, even in these desperate circumstances. As you've noted, Nigel Pearson's downbeat tweets (and his increasingly bleak reports nearly every day in the Birmingham Mail) give a stark reflection of how bad this situation has become ... for Alex Harkess to be prepared to outline the riders' free-agent status in a fortnight's time is an ever more powerful indicator because (especially at Plymouth after the 2012 season), he'll usually give a struggling club far more chances to survive than they probably deserve. It's not yet the right time for any delving into how the BSPA/SCB or anyone else let the Phillips regime stumble so deeply into trouble ... but that must surely be done in due course, if only to try to learn lessons to avoid similar chaos in the future. Unless there's any hope of the Brummies resuming home fixtures as well, it's hard to see how the BSPA will keep on guaranteeing their away meetings beyond tonight. I know you've asked earlier whether someone else (and somewhere else) could host the Brummies home meetings to let them finish the season while the current debts are still sorted out but it's the legal and insurance responsibilities for anyone becoming a temporary Brummies-host that will be the hardest to overcome while the Phillips family still officially own those responsibilities, even if they've tumbled into hideous debts while doing so. It's been much easier for the BSPA to arrange away-guarantees becuase the Pirates and Aces co-promoters respectively have just continued with their usual home responsibilities on the legal and insurance matters.

I'd agree you're not "unique" in this situation but you're certainly a rarity.

And that makes you and your pals a very welcome and enthusiastic exception to the general rule. As you're one of the busiest posters on this forum, from all your time browsing the various threads could you easily name many other forum members who so clearly have identified themselves as any particular speedway club's fans despite being local arch-rival supporters in another sport ?

Yes, Leicester's among the best-attended tracks in the country but their whole business plan was based on significantly higher attendances that they've now settled into so that the gate-receipts didn't just cover the week-to-week costs of the Lions but also made good progress paying off the lump-sun costs of building the stadium in the first place. If you go to, for example Poole or Wolves, a small part of your admission money's going towards the rent of a stadium whose building costs were paid off many years ago ... but at Leicester, a bigger chunk of your admission money's still going towards the materials and other costs of building the venue you're standing in and that's why an above-average crowd for them isn't automatically making them "doing better" as you've suggested. And if you think Derby's proximity to Nottingham will significantly help the prospects of a Nottingham speedway team attracting a worthwhile crowd, dream on given those two cities' football rivalry !! One of Long Eaton's biggest advantages was its location midway between Derby and Nottingham without fully being either one of them so that whatever your football or other sports loyalties, there wasn't any need to feel awkward by saying you also supported the speedway at Long Eaton.

Very useful to hear from someone awaiting even a modest part of the Phillips regime's debt but given we're only 3-&-a-half months into the season, your info of how long some of the debts stretch back is even more shocking than I would've expected. Perhaps this is asking for too much info Chris, but are you willing to say whether there have been what proved to be empty promises in recent weeks that at least a dent would be made in these debts ? In situations like this, a promoter stumbling too deeply into debts is bad enough but it's usually any empty promises from that promoter that turn out to be even more disastrous as that destroys any goodwill from those awaiting to be paid.

Correct ... or to be really accurate, jointly top-priority with making sure there's an ambulance parked next to that venue when you want to use it. It doesn't matter if you've got Tai Woffinden and 3 of his GP-rivals due at the tapes in Heat-1 or a quartet of 15-year-old National League riders ... if there isn't a track for them to race upon or the medical cover to cope with what they might get up to, you won't be having Heat-1 (or any other heats later on) !! If they think it's a realistic business decision for them, then yes, the GRA will put someone out of business even if you think it's greedy and nasty ... they've done it before with both speedway clubs and individual greyhound trainers so why expect any different now ? !! In fact, the GRA have probably tried to be fair and constructive with Alan Phillips before deciding upon what appears to be the current lockout as a last resort. Meanwhile, there would've been enough senior speedway folk warning Alan Phillips that of all stadium-landlords to fall the wrong side of, the GRA would be at the top of the list given their historic reputation ... yet he's still taken that tumble. Your frighteningly naive and fluffy-cloud view of how the world of business works sums up why speedway's so often passing round the begging-bowl ... speedway finds it so easy to bleat about being the victim in situations like this when, all too often, it's sent itself hurtling towards such chaos with hopelessly unrealistic plans of its income compared to its costs. For the sake of the Brummies fans, I still hope their club can be rescued ... but every indication in recent days is that the Phillips regime has driven their club to the point where nasty decisions about the Brummies are bound to be taken.

Wonderful that you're keen to get an appeal going and you may well be able to "hit 25000 in a few weeks". But, realistically, is that going to be anywhere near enough to make real progress or are you more likely to end up with enthusiastic folk soon finding they've generously chucked their money into simply catching-up the existing debts, leaving the Brummies still lurching along with plenty of loss-making home meetings for the rest of this season before there's any proper chance to find a more medium/long-term solution for the Brummies during the winter. Figures have been bandied about like "losing £5,000 per home meeting" ... well, in that case, with 11 home Elite League meetings to go, seeing out the rest of the season's going to cost £55,000 and that's without working out the size of the debts already stacked up ... suddenly, that £25,000 you hope to hit in a few weeks is going to be smashed up just as fast as it's been collected. Pledges of rescue-money are great but there's an important skill as well in using those pledges effectively. From my distance, the biggest problem isn't even the amount of debt involved ... it's actually the very thorny problem of persuading the GRA to unlock speedway's access to Perry Barr because there's little point collecting generous donations for a team who don't have a home track to race upon. So, as soon as possible, try to find out the following 3 separate answers about the Brummies' debt ... 1. How much is owed in rent-arrears to the GRA (and what will it take to restore relations with the GRA, perhaps the stadium-rent always kept a week ahead) ? 2. How much is owed elsewhere ? 3. Realistically, how much are the Brummies going to lose while completing the rest of this season because it's highly unlikely a team near the bottom of the table is suddenly going to break-even or make a profit even if it clears the previous regime's debt. Whether any supporters group, however well meaning, can manage to answer the above questions is highly debatable unless there's a willingness by such a supporters group to harness its efforts with anything being done on a more official level by the BSPA or SCB ... this isn't the time or place for different factions of speedway to belittle one another when they all want the eventual solution of the Brummies continuing. And it'll be a massive help if someone already well known to the Brummies fans can be the figurehead of any survival hopes, even if that person isn't necessarily directly doing any of the fundraising ... i appreciate this may be a difficult situation for the Brummies given the most obvious candidates for such a role are the team manager or captain but Jack Lee's relatively new to the club after many years managing at a lower level and Danny King's transfer request a while back has been well documented. Of course, the top priority is to see the Brummies continue but, within that target, there's still room for co-ordinating the rescue plan in the hope any such rescue doesn't just bring everyone back to the same desperate situation a few months/years later. Glasgow are a good recent example, albeit during an off-season rather than mid-season, of a club whose future appeared bleak but who've still survived ... other clubs have recovered from nightmare finances with fewer headlines but, nearly always, with carefully-directed rescue-funding rather than chucking money at the situation in panic-fashion. But in the Brummies' current plight, that breakdown with the GRA remains a massive obstacle.

Poole, Wolves, King's Lynn and Lakeside - clearly sturdy enough for the current level of the Elite League both in terms of their finances and stadium availability. But after that ... what's your minimum number of clubs for a "meaningful EL" ? !! Birmingham are in dire straits, Coventry don't have a stadium from 2017 onwards and Eastbourne whinge nearly every autumn about struggling to afford staying in the EL but just about manage to do so. Belle Vue could join the "sturdy" group if the National Speedway Stadium proves successful but that remains a big "if" and won't be fully known for a few years yet ... as long as they're still reliant on using the GRA's version of Kirky Lane, they're battling to make ends meet. Swindon are reliant on the new version of the Abbey Stadium working out for them (both in terms of their new track settling in and avoiding noise-hassle from loads of new residential neighbours). And as for Leicester, how can anyone describe them as sturdy while David Hemsley remains in such dominant charge ? !! Ipswich and Peterborough have already taken some of the most sensible decisions in British speedway's recent history by realizing the Premier League's their more realistic level and there appears little enthusiasm anywhere else in the PL to move up, not even from somewhere like Sheffield who'd immediately be among the top EL stadiums if they chose to move up. The Sky contract that ran out at the end of 2013 clearly stated it would be invalid if the EL dropped below a minimum of 8 clubs ... I don't know if the current Sky contract says likewise but I think it's fair to expect that's again the case. This current Sky contract runs to the end of the 2018 season ... so perhaps "stevebrum" (or anyone else) could suggest who'll be in that 2018 Elite League to satisfy that tv-contract.

And, even if the Corden family could be persuaded to change their mind, where exactly are you going to find any "prospective speedway promoter" prepared to stump up at least £150,000 just to alter Nottingham's centre-green into a speedway track, never mind also having enough finance in place to get a team up and running in a city that's gone 20 years without any team within 10 miles of it and, therefore, has no great speedway heritage whatsoever ? !! In case you haven't noticed, two other Midlands cities that did at least have a speedway heritage have had their clubs revived in the past few years ... one of them (Birmingham) is now on its financial knees and the other (Leicester) isn't bringing in anything like the anticipated long-term gate receipts from either its design-stage or its earliest attendances. So all you've got to overcome to make your fortune out of Nottingham Speedway is the landlord's indifference, the city's lack of speedway heritage and the region's difficulty in sustaining new speedway ventures. Still interested in risking those £150,000 building costs plus the team's start-up costs despite all those obstacles I've just mentioned !!

Brummie Kev's opening post on this thread mentioned a lockout last Wednesday, presumably when some of the speedway track staff wanted to tidy up any loose ends on the Brummies' usual home day even though the team were actually at fellow-Wednesday track Poole that night. That rang almighty alarm bells with me because once the GRA take a dim view of any speedway-tenant's finances, it's very difficult to swing the GRA back onside with Oxford's experiences a few years ago a prime example. I don't know any of the nitty-gritty of Alan Phillips's dealings with the local GRA management at Perry Barr, particularly whether there's been any negotiation (or at least an attempt to negotiate) for any reduced weekly stadium-rent for the Brummies compared to any previous agreed deal by all parties. But you can be fairly certain the GRA won't allow much (probably any) speedway access to Perry Barr by any new long-term promoters of the Brummies (or even a stop-gap promotion simply aiming to see out the current season) until the GRA are satisfied they've been paid up for what Phillips's Brummies have already used. It wouldn't surprise me if Phillips's most dreadful mistake in all of this is that he's vainly battled on at least a few weeks too long and, therefore, made it desperately harder for anyone else to salvage the situation when his running of the Brummies hit the almost-inevitable skids. For those who haven't steadily worked their way through the lengthy threads about Oxford or Wimbledon Stadium on this forum's General Discussions chapter for plenty of info about how the GRA views speedway, I'll simply point out on this thread that the Brummies' stadium-rent (as well as any profit from speedway fans buying the stadium's food and drink) is pocket-money for the GRA within that stadium's general accounts. Perry Barr has two BAGS greyhound meetings each week (Sunday & Tuesday) all-year-round and the annual betting-shop tv-fees those meetings generate probably amount to more than 10 times what the Brummies would pay for a season's worth of speedway rents ... equally, the greyhound crowd having a big social night out are far more inclined to spend their money on the stadium's food and drink (especially the drink) compared to the Brummies' fans. History has shown the GRA will only embrace speedway if it doesn't cause them any hassle (or at least the profits outweigh any hassles) ... anyone on here hopefully suggesting "some rent is better than no rent" won't get very far against that sort of company policy. Good luck to everyone trying to rescue the Brummies' situation but the way it's finally exploded sends out horrible signals for any happy ending. On a wider basis, when will speedway finally learn that its wretchedly cavalier attitude to settling up debts is bad enough among its own folk but utterly disastrous when it affects businesses outside speedway who, quite rightly, demand far greater financial discipline ?

But was he officially declared in Plymouth's 1-to-7 for that short spell with them last season or simply making a few guest appearances ? Even if he was in that Plymouth 1-to-7, I'm not sure such a short spell from one season can then be included in the next season's qualification at a different club for a PL-only average ... if he was just guesting at Plymouth then his scores in those meetings won't count at all towards any average calculations as scores while guesting are never included in any rider's average.

Surely not even the fresh averages for July are going to get Ty Proctor off his 9.22 calculated average from the Elite League because he's only ridden 2 Sheffield home meetings (instead of the required 4 for a PL-only average) before Monday's cut-off date (the 23rd of the previous month) for those July averages to be calculated and published. The Scunthorpe (May 15th) and Glasgow League meetings are the only Owlerton average-counters that he's ridden in because he was busy with Wolves for the Scunthorpe (June 12th) League meeting. Last Thursday was the 2nd leg of the League Cup semi-final against Edinburgh and only the group meetings of that competition are average-counters (on the basis they're the only meetings in that competition that every team's going to have) so Proctor didn't tick off his 3rd home meeting there ! What's more, he still won't tick off number-3 this Thursday in the much-delayed KO-Cup tie with Berwick as none of that competition's meetings are average-counters either ! So, by my reckoning, even if the weather behaves itself, his PL-only average won't emerge until after he's ridden at home to both Rye House (July 3rd) and Newcastle (July 17th) as there's no home meeting on July 10th. Newcastle are in a similar situation with a lack of away meetings meaning Danny King's 11+ PL-average converted from an EL-figure also can't become a PL-only average until mid-July even though he joined them in the same week Proctor eventually joined Sheffield ... in fact, Proctor and King could well both finally pick up their PL-only averages as soon as they've finished racing against each other in that July 17th encounter.

The big problem for speedway (from the noisy engines angle) is that even Paschal Taggart's plan involves around 400-to-450 flats being built on part of the Wimbledon Stadium site to help fund his revamping of the greyhound track as a repeat of the apartments he included to help fund his revamp of Dublin's premier dog track at Shelbourne Park a decade ago. Hence speedway has never been a high priority in his Wimbledon plans regardless of any enquiries that might have come from either the BSPA or past promotions of the Dons ... it would take speedway to prove its revenue-stream would be worth sacrificing most or all of those flats to get it any further up the priority-list and that's pretty much impossible. I haven't seen speedway mentioned at all in the past few months even when other non-greyhound activities have been mentioned like making sure the number of existing squash courts and the fitness club are part of this overall revamp. But at least the Taggart project clearly keeps the sporting floorspace on the site in an oval shape that would be big enough to allow any possible future permanent installation of a speedway or stock-car track if noise regulations were to change in motorsport's favour. The rival Galliard & AFC Wimbledon plan involves 650 flats on the site with the room for those extra flats created by having a much smaller rectangular sporting floorspace that would only be big enough for a football pitch with all the stands close into the touchlines and goal-lines. That would leave the costly temporary installation of any motorsport track as the only option if the football stadium's built and, even then, the proximity of the seats to the pitch compared to somewhere like Cardiff-Millennium or Copenhagen-Parken would result in much smaller lap-lengths than at either of those SGP-venues, probably restricting the lap-length beneath the minimum allowed for FIM-events. With the exception of the few Conference League years in the early-2000's and any challenge-match revivals either side of that, there hasn't been a Wimbledon speedway team competing week-in week-out for over 20 years so the distinguished earlier history of speedway's Dons means little to younger generations in that area. But since Wimbledon FC left their ground at the other end of Plough Lane in the summer of 1991, there's always been either Wimbledon FC playing a few miles away at Selhurst Park or AFC Wimbledon building up again from non-league levels once the Football League controversially allowed the Selhurst-based team to switch to becoming the MK Dons at Milton Keynes so the concept of a Wimbledon-named football team has far more recent continuity than speedway can muster. And there's also some desire within Merton Council to bring AFC Wimbledon back into the borough as a way of righting the shoddy way that council treated Wimbledon FC's efforts to find a new site in the borough in the early/mid-1980's when it was clear that football team's results were outgrowing its home ground even before the regulations after the Bradford fire and Hillsborough crush totally ruled out any worthwhile revamp of football's Plough Lane.

Tai did little that was completely new last night with all his gate-gardening ... all he did was keep testing how far the referee would let him go with his various antics only to keep finding out it appeared he could do whatever he wanted, not least because Sky seemed perfectly happy to be showing such daft scenes even if it meant their coverage overran even further. Several years ago at Owlerton when Pepe Franc (always a prolific gate-gardener given the chance) was riding for Sheffield against a Glasgow side managed for the evening by their centre-green announcer at the time Michael Max, Pepe cheerfully moved several lumps of the startline fence's dirt into gate-3. That prompted Michael to stroll from the 4th-bend pits to within a few feet of Pepe (still busy dirt-shifting) while furiously gesturing along the lines of "come on ref, that's surely not allowed !!". Given the respective sizes of the two of them, it was an absolutely hilarious Little and Large show and, as far as I'm aware, the ref on that occasion didn't do anything either.

A very good solution by British Eurosport to their dilemma although if they've always had this in mind, it's a surprise it wasn't ready to announce during the previous Grand Prix. But still a reminder to speedway of where it fits into the tv-sports pecking-order.

So am I ... but I'm equally 100% certain that what you've just stated won't have had much impact upon the decision-makers at Eurosport Towers where, remember, they're not a broadcaster at risk of losing viewers' subscription-money in a situation like this because there isn't any viewers' subscription income in the first place !! The sponsorship and advertising income from either the show jumping or the speedway has almost certainly been a far greater factor in creating the current situation ... and whether we as speedway fans like it or not, over at Eurosport Towers they've clearly reached the conclusion at the moment that they prefer the income they'll be generating from the whole of the show jumping they'll be showing on Saturday rather than from the whole of the speedway they could have shown instead. Commercial broadcasting isn't just about the sheer number of viewers watching any particular coverage although that's as basic a benchmark as the majority of the public can understand ... it's also increasingly about the commercial attractiveness of the different types of viewers that different coverage brings on board. How many of Channel-4 Racing's viewers are ever likely to go to Dubai, especially the £2-punters in your local bookies' shop ? !! ... it's bound to be a tiny proportion but Dubai still gets tremendous value out of its blanket-sponsorship of that coverage, firstly because it wants to be seen to be supportive of a British industry it likes and secondly because the tiny proportion of Channel 4 viewers who are tempted to visit Dubai via such tv-sponsorship are each likely to spend shedloads when they get to such a glamourous location. By the way, any dinosaurs on here still struggling to understand why Sky didn't mind letting-go of the SGP/SWC because of the Saturday-night scheduling-headaches it caused them, now that British Eurosport are running smack into the same bother this Saturday ? !!

"Normal finish time" yes, but so far (looking ahead to Saturday) that's not good enough at Eurosport Towers (especially given the speedway's more weather-dependent than either Le Mans or the show jumping) to persuade them to shoe-horn the speedway into the live sequence and open up a reasonable risk of the speedway cutting deeper into the show jumping than would be the "normal finish time". Meanwhile, the "slightly delayed live" option you're suggesting for British Eurosport's coverage of the show jumping is one of the last avenues Eurosport will want to take, especially now we're in an era when so much live sports coverage includes social-media angles (from either the broadcasters themselves or the event organizers) as well as in-play betting. Even as slight a delay as 10-or-20-minutes ruins those aspects, especially if the commentators or pundits slag off a tweet from a delayed-viewer whose comment was extremely accurate for the stage that viewer's reached in the coverage but looks stupid the moment it's sent because the presenters receiving it know the much-different up-to-date situation !! Hence, in this upcoming situation on Saturday, tv-channel schedulers are now always more likely to prefer doing full justice to 2 live events and deal with just one load of frustrated viewers instead of fudging round trying show all 3 live events with the risk of flak flying at various stages from all their viewers. And it always greatly amuses those schedulers that just about every sport has its fair share of ardent fans/sponsors who are hopeless at coming to terms with the existence of equally ardent fans/sponsors in other sports when awkward clashes crop up.

With Great Britain being one of the world's leading equestrian nations, those relatively lucrative sponsorship and advertising deals I've already mentioned linked-up to the live coverage from Cannes will have been struck with the expectation of live coverage on Briitsh Eurosport as well as the Europe-wide version. Between 8.15 and 9.00 this Saturday night, British Eurosport are stuck with only 2 channels on which to show 3 different types of live sports deals, namely the "once-a-year, world sporting heritage" action from Le Mans, the "niche but commercially lucrative" show jumping from Cannes and the latest "popular but still only midway through a long season" speedway Grand Prix meeting. The German tennis's part in this is relatively incidental as it's simply been chosen as the best already-recorded option to fill the 6.00-to-8.15 gap between the end of the live afternoon superbikes and the live evening programming leading into the show jumping once it was decided to show the whole of both those live events rather than shoe-horn the speedway into a set of 3 live events, none of which would then be guaranteed their whole coverage. By the way, just like the "tennis and showjumping from abroad" you mentioned, the speedway's "from abroad" as well so good luck justifying round a Eurosport executive table why speedway from Sweden should automatically have priority on British Eurosport over show jumping from France !!

It is the show jumping that's the problem rather than the tennis. The tennis from 6.00-to-8.15 is a recording for Europe-wide viewing of that afternoon's semi-finals of Germany's biggest grass-court tournament in the run-up to Wimbledon. But the show jumping preview show from 8.15 and live coverage from the French resort of Cannes from 8.30 clashes with the SGP's schedule for heats 17-to-20, the semis and the final, never mind any catching-up of heats 13-to-16 if there have been earlier crashes or rain delays ... the live show jumping runs until 10.00 so it's the first-third of that coverage that would be overlapping the scheduled last half-hour of speedway. While show jumping doesn't have a large audience numerically, the wealthy background of so many of its participants and spectators means it does attract several really lucrative sponsorship and advertising deals that Eurosport won't want to offend.

Rotherham United FC - a well-known sports team in a relatively run-down urban area who had been based for 101 years in the ever-increasingly decrepit Millmoor until they fell out once and for all with that ground's owner. So they finished playing at Millmoor in May 2008 and announced their aim to find and purchase a new site in the town while renting the Don Valley Stadium (two-thirds of the way from Rotherham into Sheffield) in the meantime. In January 2010 they bought the site of a former steelworks foundry within Rotherham ... in November 2010, outline planning permission was granted ... and in June 2011, construction was started on the 12,000 seater New York Stadium comprising of 4 separate stands holding about 2,000 at each end and about 4,000 along each side (it's in a district of Rotherham called New York). Prince Edward formally opened it in March 2012 but Rotherham United completed the 4th full season of their spell at Don Valley before kicking-off at New York with a July 2012 pre-season friendly against South Yorkshire neighbours Barnsley. Therefore it took them just over 4 years from needing a permanent solution having fallen-out with the Millmoor owner to playing in their new home ground ... it could've been less than 4 years if they'd snapped their Don Valley residency in mid-season. It's sparked a tremendous revival in their fortunes because they've been promoted in both their first 2 seasons at New York as well as being given the honour of hosting an England youth-international. Since 2011 in terms of public statements (but well before that privately), the Belle Vue Aces have been aiming for a permanent 6,000 capacity (plus easy options for temporary stands towards a total 15,000 capacity) so they're going to be take quite a bit longer than Rotherham's example for your timescale of "idea to completion". Chesterfield FC first became aware of a former glassworks' availability in the autumn of 2004 and began playing there in summer 2010 with the biggest delay to that project being the full demolition of the old glassworks rather anything to do with the new football ground. Salford rugby league were provisionally allocated their new site by their local council in 2005 and would've begun playing there as soon as 2009 (rather than the actual 2012) if the original development company on that project hadn't gone into administration in 2008. Hopefully that answers your question rather accurately.

Glasgow wanted to honour the end of James Grieves's career with a tribute meeting that could be boosted by a few of Berwick's GP-qualifier line-up, hence the scheduling of Grievesy's meeting this afternoon once the GP-qualifier was re-located from Austria. But since then Glasgow have had a stack of rain-offs, making it harder to justify burning up another week in their fixture list just for a tribute meeting regardless of the lengthy and great service Grievesy's given to the Tigers ... remember they still haven't completed any leg of their KO Cup 1st-round tie with Rye House because both those meetings are re-arranged for what should've been next weekend's quarter-final against Newcastle. Hence tomorrow's catching-up of a League Cup group meeting which has no impact on that competition's knockout stages but still needs getting out of the way with the bonus that it's being done before the counter-attraction of World Cup football during many of the longest-daylight evenings of the year. It's not too big a logistical problem, just needing one Berwick representative to have a one-off registration for the night as team manager if Ian Rae and George Hepburn both now need to remain at Shielfield Park ... alternatively in these circumstances, some agreement might be struck for another club's manager to stand-in as the Bandits boss.

The German-based website www.speedway.org provides all the FIM supplementary regulations as part of its superb statistical coverage of the various world/international competitions. For those who don't know all the terms, the "supplementary regulations" are the specific local bits of information for each separate meeting like the practice and meeting schedule, hotel list, contacts for local organizers, etc, which complement the general FIM speedway rulebook. Therefore, for last night's meeting, it published the following link on Thurs-28-May (9 days before the meeting itself although any riders/officials probably received this document a bit earlier than that) ... http://www.fim-live.com/fileadmin/alfresco/501-01_SR_Berwick.pdf On the first page of this document it clearly shows both Sunday-8th and Monday-9th as rain-off dates while on the second page it clearly shows the price in pounds-per-gallon of the riders' fuel available at the track. If these pages were simply a careless re-print of the St Johann supplementary-regs with Sunday and Monday spare dates available there, surely the riders' fuel would still be priced in euro-per-litre !! ... so somewhere along the line there has been a breakdown in communication between Berwick's noise-restrictions and the FIM-paperwork. But where the FIM, not just at Berwick last night (or indeed just in this country), repeatedly frustrate local organizers is how often they seem unwilling to the point of bloody-mindedness to listen to those local officials when it comes to understanding local weather patterns and information, leaving those local officials to pick up the pieces afterwards from disillusioned spectators while the FIM moves on to alienate another local club elsewhere. For example, Berwick's officials knew within a few minutes last night that Newcastle's evening horse racing had been abandoned at 6.20 (the first race should have been at 6.15) with half of their parade paddock underwater, their track clearly unsafe and a widespread-downpour still in progress that was clearly heading in Berwick's general direction 60 miles away and, therefore, likely to hit Shielfield Park about 2-or-3-hours after drenching Newcastle. But try persuading FIM-folk to bear such useful information in mind !!

And how long did it take to run that Under-21 World Cup meeting at Rye House a couple of years ago, admittedly due to dustbowl conditions rather than any need for snorkels and flippers ? !!

And don't forget, this meeting wasn't meant to be at Berwick in the first place ... it was Austria's round of the GP-qualifiers when the 2014 FIM-calendar was published last autumn which St Johann Im Pongau handed back to the FIM for re-allocation a couple of months ago !!