arthur cross

Several stumbling blocks for the Premier League regarding a reserve draft ... Firstly, almost half of its clubs are much further north than any National League club (all of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Berwick, Newcastle, Redcar & Workington compared to the National's northern outposts of Scunthorpe & Buxton) ... in fact, the Premier League has by far the widest scattering of its clubs on a map compared to either the Elite or National Leagues. So most of the pool of potential riders for a PL reserve draft would've been based in the Midlands or further south (reflecting the opportunities for them to ride in the National League) and too many of them would then have been lumbered with lengthy travelling each week just to reach their Premier home meetings once they'd been drafted at that level. Especially for the younger riders, often relying on parents or friends for driving to-&-from meetings, this could have put off eligible riders making themselves available for a Premier draft if they couldn't guarantee coping with being drafted by too distant a club (even if they were really enthusiastic about being involved at that level on the track). Secondly, there's a wide enough range of abilities between the top and bottom of the 20 riders needed to fill both reserve places across an Elite League of 10 teams ... at the time when the whole reserve draft concept was being debated, it would've taken an even bigger set of riders, namely 24, to fill both reserve places across a Premier League of 12 teams but, after Peterborough's late inclusion at that level, it would actually have needed 26 riders for a Premier League reserve draft with all the extra risk that would've created of a bigger gap between the top and bottom abilities. Finally, there are enough fixture clashes between Elite League and National League meetings despite over half the Elite teams using Mon/Wed/Thu as their home night while around half of the National teams use Fri/Sat/Sun for their home meetings ... if there had been a Premier reserve draft, it would be even more chaotic for clashes given over two-thirds of the Premier teams also use Fri/Sat/Sun for their home meetings !! In any case, while they're certainly not rolling in money in the Premier League, it's also fair to say that level wasn't anywhere near as desperate as the Elite League for massive cost-cutting heading into this season ... that's why the Elite clubs still pressed on with their reserve draft despite the Premier clubs' plentiful doubts about a similar scheme being applied at their level.

Having seen three relatives or family friends either succumb or become dreadfully affected by Alzheimer's disease (or similar mental illnesses) in just the last six years, I have two angles looking at Ivan's own situation. Firstly, immense sympathy for Ivan himself, his family and his friends because this may well be a long drawn out process with very few "better days" but many more "slightly downhill days" ... it's horribly sad when you have such vivid memories of people in both their prime and normal older age to then witness their decline. Secondly, while respecting any family's wish for their local privacy, we desperately need the wider public to become better-educated, more tolerant and better-prepared for dealing with Alzheimer's and its related conditions. Medical science has made huge advances with various problems that previously meant a swift death (notably heart conditions) but one unfortunate side-effect of such progress is that it means a greater proportion of the population survive long enough to reach the stage where their mental strength fails them before any of their other vital organs ... if the general public can simply understand this concept a lot better, we'll be on the way to making sure there's better advice/help for family/friends to deal with their private anguish when they need to be realistic about someone they know who has become seriously affected.

Glorious ignorance by the looks of it in that post !! Actually, Sankt Johann im Pongau (just under an hour's drive south of Salzburg) has been a regular host for many years of whatever round is allocated to Austria in the Grand Prix or World Under-21 qualifiers. It's not difficult to find out what it looks like ... simply put "speedway st johann" into a google-search and it'll take you to 13-minutes on youtube of last year's SGP-qualifier at the track ... or put "st johann im pongau" into a google-map-search and then it's easy to spot the track just north of the town centre on the satellite-view. I don't know why the local club in St Johann can't stage their allocated SGP-qualifier but I can easily see why, once it needed to be re-allocated, the FIM have gone to Berwick because St Johann's track is also around a football pitch with relatively thin straights. St Johann is 380-metres per lap so it's marginally longer than Shielfield Park ... and instead of a factory behind the pits bend at Berwick (and the North Sea coast only a mile away), you get a backdrop of stunning Alpine meadows and mountains at St Johann !! But any riders already scheduled to ride their SGP-qualifier in St Johann can't complain they're being sent to a totally different type of speedway track with this re-route to Berwick at a couple of months' notice.

Not for the first time at Sheffield (the infamous 2004 PLRC certainly springs to mind), it sounds like the track, especially in the earlier heats, had to be ridden aggressively because it was so grippy ... in those circumstances, you're bound to get a combination of quick times from the riders with good-enough aggressive skills to generate stacks of speed from all the grippiness and crashes/complaints from the riders who can't cope with (or don't like) such a track.

I'm not really forgetting the potential impact of interest ... I just haven't included in any figurework I've sketched out for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because this loan might be close to interest-free (if not completely so) as the council do finally seem once again to be heavily linking this project to all their other sporting developments just over a mile north of Kirky Lane around Man City's Etihad Stadium ... I've wondered lately whether those other developments had become a much greater priority for the council than the speedway project so it was a pleasant surprise to seem them both included in the same Manch-Evg-News article this week (even if that article's not impressed Phil The Ace !!) Most (if not all) of those other developments are eligible for Sport England funding (in partnership with the city council) because they're either for Olympic sports or mass-participation sports. Speedway's always going to find it tough to drum up much Sport England funding anywhere because it doesn't tick either of those Olympic or mass-participation boxes ... however, given the Aces' great place within Manchester's sporting heritage, there's a strong and special case for this city's council justifying whatever helpful style of funding it's providing near the Etihad also being applied to its funding of the new speedway stadium. Secondly, I try to keep any figurework as basic as possible to avoid it getting too complicated for most readers of this forum ... you've plucked a perfectly realistic 5% rate of interest to illustrate by how much the repayments could jump once any interest's factored in but I doubt the exact terms of any loan between Manchester City Council and the Belle Vue Aces would ever be made public and, therefore, I've just stuck with the amounts of money and timescales that have been reported. Arguably, the most significant difference between this week's newspaper report and any previous ones is this introduction of a 24-year repayment plan for at least the extra costs instead of the previously reported 60-year repayment plan for the whole project.

Unless you can come up with a detailed explanation of why "the article should not have been published", it's daft to ask anyone to ignore it or avoid commenting upon it !! Similarly, as the Belle Vue Aces haven't made any official announcement for ages about how the project's going, it's ridiculous to ask anyone to await them finally getting round to doing that !! ... even if it's been much slower progress than expected/hoped, it's surely not that difficult for someone at the Aces to write an update explaining any delays in as positive a way as possible. Much of the scepticism and frustration over the time it's taking to get this building project underway has built up due to the wretchedly poor lack of official information about it ... by the looks of it, even the Manch-Evg-News have reached the stage where they're prepared to run what may well be as vague an article as last night's one, simply because there's no official news emerging about a project that they clearly think is of interest to their readers. In any subject, not just the building of a new speedway stadium, doubts and criticism boil up far more easily if there's no official news to cool them down.

Totally agree with that assessment !! Any speedway clubs renting a track in a Greyhound Racing Association stadium have had to put up for many years with far higher rents than other greyhound landlords have been charging ... historically (and quotes from Wimbledon Stadium general manager Keith Hallinan proved this week it's still the case), the GRA haven't been impressed with speedway's profitability and have therefore chosen to fleece as much rent off the clubs as possible rather than budgeting for any profits from speedway fans buying the stadium's food & drink. Wimbledon certainly had to pay above-average rent while they were still going and I seem to remember Oxford saying their rent rocketed in their final years .... I suspect Birmingham may well still be in a similar situation. I've been to Kirky Lane only once (and that was just over a decade ago although I gather there's not been much investment in the facilities since then) so I can't really accurately suggest a fair price for the rent ... but I'd reckon anything over £2,500 would start to be expensive, never mind if it's actually £3,500.

Previously, it's been reported that the Aces would need to payback a £4.5-million stadium-building loan over 60 years ... hence, the calculation of £75,000 "rent" per year even though it would actually be a loan repayment to the city council rather than the usual concept of paying rent to a landlord. Yesterday's Manchester Evening News report explains that the Aces will also now have to repay most of the extra £1.3-million the council needs to borrow to build this stadium ... but, crucially, says this extra repayment will cover just 24 years instead of the previously reported 60 years ... hence, a calculation of £50,000 "extra rent" for the first 24 years would produce £1.2-million which would fit the description of the Aces paying back most of these extra costs of £1.3-million. [ EDIT: If it's just an extra £750,000 that the Aces have to find over 24 years, as John Leslie reports, then that's roughly £30,000 extra per season. ] So by my reckoning, that means the Aces will be paying back about £105,000 a season until roughly 2040 (£75,000 plus £30,000) and then the previously reported £75,000 a season until the mid-2070's ... that's a hefty burden in itself but here's a further question about the costs of the whole project. Who pays eventually for the general upkeep of the stadium once it's built ? ... while the council may well provide the initial funding to guarantee such upkeep, will they require the Aces to repay "most" of those costs as well along the same lines as repaying "most" of these extra building costs ? ... suddenly, even £105,000 a season might still look an understatement. And still no mention of any planning-hearing dates within that Manch-Evg-News report (just the sorting-out of the extra finance) with time already fast running out for having any new stadium ready for the start of the 2015 season, never mind any original aim (as reported by the Manch-Evg-News on 9-Feb-2012 of starting to build it that summer, depending on planning permission, so that it could host the 2013 World Cup Final). I remain willing to be proved wrong but, for the time being, I'm staying sceptical about this whole project working out well for the Aces and speedway in general.

Keith Hallinan will say whatever his bosses want him to say ... he's a "safe pair of hands" as general manager of Wimbledon greyhounds but without much in the way of creative flair or inspiration. And if he thinks AFC Wimbledon only play one home match a fortnight for 7-months (which would only amount to 15 or 16 home games a season), he's in for a shock when he checks their fixture-list that contains 23 home league games (plus any cup-ties in 3 different competitions) packed into 9-months.

Any update on how steep a slope speedway's sliding down after Saturday's action in Auckland ? !!

One further aspect to add to your very accurate info about why Sky became keener again to renew with Biritish speedway is that back in mid-summer Tai Woffinden was just an unexpectedly strong contender for the world title whereas by the end of the season he was the first British world champ for 13 years. While recapturing any Grand Prix rights, even after Woffinden's success, remains a low (probably non-existent) priority at Sky due to the difficulty of squeezing the mostly Saturday-evening GP-coverage into one of Sky's most crowded times of the week for its more expensive live deals, the chance to hang on to a British world champion's club action in this country did matter.

The stadium management are intending to run greyhound racing outside the remit of the Greyhound Board of Great Britain by joining the independent category of tracks (often referred to as "flapping tracks") where there isn't a nationwide databank of all the dogs taking part and there aren't such strict rules regarding things like greyhound welfare. Effectively, when you get your dog entered into any flapping meeting you can give it any name you like in the racecard, ideally so not too many other people notice you're bringing along a superstar that'll give you a good chance of taking home the bookies' money ... Edinburgh's speedway track at Armadale is also a greyhound flap and Stoke's Loomer Road used to be the Chesterton flap.

I can understand you pointing out it was live action from Poland tonight but that meeting marked a very early start to the Polish season (especially in a year when Easter's so late) because the Poles usually make a big thing of combining their opening fixtures with the Easter holiday. Coventry's problem tonight appears to be the stubborn continuation of a track-prep tactic that didn't work for either of last weekend's two Brandon meetings on March 21st & 23rd ... you'll do well to find much speedway that's ever taken place in Poland on both those dates. Havvy was only referring to Jason Garrity in the respect that Jason had been there for much of today and, therefore, had a good view of what had or hadn't happened with the track-prep (Garrity's based in North-West England but rode for Rye House at Ipswich last night so went straight from Foxhall to Brandon, presumably to use Coventry's pit facilities for cleaning up his machinery from last night). Yes, Jason's still relatively young but his recommendation of blading the track echoes what most riders/officials have been crying out for whether it was at National League level last Friday or the Elite Championship last Sunday or the Bees-&-Brummies tonight. Yet one track curator plus the stadium management seem to know better than the overwhelming view of everyone else !!

It's not just any "different climate" I was wondering about earlier ... it's the different time of year that the British season starts compared to Poland and, therefore, Coventry's track curator isn't used to adapting March's weather conditions (in either Poland or the UK) towards producing a raceable track. His tactic of trying to blend dry shale into a damp surface has a much better chance of succeeding during April-to-September which is pretty much the full spell of a Polish season but only three-quarters of the UK-season. But in either March or October, the damp surface he's dealing with will almost certainly have a much heavier moisture level than it would have during any of the warmer months because there's far less natural evaporation of the moisture and that makes it much harder (if not impossible) to blend in any dry material. Realistically, the only way to remove heavy moisture in March or October is to do it by removing the track as well because Mother Nature won't separate the water from the shale as wonderfully as she does when it's warmer - in other words, blade everything off until you reach a dry-enough level of the track-base. Effectively, judging by the reports from those who've been at the track, he's trying a perfectly reasonable tactic as long as it's a warmer time of year but a totally stupid tactic given only slightly below-average temperatures for the end of March. And if no-one from the Bees (or any visiting riders & offcials) can get him (or Coventry Stadium) to understand it's not his overall ability that's in doubt, just the little aspect that this tactic doesn't make sense in March, then Brandon's going to remain unraceable until we get at least a week's warmer weather so that he can start his next track-prep with a much less sludgy surface. By the way, who's paying for all this dry shale that's being utterly wasted by getting turned into yet more damp sludge instead of any successful blending - is it the stadium or the Bees ?

Just a quick thought ... and I'll stress immediately this isn't anything to do with the political implications of employing an immigrant trackman, simply a reflection of different countries having different climates and sporting seasons. The Polish speedway season doesn't really get going until mid-April by which time the weather's warmer and, therefore, any moisture is far easier to dry out by natural evaporation and any permanent winter dampness in the track base should be much reduced. Track preparation isn't just about the technical skills of a track curator ... it's also about his/her ability to adapt those skills to the specific weather conditions that crop up on raceday. With reports yet again that Coventry's trackman is refusing to blade-off plenty of the damp sludge, is this as basic a case that his refusal is understandable ignorance from never having needed to do anything similar back home due to his country's later start to the season ?

Yesterday's Racing Post also reckoned there is a covenant in place at Kirky Lane which would make full redevelopment for housing awkward (as far as I know, there's something similar at Newcastle dating back to Brough Park being named in honour of Lord Brough when that venue was built in the 1920's). I can understand your medium and longer-term fears for this particular stadium's future but that won't matter to the Aces if they're already in their new home before those fears become reality. But while Risk/Galliard still owned Kirky Lane there was also much more of an immediate shadow hanging over Kirky Lane's future whatever your combination of Aces, stock car or dogs enthusiasm. Best case scenario for the Aces might be that this week's deal gives them enough time to build and become established in their new home before Kirky Lane undergoes a revamp similar to the one I've mentioned several times elsewhere on this forum that occurred at Dublin's top greyhound venue Shelbourne Park about a decade ago. Shelbourne sold off enough land round the first and second bends for new apartments to fund the overhaul of the dog track and hugely revamp its spectator facilities ... something similar to that might bend Kirky Lane's covenant rather than break it but the residential aspect would be a killer to the Aces if they still needed their track to be included in such a revamp. Mind you, I'm still realistically sceptical (while hoping to be proved wrong) about the Aces' new stadium on two counts ... firstly, I've big doubts about the current Aces management (or anyone they appoint) successfully running it once it's built ... but more importantly in terms of even getting it built, I get the impression (while living well away from Manchester) that the city council are now putting much more effort into how they can link-up with the community-based aspects of Man City's amazingly detailed expansion plans only a mile or so north of Kirky Lane rather than doing anything to hurry up creating a new speedway track near the current one.

Actually, this is almost certainly a really good twist for the Aces rather than the gloomy one you're portraying, especially while the new speedway stadium remains so bogged down in its planning stage. That's because unless the new owners have their own financial headaches, this deal should remove any threat of a sudden closure of Kirky Lane that could have happened if the Greyhound Racing Association had remained linked to owning it as well as operating it. In case you haven't been following the Wimbledon & Oxford Stadium threads on this forum, the future of Kirky Lane has been in the background of an increasingly desperate need of the GRA's current owners to repay multi-million-pound loans they received around a decade ago from Irish banks so that they could purchase the GRA from the property-owning leftovers of the old Wembley Stadium. Officially, Risk Capital bought the GRA from Wembley plc for £50-million ... but it soon became clear Galliard Homes were on board with Risk Capital and then it emerged Risk/Galliard were having to keep sweet the Irish government's debt-collecting agency Nama who've been chasing the long-overdue repayments of those loans from the Irish banks. For several months now, the Racing Post has always referred to Nama as owning the GRA as a reflection of just how much Risk/Galliard are in Nama's grip. Wimbledon's future (as it's by far the most lucrative GRA site for housing development) remains the main focus of Risk/Galliard keeping Nama on-side but all the GRA tracks, including Belle Vue, have been caught up in the mess that while they appear profitable on a day-to-day basis, those profits are probably only covering the interest on those Irish loans rather than making any worthwhile dent in repaying them ... hence, Risk/Galliard are stuck in a permanent state of just keeping Nama at bay rather than finally shrugging them off. That's created a risk of Nama having a last resort of getting some of the Irish-millions back by closing all of Wimbledon, Belle Vue and Hall Green (in south-east Birmingham) for a quick sale of all the assets with all the uncertainties that would cause (although the Birmingham Brummies' home track Perry Barr would be a different matter as the GRA's use of it is tied up in a special deal with Birmingham City Council rather than it counting towards the overall Risk/Galliard asset list). In the Aces' case, such a scenario of closure for an emergency sale could've been diabolical as it's also my understanding that Manchester City Council would have huge doubts about granting a very-long-term stadium-building loan to any sporting club that was temporarily homeless or defunct ... even if the Aces have been losing any money lately staying at Kirky Lane, at least it may well have kept them ticking-over as far as qualifying for that new stadium-building loan is concerned. Last October, Nama invited individual bids for either Belle Vue or Hall Green in what was clearly an attempt to drum up some lump-sums to speed-up repaying the Irish banks and although nothing seemed to emerge in the 2-week timescale Nama wanted for that bidding, this week's deal for Belle Vue may well have begun around that time. Look closely at the Place North West report of this week's deal at Belle Vue and you'll see it refers to "sale and leaseback" in the top paragraph ... what that means is the new owners have bought the freehold rights to the stadium (the "sale") while accepting that its current activities continue (the "leaseback") ... it would've cost them much more to buy out the existing lease to give them a chance of doing whatever they want with the site (and, even then, they could still need to overcome any historical covenants over the designated-use of the site along with any local council objections to the existing facilities being demolished). Although it's not on the greyhound section of their website, the Racing Post newspaper reported this deal yesterday although it named the new buyer as Crown Oil Pension Fund (rather than SCP Investments according to the Place North West report) while agreeing with the £2,600,000 price tag. The total amount Risk/Galliard still owes the Irish banks has never been confirmed but it's generally regarded within greyhound racing that at least £10-million is still outstanding and maybe double that ... hence the Belle Vue deal probably cuts just a good slice off the overall problem rather than solving it and that would add up with a similar deal at Hall Green also being hinted at in yesterday's Racing Post. The other discrepancy between the two reports is that the Racing Post have always reckoned there's a 15-year-lease for greyhound racing at Belle Vue that began last summer whereas the Place North West report reckons its 10-years ... either way, that lease is clearly long enough to give confidence that the stadium will remain open for sporting business so that the Aces can negotiate however many more seasons they need to lease its speedway track. And now that Belle Vue's freehold owner and sporting leaseholder are two totally different businesses, that's a far safer scenario for the speedway or stock-car tenants than the previous situation ... until this week, Risk/Galliard as the freeholder could tread all over the GRA as the leaseholder because they're all wrapped up together in their battle to keep Nama happy. Now, in return for the £2,600,000 lump sum that almost certainly lands on Nama's doorstep as soon as possible to keep them sweet for a bit longer, Risk/Galliard can't alter the GRA's Belle Vue lease because they no longer own that lease ... what's more, this week's deal probably includes the new owners inserting penalty clauses against Risk/Galliard as the GRA's owners if the GRA try to bale out early from their Belle Vue lease. I can appreciate all the above stuff may be a bit complicated, especially if you haven't looked much in recent months at the Wimbledon & Oxford threads. But I hope you can still understand why I reckon the change of ownership of Belle Vue is good news for the Aces rather than gloomy news because it means Risk/Galliard have far less influence over what goes on at Kirky Lane when their overwhelming priority remains sorting out their Irish debts rather than caring for any sports fans.

Judging by the press release put out by At The Races a few weeks ago, their involvement is simply as an agent (through their Sport Mediastream division) offering the speedway coverage to their betting partners (alongside other niche-market sports coverage they're also able to provide) so you'll only see this speedway coverage on the website of any betting company who accepts it rather than on the ATR website itself. Meanwhile, no surprise that regardless of any claims that you'd have to place a bet before seeing any pictures, it proved to be the case last night that all you had to do was deposit £5 with bet365 (ready for any betting) to gain full access to the pictures with the flexibility of being able to withdraw exactly the same £5 as soon you'd seen all the action. In every other sport streamed on betting websites. that's how it works ... punters just have to prepare themselves for having a bet to see the action because the betting companies understand that letting their customers weigh up any weather conditions or other factors in the build-up to a sporting event is all part of the customer's betting experience. If anyone at Go Speed (or elsewhere within speedway officialdom) were confident it would be "only-watch-once-you've-bet" for speedway, they're either clueless about how internet betting works or they've been spun some fairytales by At The Races when agreeing to the deal. In any case, bet365 (or any other bookmaker) would take the view that once you've had a bet on the overall outcome of a speedway meeting they're showing rather than betting on just one heat, then you're perfectly entitled to watch all 15 heats on the basis that you've bet on the whole contest rather than just a segment of it. By the way, I speak as someone who's always had at least one telephone betting account on the go since 1992 (long before any internet-based gambling revolution) and who currently has 5 different internet betting accounts in regular use ... I was also aware as far back as last September that British speedway and At The Races were in the early-sketch stages of this deal ... see post-21 on this thread for my detailed concerns about this deal when it was publicly launched a few weeks ago.

Don't forget that at King's Lynn you have the huge advantage of the speedway promotion being able to work on the track without needing to liaise with the stadium owners because the promotion and ownership are all rolled up in the family business. Around the rest of the Elite League only Eastbourne and newcomers Leicester have a similar luxury ... Belle Vue, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Poole and Swindon all have to fit in with greyhound landlords ... Lakeside need to fit in with Arena Essex stock cars ... and then there's what's clearly disintegrated as a working relationship between the Coventry Bees and Coventry Stadium. In the Premier League only Plymouth, Somerset, Rye House, Scunthorpe and Redcar have speedway freedom ... Edinburgh, Newcastle and Sheffield all have greyhound landlords ... Glasgow, Workington and Berwick race around football or rugby pitches ... Ipswich have stock car landlords ... and then there's the unique case of Peterborough having loads of access to their track but dependent instead on fitting their home dates for the crowd's car-parking around the other events staged within the various chunks of the East of England Showground. In plenty of cases there's a really good relationship between another sport as landlord and the speedway tenants because the speedway clearly enhances the landlord's profits (Wolverhampton certainly springs to mind) while Berwick's Dennis McCleary is both the football secretary and a speedway co-promoter so the Bandits are probably the nearest thing to a tenant having speedway freedom. But elsewhere there are a few speedway officials who don't respect the landlord/tenant relationship enough, maybe because they think their club's long history should be enough to give them the freedom to do what they want. It's also easy for fans of a speedway tenant to misjudge where their club fits into their stadium's overall business plan if those fans only attend the speedway there ... for example, at any of the greyhound tracks featured at least 3 times a week in betting shops (Wolves, Swindon, Newcastle and Sheffield), I doubt the annual speedway rent even reaches just a few weeks' worth of the greyhound rights-fees paid by the bookies even allowing for Wolves and Cradley (ex-Dudley) both renting Monmore (and, remember, the greyhounds are shown by the bookies all 12 months of the year).

Until he can identify the person who reassured him on Saturday morning, preferably narrowing down the time in the same way the Coventry Stadium statement itemised various calls that day, I wouldn't believe Alex Harkess's version in the slightest. His idea of quick damage-limitation with his statement last night now looks very poor against the more detailed Coventry Stadium statement this lunchtime, especially as more than 6 hours after that stadium's statement was published there's yet to be any official response to it by either Harkess (or the BSPA in general) or Horton (or the Bees in general).

Once Coventry Stadium asked Mick Horton on Saturday afternoon (according to the stadium's press release) to consider calling off yesterday's meeting. it's then Horton's responsibility as Coventry's member of the BSPA to relay that situation to the BSPA Management Committee ... you're right that Horton himself wouldn't have had the authority to cancel it on his own but he was the vital local liaison between the stadium owners and the folk who'd actually be running the meeting on the day. What doesn't add up is the stadium's timeline of phone calls between 2pm & 3pm on Saturday afternoon but Alex Harkess's BSPA statement last night which included: "... on Saturday morning I had assurances that everything would be fine with the track." So who gave Harkess that info several hours before the stadium owners reckon they expressed their concerns over the phone to the local promoter ? !! At the moment, the far more detailed timeline and namechecks in the stadium's press release make this version of events much more credible than anything from Horton or Harkess

All depends on whether Coventry Stadium is now anti-speedway regardless of who's promoting it ... or whether Coventry Stadium is now anti-speedway just if Mick Horton is promoting the Bees or Storm given his non-appearance on Saturday-teatime. If it's the latter, then there might be a chance of the BSPA finding a willing alternative promoter who would be acceptable to Coventry Stadium. But there appears virtually no hope of Mick Horton promoting another meeting at Brandon.

No surprise whatsoever that as soon as he had to face up to an awkward situation on Saturday afternoon, Mick Horton buried not just his head in the sand but most of his body and the history of Coventry speedway as well. At this rate, the main thing the BSPA should be investigating after yesterday's fiasco is their incompetent decision to welcome Mick Horton back into speedway promoting because it was always going to lead eventually to some degree of nightmare, albeit not necessarily on this epic a scale, While blocking his return might have still meant a gloomy future for Coventry, at least it would've avoided him having any significant role in the staging (or not as it turned out) of the first meeting of British speedway's new 5-year tv-deal. Very ironic that all this should be happening just as even the Football League have at last had the guts to block a potential new owner by refusing to sanction convicted Italian fraudster Massimo Cellino's takeover of Leeds United. How long do you think it would take Cellino to still get the go-ahead from the BSPA ... 5-minutes ? ... 10-minutes ? ... at the most, half an hour.

At most stadiums where the speedway club rents or leases its track from another sport's landlord (most often greyhounds), the speedway club's rental agreement includes carefully worked-out details for matters like track preparation which make it clear which responsibilities belong to the stadium landlord and which responsibilities belong to the speedway club. What appears staggering in this current Coventry case is that no-one (whether it be Mick Horton, the stadium owners or, after being dragged into it after yesterday's farce, the BSPA) appears to be quoting such a rental agreement as a starting-point for working out where it's all gone horribly wrong. There'll be different quirks in each club's rental agreement with the respective landlords ... for example, as far as I know, Sheffield's deal includes the stadium staff taking care of putting down and taking away the protective sheets over their dog track whereas Newcastle's deal includes the Diamonds being responsible for this task (as seen in their appeals for more volunteers on their club thread on the Premier chapter of this forum). But the key thing is that each club knows where it stands with its own landlord and, usually, there's also a degree of flexibility when extra track work's required beyond a club's usual raceday access ... for example, with a few days' notice, most greyhound-sharing speedway clubs can get an extra morning or afternoon's access to their track on a quiet day for the dog racing. Any such co-operation or flexibilty at Coventry appears to have fallen off a cliff and, more worryingly, there doesn't seem to be any sign of such relations being repaired.

All sorts of sports (not just speedway) are filled with new ownerships who moved in by declaring their intentions to take their particular club in a new direction ... only to spectacularly overlook keeping the existing supporters on board so that any new supporters that were attracted by the new direction had to replace the departing diehards rather than the ideal plan of adding to them. I hope this isn't a cautionary tale for the Sheffield Tigers ... new promotions need to earn the trust of their club's supporters as much as those supporters need to respect and trust the new folk in charge.