RobMcCaffery

He of course played a vital role in the Rbels' title success at White City in 1977. The first rider to help win a title through being absent all year

Speaking as someone who also used to write some of those articles for the magazine I can assure you that while I respected most of those who I interviewed, other people's opinions of those riders were their own. You write those articles in the hope they might be interesting, not as an act of devotion . (In my case it was all about helping a friend out).

Amazingly there are worse crimes.

They confirmed in commentary that the rule has changed this year. Great meeting. It seems like the quality of racing throughout speedway is thankfully on the up. I've really enjoyed most of the meetings, international or domestic I've seen this year. I know it's subjective but in the case of the GPs they seem to have finally found the way to prepare decent temporary tracks. Let's hope this carries on, especially to Cardiff.

Get back in the kitchen and finish off those welsh cakes.

I can't believe Slovakia put 7 past Wales ;-) The alien spaceship abducting Gareth Bale may have contributed. Extended break after heat 16 while BSI find new batteries for the abacus.

If they're going to award a race they could at least get the order right! In the time it took to sort it all out they could have re-run it. Entertaining meeting though. Someone's been feeding NKI raw meat.

Give it a minute or two then try closing them all. You need an ad-blocker.

Ironically you should be able to access that You Tube link in the States - and in English. Okay, no Polish cutie hosting.....I understand ;-) No that's just a souvenir of her night with a Falubaz fan.

Useless for anyone in the UK unless they use a proxy since it's unsurprisingly blocked here to protect BT Sport's coverage.

Sadly it was quite some time ago. I've had a look through their archive but can't see it. I realise I should have asked for your help at the time. There is a significant chance of misinterpretation. If I see anything similar I will take up your offer if I may. Regarding the Miedzinski situation at Swindon I have found a newspaper article which suggests a possibility of Polish clubs imposing such fines. Paragraph 6 refers. http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/12955733.SPEEDWAY_UPDATE__Will_Swindon_benefit_from_the_potential_musical_chairs_in_Elite_League_/ I'll keep monitoring.

Sorry, I must correct myself, a very easy target for the extremely impatient, loudmouthed 'experts'. Sincere apologies for that omission. I forget that constantly dropping riders and combing the world for replacements is the formula for success, assuming of course you're trading in Monopoly money. You have to give riders time. It's a rare occasion when a rider is an instant success. You're talking about less than half a season and points don't always tell the full story. Sometimes you have to look for more subtle clues regarding potential such as whether they tail off badly or whether their riding approach is correct and it's just a case of waiting for things to 'click'. Over my (far too?) many years in speedway I've grown so tired of people with instant solutions for a problem, totally ignoring the fact that sometimes you have to work and show patience. Sometimes success has to be earned. Of course some times you can spot a turkey straight off. I remember Len Silver throwing a young lad from America (Canada?) into a Hackney Hawks team at number 3. He was the new sensation. Timmy Joe Shepherd hardly lasted a lap..... Ivan Mauger was a failure when he first came to Britain and I'm sure he wasn't the only one.

Easy target for impatient 'experts'.

I doubt whether he'll make it that far. "Youth is so wasted on the young".

You really do have an obsession with age. When I had the dreadful task of timekeeping I was aged between 32 and 36. I did comment to a ref once how absurd it was that I had to be licensed to be a timekeeper but not an announcer. I could do far more damage to the sport with a mic than a watch. Yes, timekeeping is absurd but try easing off on the ageism - it might stop people moving on to the next message before you've got to your point. Oh, apologies for being nearly 60 - I keep forgetting to die - very selfish of me.

I read an article on Sportowe Fakty recently which seemed to suggest that riders were fined by their Polish clubs if they were unfit to ride. Now I hadn't mentioned it in here before because I read it via Google Translate and there was obviously a real risk of mistranslation. Going further back I'm pretty sure it was suggested that Adrian Miedzinski had been fined by his Polish club for getting injured in last season's opening meeting for Swindon. Can one of the genuine Polish fans on here (i.e. not the Falubaz troll) please reassure me that this isn't the case please? If however it is true it would explain why riders have ridden over there when clearly unfit to do so and has been pointed out in earlier posts inflicting injury on other riders in the course of obeying their masters.

There are in fact usually only two subscriptions to pay since Eurosport is normally bundled in packages that include either of the other two. The 'fragmentation' is quite simple - Sky ditched the GPs and One Sport set up rival tournaments and signed a coverage deal with Eurosport Poland. So, as long as Eurosport had the GP contract all was quiet on the speedway front - few had to pay extra to watch Eurosport as well. The chief howls have come now that BT Sport (no s) has won the contract to cover the GPs, as if they had no right to and had cruelly deprived speedway fans of the coverage. Sky have ripped-off the market for years so inevitably other competitors have come along, most of which such as Setanta and ESPN have failed. Now they've found themselves facing a properly-funded serious rival in BT. Now, Sky's coverage of speedway isn't charitable and they are not doing it as a favour but as a business decision. They are a very hard-headed commercial organisation with with no public service obligations to get in the way such as those that BBC, ITV and Channels 4 and 5 have to abide with. It is a commercial business, but it is Sky's behaviour that has created this fragmentation. They overcharged for years when they had a monopoly, with most of that money going into the pockets of footballers and their agents. A tiny amount found its way into speedway. Sky have cut back on their speedway commitment, have ceased to sponsor the Elite League while still providing coverage but with less cash. They dumped the GPs onto the red button and ultimately dropped them altogether. Sky have no divine right to all sport and neither do their overcharged subscribers. This current situation is of their own creation. Regarding the extra sub - it's less than the entry cost of a domestic league meeting, a programme and a a drink - for two top-level meetings a month on average. Perhaps if Sky weren't draining so much money out of their subscribers they wouldn't be quite so up in arms at having to pay a relatively small additional subscription? Perhaps the best way is for BT to also take on the domestic British league racing contract as well? I don't say Elite League because I don't believe it will survive this season. BT aren't the villains of the piece here and they're giving the GPs a damn sight more respect than Eurosport are for their events and Sky did for the GPs themselves in the final years of their holding the contract.

Your point about people in power completely misunderstanding the false average aspect to this year's EL chaos is relevant. It was disturbing to hear Nigel Pearson suggesting that the EDR only faced two protected heats - the two reserve races when of course they are also then shielded from heat leaders in both of their other programmed rides. It's a simple principle and it's frankly disturbing how so many can't or won't see it. Regarding the rest, consider this. This was an officially-backed BSPA event, or at the very least endorsed by them, hence the use of their You Tube channel and their promotion of the event. It was clearly a PR exercise to sell tickets for Monday. If they chose to put a positive spin on matters such as praising various individuals who have worked hard for the sport then that is their choice. Did you really expect a no holds-barred fight over every contentious point in the sport? They did deal with some of the problems, obviously in as positive a way as possible so they didn't whitewash and pretend as was wonderful. What kind of crime is it to try to put forward a positive attitude about some of the things that ARE going right? As I've said before this was a piece of promotion of an event, not a public enquiry. Maybe we should have such an enquiry but you can be sure it wouldn't be marketed by the BSPA as this event was. You have to understand and accept what this was. Declaring it a wasted opportunity is frankly naiive. Anyway, I mustn't intrude on your valuable time because you must have a heck of a lot of advertisers to tackle over the fact that their ads don't discuss all of their products' faults.

I should have put 'fixed' in front of assets. The usual cash at hand, current assets and liabilities were there. The 'slush fund' was well-hidden. It was over 30 years ago and reporting requirements have been changed over the years...

Unfortunately we're a long way off having comprehensive coverage of speedway online. Obviously promotions are wary of losing spectators so want good money to allow TV coverage, so we only end up with the top level ----- plus One Sport's events of course

I looked at a speedway promotion's track's financial accounts on the Companies House website. If I remember correctly the assets listed were a safety fence, starting gate and a tractor.

I do think people's expectations were a little unrealistic. This was a PR exercise by the BSPA not a piece of investigative journalism. They did touch on controversial subjects but obviously they had to give the official BSPA line. You had to view it through a certain type of 'filter' and look beyond the necessary platitudes. You weren't going to get a BHS-style inquiry. It was a good start and they need to build on it. Of course for some nothing will ever be good enough unless they hear exactly what they want to hear.

Very tempted to cancel my series link and rely on C More either live or on You Tube in future. Dismal stuff from them. Just hope someone with some respect for it picks up the contract after this shambolic outfit. It's a shame because Dave Rowe is doing an excellent job. He even almost had me caring that Team Fogo won the pairs

As one promoter said to me when contemplating another heavy loss for the year, "Well it's either this or a new car".

There's always one. Yes, ignore the content and just blast the intro. So intelligent..,... The count-down was there on the live feed and obviously wasn't taken off the recorded version. You were supposed to watch it live. Now try watching the rest once you've learned to FF.