RobMcCaffery

There was more to this than Nicki's absence. Just taking a crude calculation, if Nicki had gone through the card Dackarna would still have only managed 42, probably less if you adjust the minor positions. Can't see the second leg getting too much coverage in next week's double-header on TV. What a choice for a team manager when choosing nominated riders, Woffinden, Sayfutdinov and Zmarzlik. That tells the story, I feel. How did they manage to lose two league matches?

No, but it does show how a squad system isn't as wonderful as some think. Got CMore running as a back-up to Eurosport. At least we're getting the match - international Eurosport is just tennis right now. I do wonder if it just being carried on British Eurosport might explain the the TX errors. Will need CMore tomorrow for the second semi so time to refresh the Swedish, which amounts to the equivalent of: "A beer please" "HOW MUCH?????!!"

Heat 11 run in Sweden - Eurosport on ad break. Lamentable. As for Nicki, isn't Hans Andersen the replacement? (EDIT - Apologies, it's Buczkowski - hardly a junior though)

Very much so. It's such a pity that we're not seeing the same superb race track that hosted the Malilla GP. Damn weather! Vetlanda are far too strong though. I'm amazed they've dropped any match points all season.

Classic piece of Eurosport. Decided track work was going to delay the meeting so went for another ad break just after having had one - just as the riders were coming out for heat 5! Sad that the weather's robbed us of a chance to enjoy the Malilla track for what looks like the final time this year :-(

Many thanks. Happy to be corrected. All information gratefully received ;-)

The German model for the organisation of sport is one to be lauded and thankfully acts a counterbalance to the ways in which sporting 'clubs' elsewhere can be taken over and artificially subsidised by the super-rich. As for the German influence in Poland it has to be remembered that Poland's tragic history has seen it substantially moved around the map of central and eastern Europe,even being eliminated by various empires for many years. As a result the western half of modern Poland spent a long time in the German Reich from the late 19th century until the fall of the Nazis and many cities changed names and status from German to Polish post-war. Examples are Wroclaw (Breslau), Gorzow (Landsberg), Zielona Gora (Gruenberg), and Gdansk (Danzig) for example. It's why Wroclaw has an Olympic Stadium since it played a supporting role in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This extract from the Wroclaw Wikipedia entry helps tom illustrate the complexity: "At various times in history, it has been part of the Kingdom of Poland,Bohemia, Hungary, the Austrian Empire, Prussia, and Germany. It became part of Poland in 1945, as a result of the border changes after the Second World War." The borderlands between Germany and Denmark and Germany and France were also rather flexible in the past.

Please name those stations. To help you, here is a list of all channels carried on Astra 28.2E. http://www.lyngsat.com/Astra-2E-2F-2G.html Good Luck! I do know a little about the satellite industry and am well aware of ways around encryption but it's not something In would be foolish enough to go into detail on a public forum. As ever you in fact know a damn sight less than you think you do. Martin, I wasn't just a broadcaster in the early days of satellite but also a close student of the subject over the 30 years following. I shall leave you in your dream world. Ian, Geo-blocking is imposed not by the EU but by broadcasters and rights holders so that say an American programme supplier can make multiple sales into various EU countries. In the same way sports rights are sold for particular markets. Thus the SGP is sold to Eurosport for transmission in Britain and Ireland, and different stations in Sweden and Poland, for example. To enforce those rights geo-blocking is used so that a viewer in Poland can only watch on Polish TV. In the same way it is used to only allow people in Britain to use the i-Player. As I'm sure UKmartin will chip in there are ways to get around this. Whether we have one European TV market with just one service showing the SGP or football's Premiedr League for example or carry on with deals in every country is a tricky choice and one which we do need the EU to investigate and act on. As ever, the press in Britain have done a superb job of brainwashing much of the population to blame everything on the EU by focussing only on the absurd trivia such as straight bananas. When in doubt it's always easy to blame Johnny Foreigner.

If the OP can pick up several satellites he almost certainly already has a motorised dish. A fixed installation capable of receiving Sky's service via the Astra satellites might also be adapted to received the nearby Hotbird satellites but is highly unlikely to receive much more, and certainly not with a standard Sky box. As for channels the complication is encryption so I suspect very few channels showing speedway are free to air. Certainly the main services in Poland and Sweden, N-sport+ and C-More are encrypted but there might be a chance of picking up coverage on say, a Danish channel. The international versions of Eurosport will carry Swedish league and the SEC/Best Pairs run by OneSport should be free to air if he doesn't have a UK subscription that includes the British versions. Sadly it's only the latter that carries the SGP in English. So,. the answer is that there may be some but speedway's not much of a priority outside the major speedway nations. Of course you can take out a subscription to overseas services. There are of course less legitimate ways to watch encrypted services.

As part of the 'nomadic setup' which managed to get the Rockets back on track in 1999(*) I can confirm exactly what happened since I was directly involved in the team manager matter. A former Rocket was approached to manage the team on a voluntary basis, more in hope than expectation obviously but he could have done exactly the right job. Sadly all he cared about was money and nobody on the management side were taking any money out of the project so that was a non-starter. Knowing John was a highly committed supporter who already could be completely relied upon to attend all of the Rockets'; away matches, as he had for many seasons, and had a knowledge of the rule book we asked him to help out which he kindly agreed to. I remember at our first away match at Buxton having to tell him that yes, the referee wouldn't change his mind but he owed it to the team to call him up and show the team that he was fighting for them. I think he picked up confidence as time progressed and I was pleased that he was one of the few not to be discarded after the return of the Silvers. I sincerely doubt that he has any power (and therefore responsibility) for the current state of affairs. (*Yes we did have a season in 1999, although I doubt it figures in the official history now)

Finally we have video footage of Starman in action! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnzHtm1jhL4

It all sounds so tragically familiar.

Some very valid points but speedway must be the only team sport in Britain where competitors regularly appear for multiple teams, either through doubling-up or by racing overseas. With the annual merry-go-round of riders it's impossible to build a true team spirit let alone spread that into the community. We used to have part-time riders with full commitment to one team. Now we have full-time riders with negligible commitment to a team. Just how many Swindon riders would be in the country let alone be free to help? It's proving nigh on impossible to get the seven riders together for a speedway meeting so what chance do you have of getting them involved in wider non-speedway appearances? Riders simply don't stay in one place long enough now. You can't socialise with most after the meeting because they're off to an airport. Of course all speedway tracks need to reach out to the community but how can they when the stars are almost certainly not even in the country?

How did we ever manage 30 meetings a year, eh? Yes, times have moved on but you don't see other sports slashing the lengths of their seasons. If the product's value for money there wouldn't be a problem. It seems many are hell-bent on reducing our schedule down to that of other countries on the delusion that somehow that will make our leagues as strong. The gaps in the season give people ample chance to find other things to do on racenights. Do people really want a 7-10 match home season? If so, do they actually like speedway?

Sadly that sums Rye House up.

I'd be fascinated to be given actual examples of this in professional sport. It may sound good in theory but I can't recall any major sport in this country operating regional leagues at the higher levels since the Football League abandoned the Third Division North and South back in the late 1950s.

Try telling someone who loses their track or finds it is only going to stage 4 or 5 meetings a season that it's "In the best interests of speedway". We need the sport in Britain to rebuild not commit suicide. What may work in the sticks of Germany won't necessarily work in the UK. As for quoting major events like Silverstone and Wimbledon, the clue's in the word 'major'. That argument is like throwing live music out of your local pub because Lady Gaga only plays in Britain four times a year.....

A rather simplistic, lazy analysis. I've been around a few years and thankfully despite this forum still keen to see as much speedway as I can. I also know that the sport in Britain is in a far worse state than it was when I started going. Then we had nearly 40 tracks, full seasons running from March to October, doubling-up restricted to young, developing talent (up, never down), a healthy supply of young developing British riders, a sport in which league racing was the priority and individual championships a great 'extra'. Promoters could stage entertaining open meetings, challenges, pairs and individual meetings without the lazy sneer of 'meaningless' (All sport is essentially, meaningless but I suspect philosophy is lost on the BSF). Guests were a necessary if unfortunate need but not out of control, riders were committed to the British leagues and they stayed long enough to build bonds with the supporters who could identify properly with their teams and weren't all treating their appearances for the team as just another pay day. Yes we had bad racing (but at least we saw far more reward for riders prepared to attack on the outside), bad weather and bad promoters. We also had several tracks in London - proper stadia with facilities. Now in that area there's.....Arena Essex. Sorry, I'm just an old fart with nothing to contribute, am I? 44 years involvement as a fan, writer, broadcaster and official so obviously I know as much as an ignorant loudmouth on the terraces screaming at riders who can't possibly hear him then retreating to his pc to vent his spleen on here where he can force people to hear him from the safety of a false name. The sport's disorganised, totally lacking in vision or intelligence with riders racing spinning machines running at full throttle on tracks whose only significant developments have been the highly vital air fences, separation of lighting poles from fences and the less-desirable decline in the potential for marketable racing due to excessive cost-cutting on track preparation. The arguing is heightened by the fact that the sport corporately is unhappy and struggling to survive and that passes through into the remaining supporters. So many people have given up on speedway in those four and a half decades and it would be fascinating to hear their reasons from them directly. Of course they'd be written-off as 'moaners' with those lacking in the foresight to know that the only way to get the sport in Britain back on a healthy footing is to learn from the catastrophic errors of too many recent years. Of course we can just dismiss it all as moaning and nostalgia and focus on just bailing out the wreck and hoping for the best. In my youth, living in the south east I could, and often did watch speedway up to seven nights a week at tracks such as Hackney, Wimbledon, White City and the surrounding tracks like Rayleigh/Rye House, Crayford, Reading or even Canterbury on a Saturday. Now I'd have Rye House and Arena Essex. You don't need rosy spectacles to know which era was better. We can't recreate the past but we can build a future that's closer to it than the overpriced disgrace that calls itself speedway now. And yet I still love it, I suppose in the same way a parent loves a child who's gone off the rails. Anyway, this is all rather irrelevant right now given the shocking reminder in Poland of how dangerous the sport has become once more. Whatever his past errors I hope and pray that Darcy Ward recovers to full health. I'll leave you all to have a good argument and blame everyone over 40.

It's far worse in the EL. Be glad you're out of it.

Lord knows how we ever coped with a season running from mid-March to the end of October with 26-30 meetings a season? Yes life has moved on, or is it down? You just see the season being nibbled away each year as the sport in Britain decays. There was a time when if a track closed mid-September you feared it wouldn't re-open the next. Now some close in August! Don't give me the weather excuse. Octobers can be as dry as the rest of the year, just as summer months can be soaking wet. I just wonder if people have conveniently short memories or no sense of the bigger picture. There's perhaps no greater sign of the economic plight of British speedway than the collapsing length of season. Of course if promoters were making money it wouldn't be the case. I'm sure there were very simple reasons why Len Silver at Hackney ran over 30 meetings a year. There's a lot of work to be done to repair the damage, but of course the lazy excuse will come up of "Life's moved on and we can't do anything" which is the most convenient line for just stumbling on and hoping for the best. I hope we have a good match tonight. Lord knows, we need one.

Poole is based in a rather larger well-off conurbation than Somerset or Peterborough (or Scunthorpe) and has a much longer history so such a simplistic comparison is not valid. I find it sad that people believe that good racing is not important. Not all teams can win! I do suspect though that the support left in the sport follows wins and names, not the quality of racing. Perhaps that's a symbol of the appalling state of affairs across the sport? When the wins stop coming then what happens?

This is the Eurosport that has a contract for weekly live Swedish League racing and has managed to find time to show about four live meetings so far since May? This is the same Eurosport that showed after-meeting chat from a bike racing event rather than the first few heats of one of their own European Championship meetings? This is the same Eurosport that relegated DGP and SWC events to Quest and failed to show the rearranged SWC Final live? They may have the deals at the moment but their scheduling is chaotic.

Each to their own. I used to work in football and was sickened by the attitude of too many 'fans' so when I see it happening in speedway, albeit a long distance away I keep my viewing to TV and keep well clear of the appalling atmosphere of hatred and violence. People excused football for years saying "it's just a minority" then Sky protected its investment by playing it down. I leave it to others - my interests lie in speedway, not hating and threatening the opposition. Some like that though......sadly.

I watched all three and all had the same unacceptable bias. What's your point?

An atmosphere of aggression and conflict like football that needs not only to segregate fans but also 'pre-register' them before certain flashpoint matches? An atmosphere where supporters earn their clubs fines for violent conduct? An atmosphere where fans invade the track during a race to steal the opposition's flag? Lovely! If that's success give me failure any day. No thank you, no matter what the racing!