Nikko

Yes they will, they are at Central Park lol :-)

Good top 5. Lambert is going to be very busy in 3 leagues and obviously Kings fans will not want a Sky meeting between Birmingham & Lakeside or you will be missing Lambert & Morley on the same night (unless NDL takes precedence). Will also be interesting to see how many meetings Lambert misses due to PL commitments. Glad Mason & Compton back, rode well together end of last year. Shame about Kingston, Coles and Kirby but be interesting to see who reserves are. Also, and I know this is a bugbear of mine, but with 4 of the 5 riders announced so far long standing Rye House or Mr Silver riders this could be the Rye House Raiders side and doesn't do much to make the Kings a standalone club and nothing other than the Raiders at Kent. Just my opinion. Also interesting "quote" came from Roger Cearns, although he isn't the co-promoter he is the Chairman as there are no Promoters in the NDL. Good luck to all involved in 2014.

Re the track staff, I would expect with the exception of myself, Paul and Tony & Denise Fowles that everyone will return for the new season so the club will be looking for / or already have replaced a Commercial Manager, Clerk of the Course and Track Photographers. Obviously the above people did more than just what their roles indicate but I am sure others will step into the roles either from the existing team at CP or from Rye House. I don't know how much news comes out from Rye House over the winter, we know Mr Silver always announces his Rockets team ASAP after the AGM, but with the Kings it seems that it will be the New Year although I would be amazed if some riders were not already signed up, I certaintly hope so. Clearly there has been a change in promotional / marketing style since the end of the season but it is Mr Cearns and Mr Silvers right to run the club how they see fit. When involved I pushed for a different way which we did last year but at the end of the day it's not the way the promotion want to go, hence the changes. Keep the faith, Kent Kings fans, it may take a while but I'm sure you will get the news you want.

Ben Hopwood would be a very good shout, if memory is correct I think he scored a max at CP last season and is a great lad with very good support from his dad Chaz. If Mildenhall don't use Aaron Baseby, he would be a very good signing, and a local lad as well for local fans to follow. Not sure he would sign for the Kings though. Anyway I am sure riders are being lined up. As a start, what about. 1. Ben Morley 2. Aaron Baseby 3. David Mason 4. Ben Hopwood 5, Benji Compton 6. Jack Kingston 7. Adam Kirby Don't have averages to hand so no idea if it fits.

I can only assume that the track will be worked on when Mr Silver returns from his annual winter in the French alps. He was very critical of it last year and of the volunteers who helped him lay it, so assume he will be doing a lot of work on it in the Spring to put it right, hopefully he will get it right the second time, as that stadium deserves a great racetrack. I always remember one of the great track men "Huggy" bending my ear saying good tracks need to worked on all year, obviously less in winter, but it's the time for maintenance etc.

Hi Hector, yes I did notice but nothing to do with me as you know lol I know that as soon as Tim is given info and told to release information he will do so ASAP. At the moment the promotion are sticking with their first week of November comment that there's not likely to be any news until into the New Year.

I told them it was often the case in speedway that there's little or no news over the winter but that the owners would be putting together a team for next year. I then gave them the Press Officers details. The interesting reply from the journalist was to ask how would all the new fans made last year know this as last year there was news every week from mid October? Good question, I pointed them again at the Press Officer.

Still quiet on the Kings front I see. With the promoter entering a busy period at Christmas with the Greyhounds and the co-promoter not giving out any news either about the Kings or the possible Raiders I guess the fans could be left in the dark until the New Year which to be fair is what they told the press officer 2 months ago. I am sure riders are being signed, but maybe a little bit of promotion would not go amiss. I have even had a local newspaper contact me asking if the Kings are still in existence! Scary.

Bryn, give up, we have been having the debate on Facebook and I have told him to read the SCB rulebook. The latest BSPA stand also calls it the National Development League. But you know Derek, he's always right :-)

Derek, sorry but your showing exactly the attitude here, lack of understanding and dinosaur thinking of some of the promoters, another example of why you get on so well with some of them especially the completely out of date and touch co promoter at Kent. In this day and age, a good website IS your best vehicle for publicity and is the essential tool for marketing your club. Yes, no one needs to pay £300 a week to do this but I can tell you as a proven fact that without the website and the marketing campaign taking people to the website before we launched the Kent Kings it would have been a very different story. Traditional, archaic promotion brought nothing to the launch of the Kings, and I mean nothing, new techniques, marketing, social media etc did. Oh, and the website also brought in a very significant revenue in sponsorship, including companies who joined BECAUSE the website was so professional and the high number of hits we could prove. Shame the same couldn't be said for the program.

Would be interesting to see how Roger would do it if on his own.

Without getting personal, I think there's been some good debate over the last few days and pages. We know some promoters read these threads, maybe on or two will take notice. The thing I will agree with Parsloes on, without Volunteers speedway is in serious trouble however in certain roles I do think professional people with experience in those roles, say in their working lives, is a major benefit, or a must.

Derek, did you see the figures week in, week out? No you didn't. Were you at every meeting so you can make an educated guess? No you were not. The last few meetings were poorly attended and serious conversations took place about them. I think the Kent Kings can be a MASSIVE success and hopefully with a few changes next season, it will be. The fans certainly deserve that.

Derek, I'm not going to get into a public debate with you, but you have been editing speedway programs for long enough that you should know the law and yes it's international copyright law I am talking about, not a rule made by the SCB or GoSpeed. I know some people in speedway think they can make all the rules, but copyright is copyright. I am certainly NOT suggesting a speedway club should pay anything near that figure! I've spent enough years trying to raise money for clubs to know that's not reasonable :-)

You are obviously a very well informed person. As it is on Facebook, and therefore in the public domain, yes I can confirm that ESA, the official track photographers also left the Kent Kings towards the end of the season and are no longer involved with the club. As with my agreement with the web designers, ESA have kindly agreed, to date, to allow their photos to remain on the official site. As with all sports photography the copyright belongs to the photographer, not the rider or club so considering what happened (which is not in the public domain) it is of great credit to ESA they allowed this. With regards to next year, you would have to ask Parsoles/Derek as he is still involved and close to Mr Silver,

Gustix. The topic and my comments are about the general issue of the current state of british speedway and some specific examples I can speak about from personal experience. Hence why it's in the general section. I only deal in facts and used Kent Kings experiences as an example about the problems the sport is suffering from. No doubt some will say I'm knocking the promotion again, I wasn't, I was giving examples.

Just a couple of points. Johnny the Spud. There is no conflict at the club as those of us who wanted to continue to work in a new way, and continue what we started last winter, but were not allowed to by the co-promoter, have left the club. It's a shame but we wish the riders and fans of the club all the best in the future. Iris123. You would have thought so, but they didn't want to know. We had all the stats from hits per day, per week, per month and unique hits for all those date ranges. We did online surveys, we had a marketing plan. Unfortunately the co-promoter wouldn't listen. His attitude is put on speedway and they will come. Forgetting the first meeting, where our strategic marketing campaign and use of radio, internet, social media helped to swell the crowd to over 4000 people, crowds dropped all year as our ideas and campaigns were dropped one by one. And as Jonny the Spud states there is now no news, now the press officer has been told there will be no news from mid November to mid January. Marketing campaigns must run all year round, you cannot be silent for a quarter of the year.

Some interesting posts on here about marketing which I have only just had time to catch up with. While I am not going to come down on one side or the other on the particular posts going on, let me tell you about speedway from my perspective, and that's someone who has been a speedway Commercial Manager for many years, has helped save a club (twice), has helped setup a new club, has been to marketing meetings at BSPA in Rugby and still is asked my advise from promoters and speedway track owners today. Speedway in this country is slowly dying and one of the reasons is that a lot, not all, of the promoters are living in the past. The marketing of speedway hasn't changed for years and it needs to. Kids and young people are the future so the show has to keep the kids interested and don't forget they live in a world where everything has to happen fast and quickly. Speedway as a sport should be made for this. It's fast, it's dangerous that's what the kids want to see. They want excitement, thrills and spills. They want to use social media to keep up to date with what's going on, chat rooms with the riders, pod casts with after meeting interviews. It's all about the event, make it colourful, make it loud (if you can), make it exciting. You go to some meetings and they are run the same way as they were in the 50s, 60s, 70s, but without the crowds. Slow boring meetings with lots of gaps with nothing happening If you look at cricket with 20/20, the Red Bull X Racers events etc it's all about the event. The biggest thing nowadays though is the internet, and speedway is shocking at this. Most websites are, let's be honest, awful and very basic. As above kids want interactive websites, podcasts, and use social media. And now we come back full circle. Most current promoters don't like, want, or understand the internet yet it's their most powerful tool. Here is a real example: Last year I worked tirelessly with a professional web design company and we launched the official Kent Kings website for the club, but at the same time we launched a mobile version for iPhone and Andriod. It was massive, the hits we had were amazing. We setup a FB page, a twitter page, both very well received and popular, and both still very active today. We worked with sponsors on links or access to their sites. It was very successful. The website was sponsored so it cost club nothing. The problem, and here is the issue, is that the promotion didn't use the facilities set up, in fact they stated they didn't like the internet or want the internet, and didn't care what people said on the internet. REALLY, this is your target audience!!! The official Kent Kings site is still there, but only because the web design company are willing to keep it going for free at the moment as a favour to me, and I don't work for the club anymore! You cannot run a successful business in this day and age with that attitude and I believe it's systematic of one of the problems with speedway in this country. It needs to drag itself out of the past if it is to have a future.

I hope there are new teams, there has very little if anything from the Stoke promotion since before the season finished, noises from the IOW don't sound great. Kings Lynn? Don't know. Buxton I assume depends on the airfence. If your feeling positive all the above teams come to the tapes plus a couple of EL/PL teams run NL teams. If your feeling negative the NL could be down to Kent, Mildenhall Coventry and Dudley. No chance of Norwich and it's gone quiet down in Bristol.

Normally it's not until Jan or Feb that NL teams start announcing riders, although with the NL AGM being this side of Xmas it could be earlier. The Kings press officer published on their twitter feed a few weeks ago that the promotion had said there would be no news until into the New Year so guess it will be a while yet, but you never know. And Hector do you really think the promotion are not saying anything because people have different opinions to them? That's pathetic, they don't care what people think or say on the internet and I have heard that directly from the promotion themselves. People are allowed different opinions and have the right to voice them on here FB or whatever, and who they are is irrelevant. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing who the Kings will be in 2014 and will be paying my money each week to support to lads.

Speedway in this country and the people who run it never stop amazing me. On the inside pages of this weeks Speedway Star Terry Russell is basically saying the promoters dont know anything about whats going on, and only he and a couple of others do. He then says he is surprised the BSPA have their meeting this weekend when it may take until Xmas for him to get a TV deal for next year, which we all know is the deciding factor in what speedway will be like next year. You couldnt write this in a novel, no-one would believe such people could be in charge. This sport, that we all love so much, is dying and maybe for the long term future of the sport it needs to die to death and then rise from the ashes from the grassroots up.

Ok lets be radical. Next year there are 2 Divisions. Division 1. No GP riders, current Elite League teams but reduced costs, and half the PL teams (those willing to spend a bit more but not EL costs). Division 2. The remaining PL teams and the NL teams willing and able to have an airfence and run slightly higher costs. I would expect Rye House to go into Division 1 (seems to be a thread in the general section similar to this) and Kent to go into Division 2. My concern for young riders is that the new Division 2 will be stronger than the current NL and only leave them MDL etc. Discuss?

All, nice comments from some, but as Waco says, time to move on. The past is the past, and will stay that way.

Having received abusing emails overnight I have removed my posts. A forum should be about debate and opinions. Clearly not allowed anymore. I came off this forum for some time before because of abuse for having a different opinion. Now it's happening again, more fool me. Lesson learnt once and for all. Fans complain that promoters are out of touch and through self interest and lack of new ideas are killing our sport. You try and do something about it and get abuse. Be careful what you wish for......

That's one reason, I wanted to bring speedway into the new world, social media, stuff for the kids, and great exposure for the sponsors. One thing I, and the people I worked with, made sure was that nothing went out that was private. I joined the club to promote the Kent Kings, to help Roger Cearns fulfil his dream and bring a team back to Kent. I also wanted to bring speedway kicking and screaming into the 21st century. As the season went on, in my mind, that changed and it became the Raiders at Kent and the promotion didn't want to carry on with the new way of promoting. It's back to the old school way of promoting. I want nothing more than league speedway in Kent and will also support the Kings. I look forward to seeing the 7 riders who will wear the Kings Racejackets in 2014, which is after all what this thread is about.