ouch

Any team would welcome him as a great all rounder. In the same bracket as Jaimon and Doyle who have similar home, away and overall averages. https://britishspeedway.co.uk/2025-rider-statistics/

Sorry I must of misinterpreted the declarations. Maybe rolling figures are to blame. Following his returning assessed average he went 7.71, 7.79 before finishing on 8.05 which falsely shows an increase over the season.

I agree, which makes Kildermand a shrewd signing as there is only six or seven riders with a higher starting average than him in this years championship.

So true.

Top stars bring people in it’s just the slow death of the sport that makes it seem that they don’t. Remove them and you’ll see a further jump in the drop in attendance. One very vocal critic of the current state of the sport said he’d turn up if his favourite top star was in attendance, no matter how repetitive his appearances. What has been the feedback from your 50 family & friends about attending regularly?

It would indeed. Be interesting to see how long they danced to his tune. You want an average changing - no problem, a guest when it’s not allowed - fine or a foreigner who’s not eligible - go on then. You want what? sorry no. Hey come back, we need you.

Must admit it’s not really aimed at me as I’m happy with my programme and chatting to people nearby. Top of my head would be….. Stats. Home, away, overall, performance at a particular track. News, both local and international for our team of riders. Fixtures and tickets. League table. Race info. Transponder info, passing inc passing after B3 L1, match ups - past and present. Predict the result. Meeting, race, individual scores. Gate performance info. Replays on demand. Votes for ref decisions, best rider and other fun categories. 50/50 raffle available via the app. Car share/coach information for away trips. Ultra local weather forecasts with track webcam footage leading up to tapes up. Pre meeting interviews. Rider colouring pages for young and old. Some kind of speedway themed game, addictive if possible. Meat raffle.

A the NSS we get a race followed by the cool down lap with wheelies, celebration etc. Then the race finishing order is announced both on the tannoy and big screen. Replays come up on the big screen then the two minutes are announced and the riders come out. During the four grading breaks we then have more on the big screen plus interviews and Chase doing his thing. The only addition to all this is the kids game and 50/50 draw at the interval. It would need a big smash or the weather to turn bad for this schedule to elongate. I’m happy with this to be honest and the only addition I’d make would be the introduction of an app giving more meat on the bones about the meeting and to provide more interaction, oh and a meat raffle.

The necessary evil was an often touted phrase back in the day but that went out of the window when the rulebook demanded a guest for a missing number six and after 75% of your fixtures you cannot replace a seventh member if injured, it has to be RR or guest. Unnecessary.

If doubling down was allowed in the 70’s & 80’s then riders would have done it. It wasn’t allowed so they attached their bike to the back of a Citroen and worked part time when not riding. There is no benefit for top league clubs to have their riders doubling down but the lower division benefits greatly and they have more votes at the AGM and thus it came to pass. Short term gain for long term pain, well done guys.

The second division use to be made up of youngest working their way through the sport. Double upping has been around for decades but it’s the double downing that started our current rider shortage. Second division clubs won’t even participate in the RS system but are more than happy to have top league riders on the cheap as it enhances their product. Doesn’t help the sport as a whole but “I’m alright Jack”, the mantra of most if not all second tier clubs.

We get this every year on all the team threads. We would have loved to keep the team together but rules don’t allow it. Losing Jaimon allows us to keep the bulk of our main team intact. ANY replacement for Jaimon will feel second best. We might have wanted a newbie from abroad and things may have gone west. So, given all that and this is the bit we should be debating, out of the candidates that fit our average gap who should we have signed?

We get this every year on all the team threads. We would have loved to keep the team together but rules don’t allow it. Losing Jaimon allows us to keep the bulk of our main team intact. ANY replacement for Jaimon will feel second best. We might have wanted a newbie from abroad and things may have gone west. So, given all that and this is the bit we should be debating, out of the candidates that fit our average gap who should we have signed?

Definitely. When you do match ups with other teams (some rumours) we lose out in every position.

So because Oxford & Birmingham aren’t visiting fans won’t attend the meetings when say, Leicester or Sheffield do? I find that odd.

With new owners it’s a chance for a new beginning and a change in team building strategy. Stop with having riders in for 2,3 or 4 years and look long term so the fans can grow to love them and start to create a family feel to the club, like The Aces. For some clubs speedway can be a numbers game put together on a spreadsheet where they see a number and not a name. It’s not the best imo despite results and being somewhat under the points limit is no bad thing if it allows riders to grow with the club.

The Colts run on Sunday afternoons (or use to on Friday) because most if not all of the competitors have jobs or rely on working parents to help them at meetings. Sundays are ideal with that in mind and even a Friday makes it a far easier fit when considering post meeting travel and maintenance. We can agree that pubs, restaurants, cinemas etc focus on weekends, so why would a small sport like ours want to go up against them? Far better to run when there is less competition. We do have “specials” on Monday and Thursday, it’s called the play offs when the masses come out irrespective of what day of the week it is.

Nights not conducive to the entertainment industry is very subjective. If we took Saturday as THE night and everyone else did the same then you are all competing against each other. You do what’s best for you. In 1976 less than half the teams in the league rode on a Saturday (6). 3 rode on a Friday with the other 10 riding mid week. This was at the height of the sports popularity yet most CHOOSE to open mid week. Moving to alternate nights to gain the biggest crowd happens in all industries. Film distributors will not go up against the blockbusters, bands will serve dates when big hitters are in town and pubs will arrange theme nights on dates to attract the most punters. It’s not a case that Saturday is the holy grail and we need to avoid the negative connotations currently being associated with mid week.

More likely that one team runs away with both leagues then suffers injuries to key team members resulting in a loss in the grand final. We could then heap praise on the second placed team as being the best in the land and worthy winners.

Is there a link to that quote from Jaimon?

Very true. Jaimon would be even better at Foxhall as a home rider as he would quickly get the starts dialled in. He’s one of the better away riders out there as well and that was not lost on Chris and Richie when looking for a top scoring guest. I’d prefer their opinion and that of the cold hard facts rather than that of anti Aces trolls.

Using the excellent speedway-stats website, here are the last three years at Foxhall Jaimon 2023 6.13 2024 5.78 2025 5.33 17.24 Musielak 2025 3.64 2023 8.73 2022 5.00 17.37 Becker 2025 7.56 2024 5.78 2023 5.00 18.34 It’s interesting how cold hard stats without any petty bias (or trolling) tell a more factually correct story. Opinions are fine but please don’t present them as fact without even checking.

A dialled in gating tart would never succeed at Foxhall, though no one every.

Jaimon would have been a number one at three tracks last year so could end up in that position this coming season and of course Brady is an out & out number one. If that was the case then in seasons ‘24-‘26 riders for 6 different teams would have occupied the number one spot a season or two after being released by Belle Vue Aces. Ace stat.

There’s no real jeopardy at the PCMT as it’s just our individual meeting in tribute to the great man. The key to the big crowds is the level of the participants. Top riders attract a bigger audience, even at an increased admission cost. You’re right about the play offs and it’s great the extra crowds turn up but not so great for teams not in it nor the qualifiers. One of my gripes that fell on deaf ears when they came about was the implied importance or not of certain fixture in peoples minds. People, though they may not realise, like to be told what to do and adopt herd mentality. Back in the day all meetings had similar importance for most of the season. Even teams that knew they couldn’t win the league wanted to finish as high up as possible or beat the title chasing teams. This led to a consistent attendance. Now we are told that some fixtures are way more important than others, we naturally start to pick and choose. Play off finalist can make up some of the shortfall but others do not. The result for the sport as a whole is a nett loss. I think now as I did then that the play offs have had a lot to do with dwindling attendances but that horse bolted long ago and the simple fact that two teams get record attendances basically drowns out any other aspect of why they should or shouldn’t be adopted by our sport. I’ve said this many times without any kind of response, which says it all to me that even us as speedway nuts cannot persuade close family and friends to attend so any amount of advertising will currently fall on deaf ears. People don’t like speedway. The ONLY hope -and I’m too old to grasp what it is - is that some zeitgeist person or event presents itself that a social media guru can use to create the fomo effect. I’ve seen it happen with say Prime drink, Ibiza Final Boss, 6/7 etc but I cannot get my head around it.