False dawn

Not at all. If a bike is found to be illegal after a meeting, a rider's points would be removed retrospectively. And that's just one example. A clear rule violation took place, no interpretation necessary. Who's fault it was that the violation took place is secondary.

Now come on Steve. Up to that point you had me on side. But people "praying" for a Poole victory? Hmmm.

Sound arguments. So it is more cost effective to 1. Piss off a vast majority of the average punter with "It's a Knockout" rules. 2. Lose meetings because you have no real opportunity to win them.

I don't sense any feeling against BWD for this. The rules were broken. He didn't do anything wrong, it was his team management and the ref for not knowing the rules.

It looks simple enough. If a rider is disqualified / excluded or any other word they dream up and he doesn't take the 15m option then this will count as a ride if he isn't replaced by a reserve and it doesn't count as a ride if he replaced. Simples

We could do both. Or is that too complicated for the average announcer? I note that Swedish TV show the aggregate score after every race in the 2nd leg so you can follow the score on the night and where we are with the bonus point. Not complicated really. However, if it's a choice between one or the other, I'd go for the current system. But we could do both. OR Maybe we should go down the GP route. Team's score points according to their total race points. Win or lose, it doesn't matter. Only your score matters. Wouldn't make a great deal of difference except that Wolves would have finished top of the league AND Rye House would have finished 4th (by 3 points). Can't see Matt going for this idea then! Oh, and Leicester would have finished 6th.

So.... Team captains toss a coin as now. Winner chooses gates in heat 1 or 15. Then teams alternate gates each race. Let the team managers choose which rider goes in which gate. If you're 8 or more behind the losing team can choose which pair of gates they want and continue to do so until they are less than 8 behind when the teams alternate again. At least with this system, the riders have to score the point according to the normal scoring system. And if one gate was a graveyard and the losing team kept choosing the other pair of gates, watch how quickly the ground staff would start to grade the offending gate.

I like the league points system. But I have always been uncomfortable with the TR idea. Preferring instead something akin to the old TR rule as well as choice of gate positions when you're behind. The choice of gate positions might get clubs to grade the gates more fairly. The advantage gained by being out of certain gates at some circuits is very noticeable.

Surely the difference is that if it's a question of interpretation, then the results stands. But if the rules were broken, black and white, the result should be subject to change.

You DO want a lot don't you?

Stox were / would be the primary source of income.

You could move the British GP back. Then have the play off final at Cardiff on Friday night followed by the GP on Saturday. That's what I call an event

Amen to that. When all hope has vanished, we can pack our bags (you can tell I'm a Bees supporter can't you? BTW one of those 10/12 in the league next year is Coventry, right?)

You don't want much, do you?

,,,,this place would be half empty !

Andreas Jonsson £100 more Vaclav Milik £200 more

That's exactly my point. Design a divisional system that doesn't result in an outright winner so that the play offs are the deciding factor. As to your point about the best two sides being in the same division. No problem. Again follow the NFL model whereby the 2 clubs (say) with the best losing record get wildcards into the playoffs and design the play offs so that clubs from the same division don't meet early on. This is possible. Once you abandon the idea that all clubs have to meet each other home and away you can make the play offs more meaningful and you can organise the fixture list to better suit the club's availability and rider availability etc.

Let's call the whole thing off

So 562 guests in 411 meetings or an average of 1.37 per meeting. Not that different from my sample (1.24) although a bit worse / bigger. Add in rider replacements and you're definitely over 2 riders "missing" on average every meeting or 1 per team. Can we agree that this is far too many?

You say potato and I say banana

Now I know you don't like American sport..... Just kidding, I know many of you love American sport. Maybe we can learn from the US. I don't know all the details of how games are organised in American Football but they basically organise the divisions on a roughly geographical basis. Games are played and teams are declared division champions. Each one of two conferences organise games at the end of the season to determine the conference champions and then they meet in the Super Bowl. My point is that the league structure means that they don't have this ambiguity between the team scoring the most team points and who wins the playoffs. Winning your division gets you to the next stage of being the champion. Let's have one big league. Split it into 4. Doesn't need to geographical, race night might be more logical. Organise the fixtures, which don't need to all within division but would be for the most part. Division leaders would race in semi finals and the winner of those meet in the final. Adopting this kind of idea has endless possibilities but we'd all know who the League Champions were at the end it all.

Hey, I didn't know I was one of them!

I also had a similar idea, a sort of Super Bowl (AFC va NFC). Unfortunately, to be all things to all men, they would allow doubling up between north and south divisions. This could be practical if it was arranged, as far as possible, to avoid clashes between north and south fixtures. The trouble is, Sod's Law would dictate that at least one rider (maybe as many as 7) would ride for both the North and South champions . Then what do you do? P.S. if you think our playoff system is daft, they said on the Swedish speedway TV programme a couple of weeks ago that the Swedish second division has a 4 team playoff at the end of the year. Why daft? I hear you say. Because there are only 4 clubs in the Swedish second division.

About 1.27 per meetingAlthough my analysis did not include the NL. I hope (please) that this brought the average down a bit.

That's his dribbling dog is it?