moxey63

I bet the boys from the 60s, 70s and even 80s wish they could race on today's super-smooth tracks helped with all those gizmo additions to the bike that only add to make it like a Sunday afternoon snooze on the armchair, but also without the worry of falling off the seat and into a rock-solid fence and not a bouncy castle airfence like today. Yes, I can understand why today's riders would appear to be better prepared. they have it so easy. But I admire any rider, from all eras.

Using the weakest of riders in world final history doesn't mean the riders who won the meetings didn't deserve them. I mean, what about all the riders who didn't make the finals due to the lob-sided qualifying system back then? It was hard enough getting through the British Final and we had no Scott Nicholls able to take the title six or seven times, the line-up being that poor. As I said, I prefer to go on other aspects other than a rider pulling his all out in the top events. If it were a GP system in the 70s, imagine the top 16 riders in the field compared to now. I also raise the British League averages and the amount of 10-point men back then, but BWitcher would rather harp on about riders picking their own gates back then or team being full of journeymen.

I liked both, although BWitcher will be on in a minute and say I can't like both.

Seriously, though, and this isn't a criticism of Tai, but to say he is the best British rider simply because he has won more world titles is like saying Shaddup Your Face, Joe Dolce, is a better record than Ultavox's Vienna because it kept it off the number one spot for weeks in 1981. You can't really compare how many titles a rider has to him being better than another rider. You have to look at it more broadly. Tai is very good. But... and it's just my opinion, there isn't that much out there to beat.

Sorry, but I think you're wrong in part. The topic is about Mr Woffinden being the best British rider, is it not. Now, as I have a forty-five year history of following the sport , never mind how much I like it nowadays, I think that gives me some knowledge and a right to reply.

Sorry mate, forgot to ask if I could voice an opinion.

Woffinden is certainly the best rider since his first title. But in a room of ugly people, there has to be the prettiest one.

Here's some old news from this time in 1987: Mildenhall Chairman Bob Steward has accused fellow NL promoters of holding back the sport and failing to sell it to sponsors, the public and the media. He describes how, after months of crying poverty and appealing for money to keep their respective tracks in business, the National League decides to hold its annual conference in the Canary Islands for a week, with the outcome that everyone patted each other on the back for their efforts. Steward believes the sport should be looking for a Barry Hearn-type character to sell speedway. It could so easily be today.

There is an urgency to have a cut-off date for the POs and then act all manic and rush the semis into one night as if there's some sort of sell-by date. You tend to feel the TV company just want it out of the way. They leave me feeling empty. But they are here to stay.

The Play-Offs kept the season alive so much for Poole fans that in June they were throwing in the bucket, drifting away and calling for Matt Ford's head. The Play-Offs seem to have presented the sport with a win at all cost mentality. Gone are the days when you'd turn up for any fixture, even if your team was rock bottom, just to see your team... and I mean your team and not a bunch of names juggled together for a few nights at the season's end.

Once the Play-Offs are done with, it seems the season is left like an empty field after a carnival, the remaining fixtures like all the litter that's left. If you're going to have Play-Offs, perhaps draw a line on them being the final act of a season and all tracks must shut.

Just didn't seem like two matches to settle the biggest domestic title. Perhaps fans can now see how the season is manufactured to allow certain teams to just hang about while the others do the hard digging but turn up when the awards are handed out. Crowds didn't seem that impressive, either, when you base your argument that "bumper" crowds help subsidise the seven months that precedes them. Greg Hancock's suggestion that more points should be awarded for the latter rounds of the GPs to keep interest alive was ridiculed. But for 16 years that's all the top league in Britain has done, in a way.

Poole, a speedway team floundering at the foot of the league table with fans becoming disheartened and staying away, not being used to failure and at the same time calling for the head of a promoter who had brought them a string of successes for years, finds an ideal time to make switches mid-summer and then prove to be the best team purely for the latter part of the season, to beat the best side all year. Just seems sort of unfair, a system set up so fans of other clubs cling to success until the leaves begin to fall from the trees and, as Poole fans were doing, don't become disillusioned and start to drift away mid-term.

Total lack of Play-Off Final atmosphere. Crowd looks a bit low too.

Catching a few recent meetings on the box, noticed the age demographic of the average fan. Perhaps a novel idea would be for the sport to team up with local undertakers and funeral directors.

The problem with Simmo, though, if my memory serves, he remained loyal to the vehicle that kept on letting him down and it conked out numerous times en route to meetings.

If I was a real fan, I'd have downed my tablet or phone and focused fully on a sport I loved watching. But you just can't stop jibba-jabbing.

You're just here to disagree with people. Go on, say it... "Oh no, I'm not.!

Not watching, it's on in the background. Pull your trousers up and toddle on off. You're boring me now, you little hoot.

It's like the Champions League in football. You can lose numerous matches and still make it in the end. When Poole were bottom in the summer, I remember thinking they'll soon be doing a Popeye and eating some spinach. And now, as if it were a miracle, Poole have found all their strength, with a little points dropping and rider signing along the way. If you are bottom in June and can still win the league, it keeps the few remaining fans happy that there won't really be a loser until the last few weeks of the season, whoever you follow, and then you'll have no more fixtures anyway.

Speedway is like X-Factor. Go through all the months of sifting through the dross and usually Poole find a way to win. Usually, it's only the last few weeks that matter and seems totally manufactured.

I disagree about the sport moving on though. Riders may be more professional, but they're still racing in stadiums befitting 1970s speedway and operated by used car salesmen.

Yes, I do. On the other hand, did you watch speedway in the 60s or 70s to have such a downer on riders from back then, or is your education brought to you via the YouTube speedway archive and the couple of races you've dragged out as comparisons?

But you have nothing to back up that standards are higher today, apart from me having to go and ask every rider past and present. I am going on what I see in results and rider careers. You can only compare like with like. When you take away Rickardsson (6 titles), Crump (3), and now Pedersen (3), championships become easier to win. We aren't talking decades ago, just 10 years. When those three riders either retired or began to demise, as Pedersen did, it allowed others in with a chance. Gollob won one, Holder (remember him), and then Hancock got back in there, Woffinden and even Doyle. It has become easier in just 10 years to win the GP. The real stars had left the building. The way it is now, Woffinden could easily do a Scott Nicholls in the British Championship and make Peter Collins' one win (in the World Final and British Final) seem pathetic. And we know it was harder back then, when every rider lived the same sort of lifestyles and were just as professional as each other and there were many more individual meetings to test the fact.

I haven't been shown to be wrong. I have been shown to have a different opinion than yours. That's all. I still have my opinion. In my eyes, I am right. Your eyes, I am wrong. There is no definitive correct answer. And yes, 10 years ago we probably still disagreed.