moxey63

Yes, Swindon went into Division Two in 1993, two years after refusing to do it. Arena had a decent side in the second division and were quite entertaining in the top flight when they came up. I have one of Andy Galvin's race jackets from one of those early years from the 90s.

I think speedway would be more interesting if it ditched the play-offs and introduced a promotion/relegation system, a proper one. It has been tried, I know, in the early 90s, but Swindon had a mardy and complained because they didn't want to be relegated, with murmurs about closing down if they did. I have fond memories of that 1991 season, Eastbourne coming to Belle Vue late-on, fighting relegation. Andy Grahame rocketed to an 18-point maximum for the Dons, his career enjoying a resurgence. I'd say that match held more interest than what the playoffs do now. It was after a season's toil in the league, not a top-four knockout competition in which a lot depends on how one team goes at the other's track. Oxford were also down there, and their visit to Kirky Lane held a lot of interest, too. There was a belief that promotion and relegation was going to work. But then Swindon threw a tantrum and things began to break down. Poole's Mervyn Stewkesbury had spent ages on the plan. But none of the clubs who ended up in the relegation spot or the second division promotion place league winners) expected to finish there, I suppose, and didn't think they'd have to be changing leagues any time soon. Yes, it was about costs, but the standard of riders was so much higher than it is now. Looking at the Speedway Star, you can't tell much difference now between the strength of the two leagues. Having promotion/relegation would add interest with the need of having extra matches outside the round-robin of the league table to keep interest alive and promoters trying to take punters' cash as far as you can to the wire by having what are basically just six extra matches that have no connection with what's gone before.

Wasn't my point. It was chrismorton's, the thread starter.

We have a ridiculous 6 team league thats seen the top 4 decided by July with essentially nothing to ride for until the play offs.

Is it really worth carrying on with this play-off malarkey when the whole point of them is to create a bumper payout for clubs at the end? 1,000 more is nice, but how many of those fans don't attend the seven months leading up to them, in which six teams full of somebody else's rider chase four places? Not appealing.

Speedway's failure has been that it has had people running it that call themselves promoters but openly admit to losing thousands of pounds a meeting to keep it going. If these men running it are prepared to run a business this way, what hope have we of survival? Again they'll be little panic in the winter. No doubt we'll have the Play-Offs, a decent crowd, and go into the winter with promoters using short-term memory (of the past two weeks) to say it's been a good season.

Been saying for a long time, that it's like a football PE lesson. So much short-termism.

Too many guests? Surely, one rider from another side is too many. But when it guests to three or four... That's why speedway now is ruined, as too many riders are now trumped up guests and have more than one side. The doubling up/down rule is surely just a wheeze to operate guests for a lack of advanced planning. Watching speedway with guests is like those Top of the Pops albums in the 70s, sold as the proper thing but in which the songs weren't even covered by the proper artists.

Promoters are sticklers for having a maximum points limit. Imagine if they introduced a rule for the maximum spent on equipment. All that money going out of the sport.

Good point about market research. But that's asking the 40,000 who will attend and who think not much is wrong with the sport. What about those who don't? They have just been allowed to drift away. Many probably still come on internet forums and the like, even still buy the weekly Speedway Star. Where's the market research on the missing fans? They haven't completely dumped the sport. Many probably just suffered one rain-off too many, a silly rule introduction that was kicked out the following year, or, like me, don't see it as a serious sport.

I watched at Belle Vue, but also attended Ellesmere Port on a Friday back in the day. I liked speedway, not for the stars, but for the team aspect.

So why has Cardiff never sold out?

Most people attending Cardiff are possibly making their first speedway visit this year, possibly many because they're disillusioned at the state of club speedway, and because it's a one-off occasion. If club racing served the sport as it once did, and teams contained riders that fans felt were part of them, I believe Cardiff wouldn't be half full.

But, back then, you had to order your tickets for Wembley months in advance, before many of the finalists had been decided. I doubt there were 80,000 there because it was "amazing." Many booked their tickets believing their rider would make it and beat the rush before tickets sold out. I think the 1978 British Final was staged a fortnight before the World Final, due to the weather, proving how late the line-up was confirmed.

You are right in what you say. The biggest attended meetings were often individual events. But, as you also say, it was only because the riders in these meetings were some from your team that you usually went. You had favourites from your team, and their being in meetings often made you travel for miles to support them. For example, as a kid, I recall booking tickets for the 1978 world final but then was left feeling empty because Collins and Morton were ko'd at the last round, the British Final. I still went and enjoyed it, but most of the people there at Wembley were only in attendance because their club men had qualified.

It was great, thanks. Used to enjoy the occasional trip to Buxton. Reminds me that you don't have to have a flash stadium to provide a few hours of entertainment. The way you could get right close up to the riders near the fence reminded me of the old Hyde Road days.

That' is the point. How many aren't interested anymore simply because the team aspect has gone. Most of us don't follow speedway because it's motorbikes; we follow it because it's a team sport. Your local track may still be there, but the lure to get you from your house to wanna go and support the local "team" isn't, because, deep inside, you don't feel it's actually a team.

Much of what you've mentioned is how I feel. I don't think speedway tried hard enough to keep the fans it already had, and I mean going back decades. I know it didn't try hard enough to win disillusioned fans back. The make-do attitude, live-for-today mentality, and pick-any-rider rules have brought the sport to its current state.

I hadn't been to a speedway meeting for about five years. About a decade back Dean Felton organised an air-fence meeting at Buxton containing ex-riders and those merely riding in it for the love of the sport. I thought "I'll have a bit of that" and went along to it. It was really enjoyable. I knew the riders did it because, like me, they love the sport and not to see what THEY could cream off it. I don't get that feeling from today's crop of riders. It was last event I attended.

Look on the bright side. It means it's half full.

Really? The man was down in the dumps just a few months ago because Edinburgh was on the verge of folding. He pleaded for single donations of £50,000 to raise a million quid to buy the current land his track's on or face joining the dozens we've had go defunct in recent years. There hasn't been a time I can remember Edinburgh not having a fighting fund.

Along with the all-important question, "will you be changing anything on the bike?" Brilliant times. Those were the days. I miss SKY. Why did it have to end.

You don't need gimmicks. Speedway can be the best spectacle in the world. It's the stuff around it that spoils much of it. Take Monday's TV match. What people don't need is lengthy build-ups, as usually happens with live fixtures. It starts with 30 minutes wasted while riders and pundits talk twaddle and throw away stuff that adds nothing to the occasion. It delays the meeting, drags it out, and then, when something happens like the other night with the fence, the match doesn't run to its conclusion. Then fans feel even more cheated. People at home can skip the boring part and have the match watched in 20 minutes or so. Those trackside have paid to watch and things should be sped along for them. In between races entertainment is just a recipe for prolonging a night people have merely turned up to watch speedway.

True. I am not interested in any other form of motorsport. Speedway is different. I liked it because it was primarily a team sport and you had your favourite team men to cheer on in individual events. Without the loyalty of having those team men, cheering any individual in solo racing is a turn-off.

But Andy Grahame was on loan to Milton Keynes from Birmingham that year (think it was '79). He was always destined to go into the top flight for the Brummies, as happened the following year. There was a bridge back then for riders to cross over, the second division to the top league. In fact, Grahame was BLRC qualifier because top rider Billy Sanders moved from Birmingham to Ipswich in September, after Steve Bastable arrived at Birmingham due to a fallout with Cradley. Nowadays, as Dean Felton says, it is a swingers club. It is like the wild west. It has lost its direction - is it a team sport or a sport merely keeping a set of individuals in work? Individual meetings became unpopular decades ago, but now we're having a bunch of individuals thrown together to pretend we have a team sport.