moxey63

Speedway isn't typical of normal sports. The group matches serve the purpose of practice for majority of teams to fine tune their sides and drop off form riders and bring in stronger ones. Poole did this. It makes a mockery of a sport set up to build a bond between riders and fans when a side can look totally different within weeks of the new season. It is short term thinking. Do other sports see teams gradually kick out the weaker members so they can bring in stronger players before the big occasion of the Play off? The team ethnicity has vanished. That was what attracted fans to watch. Riders appear for so many teams now that it's hard to keep up. It's not about building sides for the future anymore. Six months of the league season is speedway's future. Then we all start again. As you keep harping on about 4th V 5th, what do you think is the impact on teams who have no chance of making the POs in 7th and 8th? Will there fans stop attending and they'll close because they are meaningless matches? Or will the follow my oap way of thinking and just enjoy the sport the way we used to, when it was more about hope than it was winning?

Seeing as you are really aware of the money side of things, why now in the years of Play-Off speedway is the sport in the most worrying state it's ever been? There is something keeping the fans away. One forum poster mentioned taking 50% off entrance money, which is not going to happen, but speedway must have suffered a similar reduction in crowd numbers the last 25 years, all in the time PO speedway has mostly been in force. We have had live speedway since 1999, POs since 2002, and yet look at the state of the sport. I am still uncertain that PO speedway is better for a speedway season. It keeps up interest, but at the same time it's sort of begging to the few fans that are still left that their collective attention spans won't be questioned. You keep having a dig at old fans. So, come on Mr Marketing Man, where are the Play-Offs winning the new fans? As the old fans become disillusioned and no longer attend and drift away with each month, there's enough space on the terraces for everyone. If you like the X-Factor type of gimmick shows, the Play-Offs are your bag. Just not for me. And, by the way, Rye House went bust only weeks ago.. and there's more to come.

Maybe we should have the season based on Knock-Out Cup matches. That way, everytime a club and more importantly its fans taste defeat, the season is over anyway.

Just a falseness about it. There shouldn't be 80-odd per cent of clubs still involved with weeks of the season to go. That's a school sports day ploy where even the losers get medals. In any sport there has to be a taste of failure. Otherwise, you can't enjoy winning.

The Play-Offs are like the Champions League group stages in football. They allow for so many mistakes. I remember Arsenal qualifying in a six match group after losing their first three matches. Every PO match is still important, but they then lack importance becausue of the number of matches you're allowed to lose to fiddle in new riders and still reach the top four. So they have watered down the importance of every match being important, as they were in the old league system. It allows half most of the teams in a seven club league to have a shout. It is fake, but in an era where you've got to be a winner, if it helps keeps speedway going, then that's important. But it won't win me back.

I am certainly not saying speedway racing was better in the seventies. At the time, it was certainly more interesting and grabbed the attention more than what's on offer today. Was it the bikes were harder to race, the tracks more grippy and rutty, therefore there was a sense of riders making mistakes and other capitalising on them. I certainly recall riders coming back after a heat and being unable to speak, it was that hard out there. Now, it seems so easy compared to back then. A few videos on Youtube don't tell the whole story. There were lots of characters and, unlike modern day, few hoping to make a name for themselves from with all the glam stuff a heatleader back in the day would have had to dance for. I used to go to watch Belle Vue v Halifax in the early eighties for one reason - Kenny Carter. The Dukes were dross all the time, but seeing your top men against him and what could happen was worth entrance money. You'd certainly not wish to miss it.

We will never know what impact the Play-Offs have had on the sport since 2002. How many new people have they attracted, how many lost because of frustration their team was robbed on the line. If it keeps the few that remain and clicks the turnstiles every week, then it'll have to do. But there seems total frustration by most, many seemingly have disappeared from even posting on a forum like this one. That is a worry.

I await the influx of new fans then. I can't keep living in the 1970s. Just glad I watched speedway when it really didn't need sideshows to keep fans attending. I suppose Stuart Hall and It's A KnockOut is more apt for current speedway though, if I can revert back to that wonderful decade once more.

So, a fan of a 4th or 5th place team that has no chance of winning the league may give up following the team? Perhaps so, in this age where riders will turn out for anyone else at the drop of a hat. But in my world of team ethic speedway, you'd go to every match because the seven riders and you would build up some kind of bond. I used to turn up match upon match to Belle Vue, and much of that time they were near the bottom. Perhaps that's what's gone wrong with sport now, as Poole fans recently showed, either you're first in the glory system or you're on the couch at home. Someone has to finsih last, or would you make even bottom sides enter the Play-Offs? You know, it'd keep the season alive for them. I also recall one occasion a Play-Off-chasing team arrived at Belle Vue and seemed to purposely lose by a heavy margin to enable them a better draw in the semis. The whole Play-Off table matches can encourage both match and rider points massaging over the course of the league campaign. Not good. Speedway could do without such question marks being thrown its way if it wants to win or retain any credibility.

But how do the Play-Offs seem fair to a team that's won the qualifying table by 20 points and loses out to a team that finished fourth but have strengthened in the last quarter of the season?

But are any of those sports using speedway's rules, where a team is built to a limit at the start a season, purposely weakens itself and allowed to capture better players to make it stronger, and then goes on to win the top prize when most fans realise it was just one big twist. Poole fans were up in arms a few months back, wanting Matt Ford to quit. Then, wham-bam thank you mam, Rye House closed, a quick rejiggle and... everything is bright and breezy again at Wimborne Road. It is one big farce. The Play-Off system is a sham- Woffinden returning for Wolves to help them defeat what had been the better team all year. But, eh, if you like it... try telling the returning fans Belle Vue's new stadium attracted back after umpteen years, yet who were quickly put off by Tai's late-season call for Wolves as he steered them to victory. The other sports you mention, I guess, aren't even similar to speedway, in which one or two team switches can drastically alter your outcome. Again, ask Poole fans

I don't like the Play-offs. Find where I said I don't like the GPs and get back to me. I don't recall that and may need to see the doctor, my memory's definitely going. The Play-Offs are a big kick at the end of the season, a "bumper" attendance. The whole qualifying league programme is a waste of people paying money to watch. is this partly why crowds are dropping? Yet again Poole have benefitted from being allowed to weaken in the purpose of signing better riders. They'll win the Play-Offs now. A normal system without Play-Offs makes every match count. In the Play-Off qualifiers, you can piddle about. Ridiculous in my opinion. Why bother turning out and paying to watch the majority of those.. just turn up for the Final. But if you like it... Try selling it to all the new fans banging down the door, because it isn't the 70s, you know. What other changes can you think of? I just put forward the ones I think will work, and I didn't mention the Golden Helmet or second halves.

Hardly any television? Are you still on analogue?

All I want back from the 70s is the team ethic and riders cutting back on the number of clubs they race for.

Most sports would be in trouble without television and sponsorship. But speedway has to be given credit, surely, that it's battled on through more bad times than good. I haven't done a break-down, but I suspect more tracks have been lost to redevelopment than going bust. A lot of speedway's expense and outgoings is the engines, tuners and things they wear for safety. Sponsorship was afforded all over the place in the seventies and eighties for speedway. But modern day, either they didn't try enough at the time, but it sort of summed things up really, when the sport couldn't gain a backer for the live meetings SKY used to afford it every week.

BT is reportedly getting good viewing figures. How many at home have long given up on watching from the actual venue? Is this the cost of live matches?

I took on the sport and all its blemishes in 1975. Guests were part of what I accepted. To an outsider that would have been a silly part of the sport. To me it didn't matter, as I loved the sport. Even in the initial years when SKY first got involved and Belle Vue trudged down to Eastbourne with only one of their regular riders, in the early 2000s, I still accepted it as part of speedway's quirky side. But then things just went off the scale in the years that followed. I think this is when riders began to hold more power than the clubs they were riding for. Doubling up and doubling down came in. Then there was the ridiculous Golden Double, which further questioned my love. To be honest, I started to lose track of who belonged to what team. Riders who began riding for my team, to me, appeared like they were just in it for themselves, they were there because they had the best deal, the best of all worlds, the diary that suited them and allowed them to maximise their earning potential on most nights of the week. Then we have the thing last night, if I'm correct, where Belle Vue couldn't use Craig Cook, who started the season with them and then went out to Glasgow after a few weeks because Tigers had the first choice after Aces' match at Swindon was a rearranged one. But Cook began the year at Belle Vue and therefore, to me, they should have the first call - always. Does that not matter? It has just become too complicated to even bother with rules anymore. Without rules you can keep up with, you're really just watching four men on motorbikes. Yes, I am a long-in-the-tooth fan. I don't think all that happened in the past was the best. But to me right now, British speedway is very much like the Christmas Tree lights you pull out in the first week of December - all mangled up.

In the same week?

But, on the other hand, withdraw all the television and sponsorship deals, and how much trouble would it be in? The answer would be where speedway currently is, I guess.

If Swindon and speedway is that bad, and yet you pump up Cricket... why did you choose the re-arranged Swindon match tonight over the Cricket? I agree with what you say about speedway, by he way.

What are the ticket prices at 20/20?

Yes. All about opinions. You're up on your high horse simply because you like cricket. Is that right? I said cricket is a snore fest. Somebody else mentioned the crowd at 20/20 was pissed up at the business end. Cricket is a snore fest, so they invented 20/20. Is that right? I am not ridiculing other sports to make speedway seem better. Speedway is exciting, but most things surrounding it are the embarrassment. We don't need gimmicks to liven it up... or to down several or so pints of the bar's finest. Speedway doesn't need to revert to X-Factor type of crowd pullers. It is just my opinion. Chill out. Almost weekend.

I believe two current day riders had a bust-up after one of them nabbed the last seat to Poland. Does that count? Can't think of any on-track rivalries, they ride with each other and against each other really often and seem like good mates.

Cricket is a snore fest. Most of the fans are sozzled who watch it. Would 20/20 cricket be such a success if they weren't? Why do they have to get sozzled? Same applies to darts? I have never had to get smashed to enjoy speedway. I got frustrated because of the way it was being treated. The sport is still exciting, no gimmicks needed or free ale. Just needs a big shake up.

Simple things, like the gaps between heats, will make the speedway experience better. If it's a rule in the rulebook, four minutes between heats, why is it being ignored? Little things like that will help. It isn't just one problem, it's loads of small ones. Unbeknown to us, they wear many fans out.