moxey63

I'd have police chasing the riders in helicopters screened live on TV. Imagine it for fans watching at home. And the losing team manager can use one of those "stinger" implements to throw across the track and puncture opponents' tyres. And, what about this one... the top rider from the leading team actually transferring to the losing team mid-match to keep scores close and fans interested. If the match ends as a draw, how about a tug-of-war between rival fans for an extra tug-off bonus point?

Kill me... now.

I have always disliked the Play-Offs. For starters, they bullied the once prestigious Knock-Out Cup from its slot as speedway's showpiece aggregate competition. As the KOC Final always had October billing, another aggregate competition (the POs) carrying more clout and at the same time of the season, naturally dwarfed it. The POs all but killed the KOC. Secondly, and it's only a personal slant, they sort of made most of the league fixtures for the first two to three months sort of practice sessions, as Poole have proved this season, to fine-tune your side with the sole aim of making the top four, and then being as strong as possible once there. It is all about timing. A third thing I think Play-offs have taken away is the surety that all clubs actually have meaningful fixture plans in the last month of the season. As I see it, since the POs were introduced, the season is like a cinema after the main show has ended and all the pieces of popcorn and candy wrappers lie on the floor. They are the speedway fixtures of October. That is what the final month of the season seems like to me. Just seems a bit unbalanced to have Play-Offs and then a whole month of unimportant fixtures to try to temp fans from their warm homes on the chilly nights. I always forget other fixtures are taking place in October. And, as has been mentioned on here, speedway must be one of the only sports where the league title is decided by Play-Offs, even possibly by sides who didn't even finish first or second.

Why must we always bring in other sports to strengthen a point? Play-offs in speedway may result in the highest gates, but who can get excited in the majority of the season if teams just tootle and fiddle about to get into a ridiculous top four spot out of a seven team league? More teams will make the play-offs than don't this season and make the pretend excitement seem a little played out. It isn't really cut-throat stuff when there's such a target to aim at. Fans will be hard to win back after 15 years of having to put up with the farcical double bubble rule. It won't happen in the first season after it was kicked into the bin of bad ideas from speedway's past. Much of the damage of the last decade and half this gimmick caused is going to be hard to reverse.

I think we're going a bit far here by wanting other forms of entertainment. It's speedway ffs and there should be no reason to attract people for any other reason than watching a properly run sport. Speedway is thrilling, but the thrill goes for the newcomers the longer they have to stand around waiting for the next race. waste of time trying to introduce newcomers if you're going to instantly lose them. No gimmicks like double points, no teams being near the bottom after a few months and then signing a few better riders and coming good just at the right end of the season (I didn't even mention Poole). It's like Popeye eating some spinach and growing big muscles. The qualifying matches for the Play-Offs allows this. As long as the team gets there, even if they just scrape it with a much better side than began the season, then they are quids in. Belle Vue lost some fans that they managed to win back a few years ago when Wolves brought in Woffinden to eventually come good in the PO Final after BV had made all the running. Ridiculous. Get the rules right, make it simple, fewer gaps between heats and fewer restarts because of a rider getting a quicker start. There is nothing worse on a cold night than gaps between heats. Nothing worse on a cold night than gaps and having to watch someone trying to entertain you with another form of a show while there's a speedway match going on. Again, the latest BT Sport matches have overrun. Why? 120 minutes to do 15 heats and we still run out of time. It's wrong to make the public think they're getting value for money the longer they're out of the house, but most of the time is spent wishing they'd hurry up with the next race.

Not another promise of exciting new plans for next season. Remember, the same Jon Cook that introduced Man O' Man heats to the KO Cup.. Perhaps next season they plan on having a real life Play-Off system, as the weakest tracks fold week by week in the summer and then the last two standing are crowned Champions, but only after we await the other results being expunged. Exciting plans don't fill me with joy.

Committing millions to build a brand new speedway stadium right now is madness. It would be like ploughing your savings into opening a new video rental shop. Personally, I still can't fathom how Belle Vue pulled it off.

Exactly.

Not a proper sport, when a club can say "we will close" if they are disciplined. When promoters wield more power than the SCB, how's this happened? Clubs with long-standing traditions have disappeared just by the powering up of a bulldozer and yet these over-grown businessmen want to withdraw because they can't have one over everyone else. The last thing needed is for petulant promoters to start bellyaching when they don't agree with something and threatening to withdraw. Crying wolf is not good. In the end, fans just won't give a damn. You support a team with loyalty and want it to be there as far as you can see, otherwise why bother. Perhaps fans' passions will get directed elsewhere if they're forever hearing their promoters say the speedway team may have to close... again. I know about that, I think it got me in the end at Belle Vue. Perhaps that's one of the reasons I'm more engrossed in the history side now - because I know that has happened. No one can take it away. The future is uncertain.

I know where you're coming from. But, personally, I'd have egg and chips every day... so long as the place was run properly and open when it said on the door and didn't keep you waiting hours before the dish was finally served.

What have they done in the last 20 years to cut costs? And did any of these cost-cutting measures actually cut costs at the gate to stop the rot of fans who felt speedway wasn't value-for-money anymore? Cutting costs but putting up admission is a wrong blend.

It is great to have controversy, fisticuffs and storming the referee's box, but even that would wear off, especially if staged managed. Plus, the only time riders get heated nowadays is if they're running late for the flight to Poland.

You mentioned novelty wearing off. That was what came out on top when the late Bob Radford was asked back in the early 70s to carry out a public survey of 500 people in the Halifax area. He was asked by promoters at the time Reg Fearman and Eric Boothroyd to carry it out as he worked in market research. People just said the novelty wore off. Many that were asked on the street also followed other sports. I suppose when you compare speedway with the other sports you're following, is that why the novelty wears? No idea how to avert this.

I think it was the other night in that True Grit documentary, Nigel Pearson stating a rider could be racing one night for the same team and in opposition the next. Had I been a casual observer, I'd have ditched any thought of getting serious about such a silly sport. To blame riders having to earn a living for such an oddity is bowing too much to the riders who must be wanting the sport to fund them all year through.

Speedway needs to cut its costs. Full stop. When Tai Woffinden says he'd have to take something like a 90% pay cut to race in England compared to Poland, you'd be daft to prick up your ears and wonder where British speedway has gone wrong. Personally, I recall being amazed when hearing Bruce Penhall had a host of bikes when he came over in 1978. I know the top boys over here probably likewise. But rewind just six or so years to 1971, when leading rider Malcolm Simmons admitted his upturn in form was down to finally having the first ever all-new machine in his care of approximately eight years or so. He was 25. Now, let's return to 2018, all the glam that has to go with the sport. I bet a young up-and-comer would be seen dead in someone else's old hand me downs. Poland and Sweden won't always offer that pot of gold, but in the meantime, we should make honey from these so-called stars not wishing to ride here and create something in which, you know what, we won't really miss them. Money talks, and I feel British speedway doesn't need that kind of rider right now. the mistake of was actually letting them use Britain as a cross-over point to other jaunts in the first place.

I am exactly like you, Steve. Just can't get used to mobile phones or tablet for the internet, rather stay on my desktop system.

Same with the Play-Off Final... do they charge extra for those matches. Surely if they had fans in mind, they'd set up some kind of loyalty system in which actually attending all the dross served up in the actual league programme to get to the POs. Surely attending every home match of the 18 or so league fixture warrants some form of loyalty payback, not pumping admission up for the semis and final. As for promoters and their famous "If you don't like it" retort. I have just been looking at some watches online. Some of the feedback was quite straight to the point and not very nice really. But they received a nice reply thanking them for their feedback and that they take it into consideration. Not "If you don't like the watch, don't buy from us again." There comes a point in most fans' experiences where they feel the sport or the club has taken the pee just one time too much. It's a build up of various things. This may get people's backs up, but I really wish speedway would fail to the point that all this talk of having to do something to save it actually comes to something. Talk is fine at the winter congress, the promise of a radical new approach. And then we have memories of Swindon v Leicester from last Monday....

I was only thinking the other day about the Speedway Hotline, the premium-rate telephone service that used to keep you up to date with speedway news about 20 years ago. I only called it the once - to find out a result from somewhere - and couldn't believe the waffle you had to go through as your bill was ticking up just to find out what you actually wanted to know. I think most tracks had one, in addition to the national one provided by the BSPA. They don't half like ripping off fans. Thank god for the internet, eh.

Oh no... a speedway fan and model railways.

They're not the hands strangling British speedway to death, are they?

The sport cannot pay the type of wages riders demand. Having read the Chris Harris piece in last week's Star, saying he has never had a job outside speedway, that tells me he must have been paid quite a pretty penny to survive the winter months. Speedway's close season is longer than football's, remember, which we like to compare it with. Not saying the wages are even similar, but speedway must have paid well to make seven months work to keep you for 12.

You tell them. They've laughed at me enough..

Make British speedway for those committed to British speedway. They'll be enough meetings for those that are if they go for one league. Then tracks could hold individual meetings and entice some of the guys who don't really want to commit to Britain alone. League speedway needs to come first, or speedway will eventually drift towards digit figure teams.

If it's about cost cutting, reverting to 13 heats will be doing that. Nominated heats must mean quite a strain on the wage bill. And how about programmes. Why are they so much to buy? I know people say they are part of the club's income, but how many stay-away fans input the factor of programme costs into the night out. Some people don't enjoy speedway without keeping score, for example. Surely the craze to make the average club programme the one thing that's professional about speedway needs drawing back on. IWe aren't football... and even in that clubs have started to hint programmes may be a thing of the past. A basic scoresheet is all that's needed.

Yes, naturally 13 heats would have to be cheaper, as would the complete exclusion of the riders that would rather commit to other competitions like the GPs and foreign leagues. As for your belief that the past is a different country - bump starts, women riders and circus night out... wasn't that back in the 30s.?