moxey63

Hi, it was the wrong number, sorry I kept you... Can you hold on again, someone at the door now....

One of the things I can't quite follow, are riders racing for many different clubs. I can't keep up with that. Speedway must have been like this during the war years, when tracks operated using the riders that turned up on the day. As for flares... how wide were yours. I had a really bad period of always catching mine in my bicycle chain. That was it then, they were ruined. BWitcher No wonder your parents are threatening to kick you out. I feel speedway's rules are silly and you ant me to tell you which rules. I tell you, then you say I'm using the same reasons. Hold on a minute... someone's on the phone. Can you wait here till I get back?

BWitcher Your defence of speedway is commendable. You really are clinging on and I understand my anti-speedway rules stance is akin to me calling a member of your family names. Please let me explain, as regards the other sports you keep throwing into the discussion ring. I don't follow other sports (other than football). One of the reasons I stopped attending speedway was... well, the final straw I believe was the double-points thing. I am glad – even indebted to you, forever – that you have pointed that other sports also make regular rule changes. I will now also stay clear of the ones you mentioned. Thank you for the general information. I would stop watching football, let me add... when the time arrives that goals count as double when a team falls behind, an artificial way to make it a closer match than it is. Not that I see a serious sport – as football is - doing this. That’s why I feel I am not wasting my time by watching football. As people use the football similarity with speedway too frequently on here, I raise a scenario where - if football introduced Golden Joker Goal similar to speedway's, a player effortlessly put the ball into the back of his own onion bag, so that his team could use the Golden Joker Goal. Can’t see it happening. Imagine how the media would take a sport, say, if Manchester City goalkeeper purposely backheeled a goal or so into his own net, enabling his team play the GJG (that's Golden Joker Goal). Adding further insult, Hart tries to make it look unfortunate, takes off his boots in frustration/disgust and throws them onto the touchline as he ams it up. It wouldn't happen. That, my friend, is why speedway isn't taken seriously... why many of us don't feel it's honest anymore.

Enough is enough, already. Other sports probably give any proposed new rules etc trial periods. I don't know all the sports that have introduced new ones, and maybe they have made the sports better along the way, like moving at the tapes in speedway (although scoffed at at the time) has made starts better than when riders could move. But have any of the other changes made the sport better - meeting format changes, team strengths, six-lap nominated heats.... Speedway, and all its competitions that were short lived, rushes headlong into new rules without sampling them first, perhaps in start-of-season matches or spare dates. The match points system now just makes things complicated. The old aggregate bonus points did nothing whatsoever to alter the final league standings, therefore it wasn't needed for the two decades it stood.

Maybe it's this... SPEEDWAY ISN'T GONNA DIE... PLEASE TELL ME IT AINT SO.

Close your eyes for one brief moment and believe it isn't really happening. Or you could ask why the World's Leading Speedway Magazine is carrying stories and taking the liberty of asking questions about a thriving sport where there's standing room only?

One of life's downsides is... people who have the brightest ideas never get to run a speedway club. Just because you have financial weight to buy a club, should this make you a suitable person to make rules and regulations, especially when those decisions will one way or other affect your own club of which you have money invested? Is it time to plan ahead, interview independent people who have no particular affinity to the sport, no financial sway, and to set up a party to look at changing speedway to being a simple sport once again, with rules, race formats and costs sustaining a total revamp. I stopped supporting any particular club long ago; more of my interest was for speedway as a whole package (as most supporters is, I suspect). We may argue on here about the rights and wrongs of the Golden Double etc, but while some throw internet punches at people who a chasing the love and what’s best for the same thing, the speedway house is still in flames and nearing a complete shell. BBC sports pundit Colin Murray was criticised this week for choosing one particular female athlete’s backside when asked to choose his perfect sporting body, section by section. In a way, my opinion is speedway should learn from its own past, revert to what served the sport best. Try to cut costs – do riders need the increased burden of dirt deflectors? Monitor racing with them and without them, see if the shale issue is still (or was ever) a problem. I recall one of the reasons they were initially introduced was to stop dust and shale from drifting to nearby houses. Exeter was a venue cited, and we all know what happened there.

MikeBV, well put across. People on here say I am to concerned with speedway rules. It bothers too much bout iddly-piddly ones, fractions of a point for example. How many riders over time have been frozen out and forced into retirement because their average was slightly too high - Gordon Kennett and Paul Smith, to name two. Rules and regulations should be the backbone of any sport. Go back to a time when promoters didn't feel they had to prove their worth by making up ones that are doomed to fail.

BWitcher - soon to be last man standing - I didn't know anything about speedway when I started attending, I admit that it was only getting to know how to fill in a programme that retained my interest. I soon binned my trainset. Being a sucker for rules and never one to like change, I feel speedway has made too many needless alterations over time in an effort to spruce up a product, when in fact fans only want decent racing and understandable rules. Rules appear to change in speedway, get reverted back to what they were, get changed again. Race formats are forever being fiddled with - imagine football having 90 minutes a match one year, 65 minutes a match the year after, 140 minutes... Imagine if a football team could bring on a Gazza-type character - a Joker - to make the crowd more interested and keep scores close - he'd be able to pull opponents shorts down so they can't run, in order for him to gain advantage as he runs on goal. Sounds silly, and football wouldn't allow it. Speedway, on the other hand... And just look at the thousands that still stand on the terraces with you. Although you are not entirely alone on the terraces, surely you notice speedway crowds are dipping , just as badly as one side of my fringe when my dad used to cut my hair. Next time you cough at your speedway track, notice the echo. Without rules and regulations, why play any sport?

I don't care about other sports, I thought I revealed that in an earlier post. Speedway is still four riders over four laps, can't argue with that, but everything else around it changes ever so much. If you just like speedway for watching the four laps, I suggest buying one of those wind up trainset. BWithcer, looking at the title of this thread, it says RULES ARE A JOKE. Discuss.

Maybe I am not fully up-to-date with other sport, granted, but I wasn't a regular on the terraces at the other sports to notice such changes. One of the reasons I don't attend speedway any longer... is because I couldn't be bothered keeping up with its needless little rule changes, that only people with too much time on their hands could be bothered to digest. I could list all speedway's rules changes, the ones I can remember, but the markings on my keyboard would begin to wear.

If the rules don't change, how come you's anoraks have a full library of rule books in your studies?

BWitcher, I have just re-read your questions. You have taken several sports to highlight each ones major changes in the past 30 years or so. Can you run by me speedway's list of rule-changes in that time? I bet they've had that many in as many years.. Please don't try to prove a point by cherry-picking major rule changes in sports that probably change their rules once in a blue moon. It looks smart on the face of it, but you're dealing with moxey63 here.

Then why, if the sport didn't change, would you have to take someone who stopped going - even as recent as the 90s? They stopped for a reason. I went in the seventies and no longer attend, and I've told you one of my reasons is because of the rules forever changing. Or do I not count? Sorry, what question was that?

I knew the one introduced in the KO CUP for last season, the farcical match-race, I knew that was doomed to failure... but didn't expect it to blow the bloody competition away too. You have to question the men who think up these rule. Are they fit enough to run the sport... or even your club? Anyone who remains in favour of the rule changes... you'll soon be entered for the competion of Last Man Standing, the latest change by some bright spark promoter to introduce a bit of interest.

We are bound to disagree, but my belief is that speedway has too many rules and insists on changing rules more often than most sports. Of course the basics are still there - four laps, 3-2-1-0 scoring system, but just look at how many colums are needed for the league tables and the different points you get for smartest mechanics, best dressed coach etc. Whatever happend to 2 points for a win, 1 for a draw? The recent World Cup, didn't one of the managers try to make a tactical move... and wasn't there even a question against whether even the referee knew if he could. I forget what country it was, but there was a bit of confusion for a time. If you enjoy speedway at the current time, then I feel you enjoy its rules. But when you need directions from your sat-nav to find the closest supporter stood near to you, then I question why the penny hasn't quite dropped. It isn't all about rules why fans are drifting, but are they too complicated to keep any new fan that attends his first match?

Well, I was more confident watching the tennis and following it for two weeks, despite all its rule changes over 30 years, than I ever was in recent times watching speedway. The tennis must have knew I was watching, cos they used what basically were the same one I remembered when Bjorn Borg was at his prime. Now, could a speedway fan who hasn't watched for 30 years renew his interest with the rules that have been introduced since they stood on the terraces in 1983? Thought not.

Posters on here always compare speedway and football, which are worlds apart from each other. Speedway should be compared to.... It's A Knockout... which is the first thing that came to my mind... and then wrestling. Speedway has so many rules... and most of them can be bent to suit whatever team wishes to do so. Go on then, enlighten us. I must have had my head buried in the speedway rulebook to miss them. One example... I watched Wimbledon tennis the other week and still knew the rules, which I think they used 30 years ago. Don't recall thinking... gee, they brought in a new rule since the last set.

BWitcher - How many times has speedway fiddled with its rules, say, over the past 30 years? Now, and see where I'm coming from here, how many times have serious sport messed around with their rules - football, tennis, rugby, even snakes and ladders. A sport is only taken as serious as its rules, and when you can bend them that sport stands up like a cheap Christmas card on top of a warm television set.

With all due respect, SCB, I cannot be a***** with keeping up with the rules. You mention Poole didn't cheat last night but did last year by naming their side in the wrong order, it is things like this that puts people off, not knowing when averages count, how they count, who can line-up in what position, who can take the nominated race. People who are keyed up on the rules probably think the rules aren't that bad and, as proves in your case, can even tell you how many pages of the rule book the important rules take up! I don't want to be likened to The Comic Guy out of The Simpsons, not saying I'm putting you in this bracket, SCB, but (and I'd been a fan of 30 years at the time) somebody asked me at a match once "Can they introduce a Golden Double now?" and I didn't know the answer, I knew my fingertips were losing their grip on my hailing interest in speedway and its magic-slate rules.

I believe there is a conspiracy among so-called promoters who along the depths of time have taken the sport from what was reportedly the second-most popular summer sport in Britain into one that is obsolete within the next few decades. I have no proof, apart from what I’m seeing with my own eyes. By breaking down the patience of once-loyal supporters (like I once was) with baffling rules - Golden Doubles, Bubble-trouble-I’m-in-a-muddle, six lap finale, green helmets, match races in KO Cup, ditching the ko cup, allowing TV to invent rules (ones that Stuart Hall would have been happy back in his prime to laugh out loud at)… it’s an effort of “We know best… because it’s our money.” But they make the sport come over as ridiculous to people who previously wouldn’t have a bad word spoken against it. The constant tinkering of rules is either to sell rulebooks or an effort to make promoters appear more intelligent than patrons who gradually get put off by the forever influx of silly damn rules. Maybe it's a trick to make fans believe promoters know best, until their ship starts sinking and they dive off it, hopefully in time for another mad-thinking "I'll sort it out with my ideas" sort of guy to ride to the rescue. I do not doubt that promoters must be of above average intelligence. They are, aren’t they? I provide this reason after much contemplation. My way of thinking is that they have built up financial muscle to be able to purchase the clubs of the sport we follow(ed), so they must have something about them. But then, I question my own logic and am left to scratch my scalp… Because had they treated their businesses with the same pattern of logic they had treated what used to be a terrific sport, many of them would now be penny-less.

I feel more concern for Michael that his relationship has broke down than the fact he drowns his sorrows in a bit of pot. I have never touched the stuff myself but, aye, if it makes him come through a difficult patch, then so-be-it. And what has his age (as someone brought up) to do with anything? Michael Lee always creates interest, always has. A somewhat wasted talent but with many a tale to tell (I bet) that didn't make his book.

So long as it doesn't boil over and start aggro on the terraces - with the few remaining individuals that use them nowadays - this sort of behaviour (and I'm going to be slated now) is good for interest from what otherwise would have been just another fixture confined to the record books. It's out there now - that Cook and Barker aren't room mates. So, next time they meet it will create a bit of interest and perhaps... and I'm saying "perhaps" (before promoters start building new stands at their gafs) - it may help create a few more clicks on the old turnstile, a few more pennies in speedway coffers. I don't particularly like Barker, but he is always interesting to watch and only seems to know one way to use the throtle. If people don't like you, you are creating interest. Too many bleachy clean chaps in speedway these days, for my liking.

Tom Owen was thrown out of a meeting at Paisley in 1975 while with Newcastle, also after a first heat incident.

Think it was Dave Younghusband back in the early 90s who said youngsters would walk through the bar "Hollywooding" it in their riding gear etc if they could. Seems like people who can’t afford it, the youngsters, wanting the perfect cake before they can even cook, are spending a lot of the costs. The costs, at the end of the day, must either be met by people paying at the turnstiles or by some sponsor. Speedway, in this current climate, can't depend on either and must begin making the sport more manageable. Speedway “promoters” have the power. They complain about losing thousands every season, so why don’t they take action. It seems obvious they are handing over to the riders more money than they are taking in, and so up the admission price to pay the riders yet more money the following year. The result is that some punters refuse another pay hike and stay at home. We have seen people quit smoking after a recent budget rise in their price, not willing to pay anymore. And cigs are a drug; hard to pack in; speedway a luxury, when times are tough. I say at least a fiver could be shaved off the average admission, if promoters began taking steps right now.