Grachan

That's weird that he has guidance from Norris. When he was interviewed I thought he reminded me a bit of him from the way he spoke.

Just got back from an alternate universe, where the Oxford Rebels held a 14 point lead going into the meeting after good use of Luke Killeen in the first leg. Oxford got off to a good start, having a 2 point lead following Foord's exclusion for "foul, dirty, absolutely outrageously disgustingly horrible riding" in heat 2. The Rebels kept the pressure on, and remained level on the night following Nicholl's perfect tapes-to-flag victory in heat 6. The Pirates started to edge away in the second half of the meeting, and were just 4 behind on aggregate going into the final heat. Sam Masters looked to be having bike problems, but a ray of light came down from Heaven and his bike seemed to be fixed miraculously by an act of God. Masters then clinched the required second place to give the Rebels a 2 point victory and win the League title. Congratulations to Oxford Rebels on their best campaign since finishing bottom of the league in 1974. Poole Pirates ha ha ha! Glug! Glug! Glug! Much better meeting than the Swindon v Coventry Eurosport bore-fest in the Elite League play-offs.

Looks like it's down to whether or not Oxford's top 2 can beat Brennan.

Interesting bit of commentary there. Vinnie Ford might have to borrow someone else's bike for his remaining rides. If you were a rider, would you lend him a bike?

He's certainly a bit of a menace, but the way he is makes me think that in a couple of years time he'll be brilliant.

Oxford are in danger here already. Poole are really fired up - perhaps too much so!

1st - Sky were the best by a long way. 2nd - BT Sport were also very good. 3rd - BSN do an admirable job, and are improving all the time but do make error i commentary and editing. 4th - Eurosport - I look at the coverage, and I think to myself... "Eurosport".

Oxford gifted that one to Poole. Very odd that they didn't use Killeen. Could cost them the league.

Suzi Perry was great, but probably under-appreciated at the time as she was still cutting her teeth in the business when she did speedway. When Speedway was on Sky, she'd be interviewing riders walking back to the pits after they'd been brought off. I remember Jimmy Nilsen saying he would get revenge on Joe Screen while stomping back to the pits. It's great telly. Now, if there's a crash, they cut to a bunch of over-60s eating their sausage and chips because they don't want to upset anyone. Also, instead of cutting to some interesting conversation between races, we get long shots of stadiums with a tractor going round or race-re-runs with repeats of the races to the same old music every time. Every time that comes on, my 6 year old complains that it's "that again" and that it's "boring". Kelvin does his best, but it is a lot to expect an ex-rider to carry the whole programme - and his self-confessed maths problem is a major flaw as it's pretty key in the context of a meeting that if you are 10 points down then two 5-1s aren't going to get you a draw. I must admit, I do find speedway on Eurosport a hard watch at times and don't always get to the end of a meeting. But it's Eurosport. It's always been poor for as long as I can remember. There is a lot of space between races at a speedway meeting. The key is how to fill those spaces.

Jack saying there exactly what I thought the first time I read about this. How can you throw a team sheet through a wire fence? Must have been one hell of a throw.

Because it's based on position in the meeting. I actually like the current scoring system. I wasn't sure at first, but now I think it's better than before. Sorry.

It does change it. At the moment, the winner of the final is the top scorer in the GP. That's how it should be. Winning the GP should also be about how many World Championship points you get. Even under the old system, it was, although the top scorer wasn't necessarily the GP winner - so this makes more sense. Having no points for winning the final makes no sense at all.

That's a terrible idea. It reduces winning the GP to the status of winning the second half. I actually think the current scoring is fine. It's only hard to work out because poor old Kelvin isn't very good at maths so just confuses everyone - including himself. The winner of the GP should be the top scorer. Anyway, well done Robert Lambert, and congratulations to Bartosz Zmarzlik on yet another "asterix" World Championship. I'm still not convinced he is as great as other winners with a similar amount of wins though. Imagine someone like Leigh Adams riding in a field this strength instead of Bartosz. We'd probably be talking about Leigh Adams as one of the greatest riders of all time instead of "best rider never to be World Champion". How many World Championships would Jason Crump have won if Tony Rickardsson and Nicki Pedersen had been banned? Does he suddenly become the greatest of all time by default. You can only beat what is in front of you though, and Zmarzlik is doing that every year with a GP to spare.

Wow. I was prepared to give the ref the benefit of the doubt, but not any more.

Ipswich are going to throw this away with all these falls. Leicester have been poor.

I've been to a couple of Autorace meetings in Japan. As you say, it's mainly a betting thing and very different to speedway other than the oval track and no brakes. Good entertainment though. The problem I can see with speedway in the Philippines is that the riders probably wouldn't want to wear helmets and would have their granny on the back and a baby sat on the petrol tank!

Decent GP, and great to see a British 1-2. Th crowd looked a similar level to the last couple of years, so this looks like the new normal now. It can't help having tracks closing down all the time. A lot of fans from the likes of Swindon, Wolves, Peterborough and so on are probably lost over time. Swindon, for example, used to put on a coach. Cardiff is still the best place to hold it though. I think most people can see that. It's only the Belle Vue Freedom Fighters that seem to be resisting this. Belle Vue is obviously a better track, but it's outdoors and the crowd for the SON doesn't exactly encourage change. I don't know if crowds can ever get back up to the previous levels. I saw a comment on the Digital Spy forum recently in a discussion on speedway, where someone said they used to enjoy watching it but have lost touch with what is going on now since it stopped being on Sky. I think that was a bit of a shark jump for the sport when that was lost. I'm sure Dan Bewley could be a World Champion if he can retain a level of consistency. He certainly has the skills!

People had better get cracking then. There are still front row tickets available on the third bend!.

Was it 70 quid a ticket? Really? Taking that into account I'd say the crowd was pretty good.

Definitely going to miss having a strong reserve by the looks of it. Missing Tai Woffinden without a doubt. Is it worth giving Brennan a go or will Dan pick up a bit?

I agree. It's like an obsession. As soon as someone has a bad meeting people are online banging on about possible replacements. It drives me crazy sometimes.

A bit of a let down as a meeting. I arrived at the car park. The moment I got out of the car it was like opening the oven door to check on my roast potatoes, so I was sure then that it was going to be dry and dusty, and so it proved. From the opening heat, a lot of the riders looked more interested in preserving their own lives rather than racing for points - and who could blame them. The first time they came round bend 4 it looked like they were all going to hit the fence coming out of the bend. From then on a lot of riders clearly showed little effort once at the back. This carried on for many processional races, until about 3 or 4 to go where there was actually a few semi-decent races. It's a shame. I was looking forward to seeing Workington, and had told my son to watch out for Tate Zischke. "He's a star of the future," I said. "Watch him go" I said. "That means he'll be rubbish," he said. Oh, how he gloated at my rubbish speedway predictions.

Got my ticket for tomorrow - much as I resent having to buy it a day in advance. It's Championship speedway, not Taylor Swift, for God's sake! Weather forecast is dry and sunny, which is a bit of a concern as that normally means a rain-off at O*ford! C'mon the Batch!!! Go Celina Go!! Girl Power!! Good grief, that's far too much speedway enthusiasm for one day.

Didn't Sophia Floersch, the top female racer, opt out of, and speak out against, the female series saying it undermined the effort women currently make to compete against men? I'm sure I remember reading that a while back.

Personally I don't think I'm doing them a disservice. To me, I'm actually doing the opposite. They compete equal to men, so can be judged in that way. It's not the same as, say, tennis or swimming, where the physical dofferences between male and female mean they have to compete separately. If I did a disservice to the other riders by assuming they weren't at her level then, in my defence, I did say 'presumably' as I don't know much about them. Having said that, Celina was unbeaten all meeting and that is what I, for one, expected. And if you think I'm somehow having a go at her, I should point out that she's probably my favourite rider at the moment and one of the few likely to get me to part with money and actually go to a meeting