Paulco

Poor souls , they've had the good times , for the sake of the sport it cant carry on like this .

9 paid 11 tomorrow would do very nicely

Very true and i'm afraid you're probably right . Douglas is probably eligible on Saturday because of the extra 5% you get for a home guest

Tonight's situation with Harris shows up why this cant continue the way it is . Rye chasing a play off place while Peterborough riding for nothing but pride and Harris has to ride in the lesser meeting , that is where we find ourselves now and it cant go on .

Yes that was announced last Saturday , hope Mason does a job for us tomorrow , though he's no great record at Sheffield .

Then we can use a guest if that's the case I assume

As long as my riders don't miss a Glasgow meeting because of it , then they can go and earn money where ever they want .

You get that kind of response after incidents like that , I wouldn't make too much of an issue about it . Maybe Smolinski is after Pedersen's crown as pantomime villain . Few years back , during a televised Edinburgh v Workington clash , Tai Woffinden ( guesting for the Comets ) exclaimed during an after race interview that Edinburgh riders ride like girls - he had just been excluded after Matthew Wethers had fallen during Tai's attempt to overtake him . Seems daft to think a speedway rider might go down too easy like a footballer , but i'll bet it happens .

You cant , nor would you want to . We're in the same boat with Nike Lunna's season ending injury , and riders like Heeps and Lunna get more time on the sidelines because of the type of rider they are . But these are the type of riders that excite us as fans of the sport and while losing these riders hurts our title chances , we hope they never just settle for a second or a third place . Once again the loss of these riders has been made worse by ill thought out rules . I understand why the deadline was brought in , to stop teams like Poole strengthening up for the play offs , but some sort of safeguard for clubs losing riders through injury should have been built into the rule .

Exactly , I couldn't even tell you which foreign teams any of my riders turn out for , nor do I care .

His average is higher than Dan's , so at least Aaron can take one of Nike's rides , as well as Dan and two from Tom

As last year , guests could play a big part

A reformed lower division for British riders I would imagine

In 1995 when we had the last amalgamation , the 2nd tier clubs got screwed over . All the big stars were supposed to spread around , but the reality was Mark Loram to Exeter was the only notable one . However now there are very few big stars riding here regularly and it's basically the same riders performing in both top leagues , so an amalgamation now makes perfect sense and shouldn't harm any club wishing to be a part of it .

Oh dear . The lad is very injury prone , his style of riding I suppose as he's a never say die type . But if he's out again then that throws a big spanner in the works for us . We're already without Bewley for Saturday's return fixture , though Ryan Douglas is a decent performer round Ashfield as his stand in .

But generally crowds in our division are pretty poor . Places like Scunthorpe , Berwick and Workington are racing in front of only a few hundred souls at best , and that is unsustainable . And the cancer of riders being missing for whatever reason has crept into the second tier more and more . Lack of sustained weekly fixtures is harming the second tier far too much too , which also impacts on crowds . So to think that everything in the Championship garden is rosy couldn't be farther from the truth .

Not sad at all . I fear league speedway is disintegrating before our eyes . Doubling up has spiralled out of control , rider availability ( or lack of it ) has made rescheduling postponed fixtures virtually impossible . For league speedway to survive I feel a top league of 14 or 16 teams is really the only option , with a second tier of who doesn't want to be in the top league or can't afford to be . It's not a case of just catering for a top league , it's trying to make sure league speedway doesn't completely self destruct .

Can see both clashes ending in home wins this week , but the play off four has pretty much been decided for weeks . So these two meetings coming up aren't that important in the grand scheme of things . Sheffield will finish top and choose Edinburgh , and that will be comfortable for Sheffield whether Masters is back or not . Meanwhile Ipswich and Glasgow will slug it out for second and third and that ultimate play off semi is too close to call over two legs .

That included some of the away side a lot of the time

Aye the old 13 heat format was a bit jaded , hence the change to 15 , 16 , 18 , then back to 15 . 15 works perfectly well . As for gardening , the holding on to the bike while they stamp on all the spiders at the starting gate looks a bit silly , I believe next season they're not allowed to get off the bike at all once they get to the start .

Taking three laps to pass the lesser Lindgren in one heat , and looking a bad last in heat 13 before Garrity's bike exploded is a major concern .

Don't know what it is , but a wee bit of power sees some people reach for the jackboots .

It was pretty embarrassing , the riders hadn't a clue whether to stop or carry on racing . But apart from that it was an enjoyable enough meeting , not much in the way of passing , but good close racing in many of the heats . Think we all breathed a sigh of relief when we saw Nike get back up after his heat 14 crash . Nobody's fault though , don't know if that was a different bike Lindgren was on for that heat , but he looked a different rider than had been out previously , though when the bike went entering bend 1 poor Nike had no where to go but into the fence . Felt for Pickering , on trial from our feeder club and he was worth more than what he scored . Our Worrall was superb , as was Newcastle's . Lawson was his usual , brilliant in his four programmed rides before , not for the first time , messing up heat 15 . Summers though is becoming a worry , he looked slow last night . And the other farce was at half 6 when me and my mate were stood on the upper tier of the back straight . One of the over zealous park rangers came up and told us " you cant stand here " . Shocked we replied " excuse me , we stand here every week along with a hundred or so other people " . But no she was steadfast in her jumped up authority , in her book the whole upper tier was off limits . Anyway , thankfully , one of the directors was on his way to the pits and Mrs Jobsworth was told to get a grip and behave herself . So we were all allowed to take our usual places and enjoy the speedway . Honestly , speedway stewards are another curse on the sport .

Aye true , but the seats are cushioned

Yes they do i'm afraid , but for that you get to enjoy the Glasgow experience . The awesomeness of the Tigers and the plush 21st century stadium with it's impressive facilities .