Paulco

Things have been disintegrating for a while now , but this has been the most self destructing season yet .

Return fixture after last night's now normal late meeting collapse on the road for Glasgow . There's no doubt the wheels have come off the Glasgow wagon a bit recently , but the home form ( such as there's been ) remains fairly solid and if we can get through the rest of the campaign without slipping up here then our play off place shouldn't be seriously threatened . No Dan tomorrow , he's away somewhere or other on a FIM thingy , but Ryan Douglas is a perfectly adequate guest . No Nike either as Tuesday's crash in Sweden has ended his season prematurely . For our visitors , they were pretty ordinary in the earlier clash up here , but they've peaked at the right time and are on a long unbeaten run . No Rocky Bates , he's away on the same FIM thingy as Dan , but they have Lewis Kerr in his place . No Todd Kurtz either , so r/r for him , but that's no bad thing for Sheffield as Kurtz is minging round Ashfield . So once again the onus falls on our heat leader trio to guide us home , and with Grajczonek , Howarth and Bjerre in opposition , they have to be on top form . I think we'll bring Sheffield's unbeaten run to an end , but they're more than capable of grabbing a point .

Never mind , at least the likes of Jenga and the mob who are constantly bleating about the money side of things will be quite happy we're rubbish again

All that you say might well be true , but the Aussies seem hell bent on antagonising all and sundry recently . We had the nonsense at Kings Lynn with Holder and Batchelor , Holder junior only riding for Peterborough when it doesn't clash with Poland , Schlein having a strop about the money paid at the fours , and stropping yet again last night at Peterborough . They may feel that they are in the right , but it's a kick in the teeth for the country that allowed them the opportunity to become stars .

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 .