uk_martin

Or go wearing your British team colours. I was at ZG yesterday wearing my Brummies shirt. The novelty value opened a few conversations with some nice friendly people and made for a very happy time.

Who gets the British Cardiff wildcard is down to one thing and one thing only...who gets most bums on seats. Forget romantic notions about who is on form, and who deserves it. And forget any fanciful ideas about it ever being linked in to the British final again. BSI are a business and they will care only about who will draw the crowd in and generate the most cash for them. As for the rest of the SGP series, my guess is that there won't be any more "token Brits" just for the sake of it. Any British rider who wants to get into the SGP series will have to be there on merit, either in Tai's case by being in the top 8, or in any other case by making it through the qualifiers. Relationships between BSI and BSPA are such that British Speedway is owed NO favours any more.

Don't think that this is quite the right web forum to be discussing that sort of thing... Any more suggestions like that and you'll have GCHQ monitoring your internet traffic!

They shouldn't be. Images are usually linked to third party sites. For that reason, the speed of the BSF server isn't affected. You might be reduced to the speed of the slowest server when viewing a page that includes these images, but only on pages that include these images. i.e. it will take as long as it does to download the images off the third party server. The rest of BSF will be unaffected. IF BSF is running slowly it will be down to other factors, or maybe it will be down to your connection with your ISP.

Communism beats Capitalism 6-3 Probably Eurosport's way of saying, "If Great Britain wants to be isolationist, let it be isolated!!

8 riders qualify as of right, the rest of the line-up for 2014 will be down to the qualifiers and to BSI. I would hardly think that those who tread the podiums will be in much danger of not getting wild cards if nothing else. Added to which, KK is quite capable of making up 1 point per meeting on the old men of the sport. Wouldn't be surprised to see Gollob and Hancock retire at the end of this campaign anyway, so that's two of the top 8 that won't be back and whose places will need to be filled. I would be majorly surprised if KK wasn't in the SGP's in 2014

Not far off the mark there. As I understand it, the BSPA didn't want to field a GB team as it would cost them money to effectively fund a rival promotions agency's event. The BSPA still view British Speedway and especially the Elite League as the most important speedway tournament in the world. Now that there is more money, and more television and more top riders in Poland and Sweden, there is an ever increasing amount of sulking going on. As has been seen, no British rider has been entered into the European Championships, and no quarter given to teams who field foreigners who have been entered into the "Euro's" by their parent federations. The BSPA are withdrawing into their shells, and the other speedway promotions companies are distancing themselves from the BSPA. Witness BSI's decision to nominate their own wild card, and contract Chris Harris as far back as last November, to the Cardiff GP. If truth be known, none of the British riders who did their damnest were ever in with a sniff of Cardiff. It was such a massive game of smoke and mirrors to give the impression that the British Championships mattered that I'm surprised that it hasn't stirred up more controversy than it did. The money is in Poland, the television coverage is in Poland, so if the Poles (One Sport etc) decide to run their own show, who can stop them? BSI are completely independent of the BSPA and the Cardiff SGP didn't even get much of a mention or any promotion by the BSPA (their web site, or any other means), so much of a sulk was had about it. British Speedway and the British Championships is now isolated in World speedway terms. It won't be long before the top British riders will have decisions to make about whether they want to continue as bigish fish in a shrinking pool, or if they want to up-sticks and move their lot onto the continent, like others have in the past.

What is this event all about? It's calling itself the Speedway World Championship FFS and it looks to have FIM backing. I may have thought that it was an SGP Qualifier or something, but why would Krzyszpy Kzakesz be in a qualifier for an event that he is secure in already? Any thoughts / answers please?

Well, ain't everything perfect. The pits are where they are to: 1. keep noise down to the local residents. & 2. the Greyhound Racing Ass wouldn't allow the area where the doggie owners prepare their bow-wows to be given over to anything else. Take a look at the stadium on Google Earth or on Google Maps and you'll see the reason why the stadium can't "build back" It's the GRA's place, We do the best we can as tenants. .

To put some flesh on the bones of this one...the fans were in the ZG stadium because Falubaz returned their allocation of tickets to Gorzow, unsold, because they did not want to comply with the security conditions that were imposed after last years behaviour of the Falubaz fans and the violence between them and the Police after the meeting. The Stal Gorzow management insisted that Falubaz fans would not be allowed to carry bags, bottles, flags or drums into the stadium. In response to the repugnant "Sector Flag" from last year (the one hero-worshipping the wife/murderer of Eduard Jancarz) Falubaz would not be allowed to display another "sector flag". Due to the suspicion that flag-poles were used to smuggle in the smoke flares, all other flags and their poles were to be banned too. The local Police insisted that Falubaz fans would have had to be more thoroughly searched when entering the stadium, for knives etc, including fans having to take their shoes off to prove that they didn't have blades inside them. The Falubaz management were of the opinion that all these restrictions were a breach of their fans' civil liberties and human rights, so told Stal what to do with their tickets, and laid on a TV screen inside their own stadium where the fans could watch the meeting. All the ZG riders had to drive back to ZG to thank their fans at the stadium after the meeting too.

No, he's just a wind-up merchant and you let him get to you

A day's hire charges from the local county cricket club, a low-loader to bring it on...how hard can it be?

"Old Perry Barr" - Andy Grahame, Kelly Moran, Erik Gundersen, Phil Herne "New Perry Barr" - PL - Jason Lyons, Rene Bach, Tomasz Piszcz, Andre Compton (Woffinden and Ward - see below) "New Perry Barr" - EL - Tai Woffinden, Darcy Ward, Emil Sayfutdinov, Nicki Pedersen

I don't think that Drury would block any of the Brummie Brits from earning a living. That said, would you really want Nicholls out there representing this country? Check out his scores recently... That said, if the BSPA wanted to send a GB pairing, they would have to pay for it...and I think you can see where this is leading...it's not like everyone is flushed with cash at the moment, and certainly not to spend on a bit of a "jolly" for a lucky twosome, for no benefit to the parent organisation, is it? Second reason for the BSPA not wanting to play ball - http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=pl&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sportowefakty.pl%2Fzuzel%2F351800%2Fwojna-angielsko-polska-o-speedway

Interesting...some positive comments, some negative comments...well now how about a little competition? There is this free to use web site - https://popcorn.webmaker.org/ - Why not have a game of "Fantasy Speedway TV Producers"? Get your audio and video recordings of the night's action, plonk them into "Popcorn Maker" mix them up the way you like them, post the results online, and we can all share what you think a perfect presentation will be. Maybe we can even have a vote on whose is the best?

...and Middlo doesn't? Never mind. Next time one of the Team GB riders cocks up I'm sure that Middlo will justify it by telling us that "it's what all youngsters do these days"...

Interesting...the reserves race moves to heat 2 instead of being heat 1. In fact the first 5 heats would look very familiar to UK fans, only at heat 6 do the Poles start to do their own thing. Google Translate on top form again - Łukasz Kret = "Luke Mole" (Some far off distant relative of Tony Mole perhaps?)

I think that there must be some kind of "FIM Virtual Speedway Fan" Playstation game that KKS is playing that enables him to be everywhere all the time. Big question though is when he's fed up of being a speedway fan does he play his World of Warcraft game or does he pretend to be Lara Croft?

Hmmmphhh - STILL no reply from Falubaz.Zielona Gora I even wrote to Falubaz Wolfslake in my best German to see if anyone knows anyone in Poland who could help, but it seems to be corporate philosophy not to reply to foreigners. They obviously don't feel the need for any more people through their turnstiles. OK, time for Plan C...

Still no reply from Falubaz What's Polish for "customer service"? I'll be hiring a car from Poznan airport. Interesting information though. Never knew any of that! Food for thought for the future. Thanks.

Now that it's the speedway season again, can we send them an e-mail asking for our fans back please?

Get ready for the Politically Correct Thought Police to do a dawn raid on your house and cart you away to a correctional institute of some kind!

Thanks for that. I've sent an e-mail to the suggested address, lets see what happens. Keeping fingers crossed here.

I wouldn't worry about it. Britain's recent weather has been on the back of cold north-easterly winds eminating in Siberia. I dare say that will also apply to the rest of northern Europe. As they say in Germany, "nothing good has ever come out of the east!" This time we can blame the Russkies!

Looks like I won't be the only beneficiary of this question, so does anyone have a working e-mail address of someone at the Falubaz Zielona Gora office please? I've tried e-mailing 'info@zuzel.zgora.pl' (as per the web site) but no-one has had the courtesy to reply yet. Obviously, my e-mail was in English, which may have a bearing on this but it wasn't a hinderance in getting replies in the past from Gorzow, Leszno or Tarnow. Maybe the address is wrong or has been changed without the web site getting updated...who knows? Anyway, for the benefit of us Brits who will be in Poland for the Falubaz v Stal Gorzow fixture, and who want to obtain tickets, any assistance in establishing contact would be very much appreciated. Thanks.