uk_martin

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.

Sadly, not over satellite though :-(

Do Kanal Sport still have the contract to show Danish league speedway this year?

Please let us into your secrets...what are they called, what do they do and how do you rate them, having used them? Which one(s) get the Pawel Stamp of Approval?

Does anyone know of a streaming App for the Android phones that show streaming Polish stations on your phone, a bit like the CatchUp TV app for the UK TV stations?

Top tip for renting a car from Berlin this year is NOT to go with the "special offers" that the airlines tout. Last year the situation was different. Through Ryanair, I was able to book an Opel Astra Turbo for €25 for a day in Germany, thanks to their deal with Hertz. I almost sleepwalked into hiring with Hertz for Poland again this year, thinking that their rates are bound to be competitive again. No such luck. This year, the Hertz rates are much higher. I was able to rent much cheaper online through a Polish "broker". Likewise, when I was due to need a hire car earlier this year in Germany, "Sixt" were hallf the price of Hertz for comparable deals. Can't guarantee you'll have the same experience, but it'll be worth shopping around I think. Cheers Martin

Why has the Poznan team folded TWICE in the last few years? Is this a dead horse that's for flogging or for turning into beefburgers? I know that the romantic notion is to save the speedway, but for whom? If Poznanians aren't interested enough to follow a team and to make it viable, then who's going to listen to us foreigners?

I'll be going to the Gorzow SGP too. I'm flying in and out of Poznan and hiring a car. My plan is to go to the Falubaz Zielona Gora v Stal Gorzow meeting on the Sunday, basically because it's the only show in town on that day. And ZG is only about an hour from Gorzow by car, Honestly, it's the speedway equivalent of the "Old Firm Derby" and NOT to be missed. The way things are, there are spare seats in the car to get from Gorzow to Zielona Gora, and you will be welcome to them, but I'm staying in a hotel local to ZG before driving back to Poznan on the Monday, so you will need to bear that in mind with your own travel & accommodation arrangements. Top tip though if you are going to this meeting, and that is to cultivate an e-mail connection with someone at ZG to ensure that you're not left outside when the meeting starts as it WILL be a sell-out. Zielona Gora is about the same distance away as Gorzow and has direct rail links to Berlin I think, so you should be OK for a reasonably short train ride back from there. Driving on main roads in Poland is no big deal. Even I can manage it lol. OK, they subscribe to driving on the wrong side of the road, but the roads are quieter than say Germany or France, and although signs are in Polish, stuff like directional signs are easy to understand. They say that Poles drive like Tomasz Piszcz rides, but honestly, they are no worse than Italians, the French or the Spanish. Lots of Polish roads go through woodland and forests, where you might notice lots of scantilly dressed "hitch-hikers" in the turn-ins to picnic areas etc. Warning - rumour has it that they may not be all that they seem! The way things are looking, I'm holding on til later before buying currency. Sterling has tumbled recently and is at a low, so as exchange rates tend to go in cycles, it may have recovered by the middle of the year, so you will get more for your money by waiting a while. Hope that this helps, and if it's of use, then mine's a Tyskie from the barge moored on the riverside in Gorzow See you out there!

From a Birmingham perspective, speedway and football were the only 2 shows in town in the 40's and early 50's. Graham Warren brought the city centre to a standstill with the crowds that thronged to his wedding at St Martin's in the Bull Ring. THere are rumours of attendance figures in the order of 40,000-50,000 to see the Golden Helmet match race between Graham Warren and Jack Parker in that period too. Compared to that, in the 1970's the biggest crowd would have been about 10,000 in around 1974-75 for the classic encounters with Eastbourne and later for the first season or two in the "First Division". Already comparing the 70's to the 50's there's an 80% reduction in the crowd. Since then, we've got a top class athletics facility, the National Indoor Arena, the National Exhibition Centre, an international BMX / Skate Park, so between all those, any number of World and European Championships in any number of sports you care to think of have been fighting for the £££ in our pockets. Far more choice than there ever was for the ever more scarce spondooliks. Sports come and sports go in this city, The Brummies were a pillar of 1950's speedway in the UK, and then they went into decline, revival, more decline, and now revived again. Moseley rugby club failed to embrace professionalism properly and went from being on a level playing field with Bath and Harlequins to a tail spin down to the depths of the league structure. The Birmingham Bulls were once the 2nd best American Football team, but went into decline. The Birmingham Bullets basketball team were one of the top clubs in the country and they declined and folded. Speedway isn't alone in it's plight. Other sports have suffered too.

Do a google search for "Satellite TV card sharing" and see what you can find, that's if your decoder is of the Linux variety that can take advantage of this method of decryption. If you're lucky, then the details about which card you need will be a thing of the past.

There are some people objecting to bad English. Are you condoning bad English or objecting to the objections? (or both?)

There's "Kids" three years younger than him fighting a war in Afghanistan against kids hardly big enough to pick up a Kalashnikov. He's been deemed responsible to be married for 4 years, to vote for the last 2, so he's old enough now to know that drink, drugs and bike riding is wrong. Part of making mistakes is suffering the consequences and punishment. That's what you learn from. The fact that no-one was harmed is a fortuitous circumstance, not a mitigating one. ..."and he's in control"..."and he can stop at any time he wants"...yeah, heard all that before. Why is he entitled to make more mistakes than anyone else? Just because he's pretty handy on a speedway bike and has a fan following doesn't entitle him to softer treatment off the authorities.

Birmingham Brummies: Adults: £16.00 OAPs, Students (on producing of I.D. cards), Disabled: £12.00 Juniors;(aged 14- 17 incl): £5.00 Children (13 and under): FREE (When accompanied by a full paying adult) Programmes: £2.50 Cheapest in the EL possibly?

Would anyone now like to start a new thread, imploring their promoters to "Break the bank to sign Darcy Ward"???

The SS Big Issue. May God bless it and all who sail in it.

I still don't get it. You hear of riders spending what it takes to shave a few ounces off the weight of their bikes, and then they go for a pizza or kebab on their way home from a meeting... You also see really big guys like Joe Screen, getting the sort of scores that waif-thin riders can only dream about. Why bother with titanium bits and bobs at grass roots level? Like pub darts players having titanium stems on their darts, at that level it won't make a ha'peth of difference. Skill is what is needed at lower levels. Having a bike as light as a feather won't help a Byron Becker become a world champion. Still, it's a free world to some degree. If twit-bits are allowed and people want to waste their money on them, let them go ahead. Just don't let the paymasters get suckered into increasing their pay to compensate, or our admission prices to pay for these follies.

The bikes have to be of a minimum all-up weight don't they? So what's the point ???

This thread has been on the boil now for just over 2 weeks. In that time, we have moved 2 weeks closer to the first stated event date, however we are no closer to knowing any more about the riders who will be making up the rest of the field, nor where the remaining events will be taking place. The only developments have been the possible withdrawal (depending on who you believe) of Leicester as a founding father venue of the series, possibly as a reaction to the other main occurence, which was the famous SCB statement. The "temporary" web site is still holding the fort, however no new news has broken out about who what when or where...etc...anyone else booking their holidays for this year yet? Anyone else likely to find it difficult to take time off work at short notice to travel to a track on a Tuesday night to help make a success of these meetings? Whoever these Chuckle Brothers are who are running this series, they aren't doing themselves any favours by slowing information down. And another question for the organisers, bearing in mind that speedway teams generally lose money, for instance, Peterborough lost, it was said, £140,000 for running a 14-meeting season, so about £10,000 per meeting, what will the Chuckle brothers do for 2014 if they lose that kind of cash in 2013? Because even if the events take place, if they make it hard for the fans to support these events, then they will lose money, and then what? Oh, and finally, looking at the Rye House and Leicester web sites, their fixture lists include the likes of British Youth Championship rounds, Flat Track meetings etc, but no mention of this UK Speedway Series...why not?

Remember brass darts? It goes back a few years doesn't it? But then along came tungsten darts...and with the option of TITANIUM stems too! Well every pub player had to have them didn't they? The chance of cramming more darts into that treble twenty was too hard to resist. But do you think that the standard of pub darts improved in the slightest?

One thing that will be very different...and that's that both the intended fixtures announced so far (give or take whether Leicester goes ahead or not) are set to take place on Tuesday nights. Hmmm, a journey to the Hoddesdon Raceway for some Tuesday Night, Dry House speedway...OR maybe they will be even more different and actually water that track to give racing a chance....now maybe that would be worth going to see

Are they capable of running meetings without SCB Referees as well? Or running meetings NOT called speedway and NOT governed by the SCB rules and regulations on Speedway? Can't wait to see what will happen when the first rider uses a 600cc bike or removes his silencer, or uses one that's not approved under the SCB regulations. Maybe, without referees, they will run things like in ancient Rome, with the power to decide being given to the fans, based on who shouts loudest? There may even be polls on BSF or the Speedway Updates site to decide on who was at fault for a first bend pile-up with fans voting using their mobile phones...it just keeps getting better.

Can't help but wonder how Silver Len has allowed his Rye House set-up to get involved with all this. He's been around the block a few times, he knows the ropes. He must have been given assurances that everything will be above board, approved and legit. Can only assume now that the promises would have included approval from the SCB to run this series, which now seems unlikely. It will be interesting to see how Silver Len reacts to the SCB dictat.

I would question that. The only reason in my mind why the FA countenenced the formation of the Premier League, and the constitution of the Premier League Management Committee, was the threat at the time of the top clubs (Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool etc etc, ) joining a European Super League. Looking at who is signed up to this new upstart, and bearing in mind that it is for individual meetings only, so the BSPA have no involvement, at risk of sanction currently are 2 PL tracks. Ask yourself if the SCB would care about losing them? To continue the analogy, I doubt that the FA would have cared twopence if Plymouth Argyle, Lincoln City, Carlisle United and others of lower status had wanted to break away from the Football League.

I'm out of breath!

My understanding is that the SCB control Speedway in the UK, as the ACU sanctioned body, and recognised by the FIM as the controllers of the sport in the UK. The SCB then devolves the running of League speedway to the BSPA. The fact that the composition of the SCB is predominantly BSPA members with some referees chucked in for good measure, does nothing to help remove the impression of "conflicting interests" though does it?