uk_martin

Did Dastardly and Mutley engineer a catastrophic floodlight failure five days in advance of that fixture too? Surprised that they are allowed to get away with it, especially with their "previous".

Sad state of affairs that if you got rid of everyone who you can't trust, you wouldn't have anyone left to run a club in this country any more. Anyone remember the fiasco of Kings Lynn cancelling their match against Birmingham a couple of years ago because of a "floodlight failure" (5 days ahead of the meeting)?

"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.

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?)