uk_martin

Those in bold are my stab in the dark best guesses for progress to the final. Good luck to the English guys, but when you look at the gulf in class between MJJ (GB-EL Ekstraliga etc) Dudek, Zmarzlik, Pawlicki2 etc and the likes of Tom Perry & the Worral bros, you have to resign yourself to saying good luck and god speed, but not hold your breath lol

Sounds like a handicap race to me then. The Italian, Irish and Spanish wheelbarrows be followed by Frenchies, Germans and Belgiques with buckets, to transfer their burdens over to the Belgian, German and French wheelbarrows, as the race progresses, in case the wheels come off their financial wagons. Could also be that the Greeks will get a German to push their wheelbarrow, as they expect all their finances to come from Germany at the moment?

Stuff that lot... it's the boating, bows 'n' arrows and swordfighting that I'm most looking forward to.

According to this article - http://www.polonia.bydgoszcz.pl/blog/1_1432-josh_auty_w_polonii_bydgoszcz_.html - it seems that Josh Auty will be given the chance to impress Polonia with a view to challenging for a team place. Best of luck to the lad. Be good to see British talent given a chance in Poland. Now for Ben Barker to be given a go over there...

The TVP cameras do a good job, but three are things that they miss, things that make the trip over to Poland for league meetings so worthwhile...the insanity that is a Polish league meeting... Enjoy!

Oh so nearly for Gorzow. If zagar had decided to turn up then the result could have been different.Like Bluejam says, these two teams could be facing each other again in the play off finals. Tarnow's riders might have to be banned from riding in the UK to improve their performance if they are to stand a chance against Gorzow then lol.

The thing is, watching a silent movie, you can't make out who has said what to who, or get an explaination of what was going on etc etc...people are left to interpret for themselves with only a part of the information to hand. If ever there is a time when misunderstandings could ferment, it's when there is a lack of information, so the absence of the presenters was highly unfortunate. I was at the stadium, and the pits were below where I was sitting. I could see and not hear, a bit like people watching television. Again, my view was also partially obstructed as well, so I could only make out some of what was going on. There were the occasional phone text messages from family and friends away from the stadium which informed us about certain things, but not everything can be contained in an SMS message. I also could form an opinion on what I saw, but as I clearly didn't see everything, or hear anything, it would be wrong in my mind to be too opinionated one way or the other. As for the TV coverage, and also only in my opinion, either the presenters should have stayed, or the entire coverage should have been stopped. Only half-covering the events was the worst thing that could have happened.

I know what you are saying, however in discussions with people, the question that always came up, is "what would Lee have wanted?" Unanimous opinion was that he would have wanted the show to go on. (note it is only an opinion, feel free to disagree) Hence the "damned if you do and damned if you don't" line.

A case of "damned if you do and damned if you don't". Also case of "talk is cheap" comes to mind. Supposing that the meeting would have been cancelled after about 7 heats, Would the supporters in the stadium have been entitled to refunds? In which case would the riders that wanted to have the meeting stopped have been happy to not get paid for the day? There was only one pot of money, it could either go towards refunds or it could go to the riders' pay...it can't go both ways. Would the people who were phoning in to complain afterwards have been willing to pay for the refunded admission prices? As for the conduct of the meeting, the translation that I saw on the SG web site says that the PZN does not influence meetings from "outside". Its representitive at the meeting is the referee, (or "judge"! in the words of the translation service lol) and he negotiated the continuation of the meeting with BOTH team managers. It's easy to say that it's all Gorzow's fault, but I'm willing to bet that the last three races being 5-1, 5-1 & 5-0, influenced ZG's wanting to pull out of the meeting too. They were keen for the meeting to be rerun rather than taking Gollobs option of letting the remaining riders in the remaining heats get excluded under the 2-minute rule and have the meeting count towards the league table. No-one's hands came out of all that totally clean. As for the actions of the TVP guys, I can understand their personal feelings, and I have sympathy with that, HOWEVER, there is a PROFESSIONAL angle to this. The whole situation was confused, there were millions of people watching who needed explanations of what was happening, and it was their jobs to make some sense of it for the benefit of the viewing public. They let their personal feelings get in the way of their professional obligations. OK, there was a death, and it's very sad that it happened. But we've seen that before. When MotoGP riders, IndyCar and F1 drivers have been killed in the past, the TV presenters have stuck to their tasks and the viewing public got all the information that was available, and weren't left trying to make sense of a silent video that carried on for a long time afterwards, and I wonder how many opinions were clouded by mis-understanding the pictures that were being seen, that weren't explained by a commentator or presenter.

Kind of relevant to what is bieng said here, but no point writing it out twice...

I've just returned home after having travelled to see this meeting. As to what happened, all I can say is that the situation was confusing. The stadium PA was hard to hear where we were so we didn't catch the internal announcements, and of course we didn't have the benefit of what was seen on TV. That said, the pieces of the jigsaw that are to hand suggest that: The Referee consulted with the teams as soon as news broke. Both teams agreed to continue. The match score card was signed by both team managers to that effect. Falubaz had a change of heart as time went on and of course it was all stopped after heat 11. Some Stal riders were seemingly also not happy to contunue. Tomasz Gollob's suggestion was that the meeting sould carry on with all remaining riders in the remaining heats being excluded under the 2 minute rule so that the meeting could be "declared" and no rider need ride. Flaubaz's management were not happy with this and were negotiating for a re-run of the meeting. Confusion ruled. No-one seemed certain about what was going. I said that I had a few pieces of the jigsaw, but I don't know how many are missing. Not sure anyone really does. Stal fans were locked in the stadium for a while as stories spread about the Falubaz fans and the Riot Police locking horns with each other. Seems some Falubaz fans were arrested, and others would be persued on the evidence of the CCTV and photographic surveilance that was carried out. What seems to have missed all the reports so far, was the spontanious chanting of Lee Richardson's name by fans of both teams when the news broke. There was a minute's silence as a mark of respect, and the afterwards, there was even applause from the Stal fans when the next round of tribute chanting of Lee Richardson's name came from the Falubaz fans. It of course led to the Stal fans repeating the chants. Not long after that, but I'm not quite sure after which heat, the Falubaz fans unilaterally left the stadium. Sadly that was when they had their encounter with the Police. The meeting went on for a heat or two without them, with the atmosphere in the stadium being numbingly flat. After an period of uncertaintly, the announcement was then made that the meeting had been abandoned, with decisions about whether the result would stand following later in the week. People started moving towards the exits, but of course were penned in for a while (see point 5 above) Someone on another thread said that we can all live another day and the meeting may or may not be rerun, and there will doubtless be repercussions, before everything is sorted out, but there's one person who won't be with us to see that day. RIP Lee Richardson, and my condolences go out to his family friends and colleagues on their immeasurable loss.

Life's not too bad for the travelling fans either. Return airfare to & from Poznan was about £56, return train fare from Poznan to & from Gorzow is under £10 and admission to the stadium for under £13. It's cheaper to go to Gorzow (v Zielona Gora) than it used to be to fuel-up a car and watch the Brummies away at Edinburgh or Glasgow. Keep an eye open for a Union Jack flying in the crowd somewhere...

When I was in Torun last September, I stayed a night in a hotel that appeared to have a Polish Cable TV station that was showing Polish 1st Division speedway (Gdansk v someone- sorry I can't remember lol). I saw a highlights programme, late at night, so maybe they do, or maybe don't do live broadcasts, I don't know. Does anyone have any more information about this channel (sorry, too much alcohol to remember names of TV stations, that late at night lol) and whether there are online streams to it?

Anyone who is into Satellite TV, and is looking at upgrading their receiver may wish to have a look at this - http://www.azbox.com...registos&id2=14 Not only does it receive TV by satellite, but it does YouTube (like those TiVO boxes do) and also IPTV. Hopefully what that will mean is that if you input the IP address of the online feed, the Satellite receiver will show Kanal Sport like it was any other TV station, right onto your television.

Excellent!!! The sport is going truly international I wonder how long before we get more Indian teams competing in the Polish leagues.

Seems that DK4 retain the SGP series for the benefit of Danish viewers.

When they do the highlights packages they are sometimes on TVP1, which is also in HD, but I've not yet seen a live league meeting in HD yet. BTW, I was watching the SGP on UK Sky on Saturday, Do Canal+ still provide SGP coverage in Poland? Was well impressed with their coverage of it last year, and they have launched a HD channel since then,

Any idea when TVP Sport will broadcast iin HD like the main TVP station does? The standard definition satellite station is pretty good, but being able to see/record in HD would be so much better.

If it's the one I'm thinking of, the accident happened in the Birmingham v Newcastle National League fixture at the Bordesley Green track. I think I've been told about this accident, although I wasn't there at the time. Scroll down to "Issue 3" here - http://www.retro-speedway.com/page.php?14 - and maybe buy the magazine! There are also other threads on here discussing Joe Owen - e.g. http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/ind...showtopic=40567

Political correctness left "lagging" behind yet again!

Of course Darcy was a sore loser...he had a bad back, remember?

As far as I know, there is only one track, which is of training track quality, which was built by a couple of Brit ex-pat riders, near to the town of Murcia. I've not heard any news of it for a couple of years so I don't know if it is still running or if it became someone's "folly". There was an ex-Leicester fan who tried to run a "Speedway Bar" in Bennydorm, but that venture I believe was short lived. I don't think that the hot, dry, sandy, (Rye-House-esque?) conditions suit track preparation in the south of Spain. It would be interesting to see if that telly broadcast was a one-off or if they do speedway regularly on telly over there. Mind you, there will be a lot of MotoGP snobbery to get over for speedway to really take off in that country.

I don't think that the PL clubs are getting ticket allocations this year the way that they have in the past. At Birmingham, we previously packaged tickets and travel for the purchasers of the Birmingham block allocations, but that's all gone out of the window this year. The Supporters Club contacted the SGP's promoters, and found out that they no longer believe in discounts for block purchases so no way forward there. Seems that anyone who wants to go to the SGP has to buy a full price ticket, on their own, direct from the "official sources". Can't wait to see what impact that has on the numbers going.

I don't understand. How can a team have a home fixture every week if they only race on one day of the week? Surely their home fixtures are fortnightly so that they can alternate home and away fixtures?

Yes, but wasn't that more to do with Pot Noodle becoming too associated with Wales ("tectonic plates" "food of Britain, isn't it?" and all that) and not wanting to be stereotyped by eatinig his favourite food?