uk_martin

You rightly quote a real world situation....but speedway lives in a parallel universe where promoters can't see beyond their own stadium's car park, let alone what's going on in foreign countries So does any of this actually surprise you?

And there's the next non-surprise, the voice of journalistic wing of the speedway circus sounding out support for the corrupt practises infesting the governing body. What a lovely mutual back scratching arrangement you had, or even still have. You get fed some nicey nicey press releases so that you get enough to publish, and in return you agree to abstain from any investigative journalism (Belle Vue, anyone?), and you publicly voice your support for their every deed and misdemeanour. Speedway Star became the official propaganda vehicle for the BSPA. Not since the Soviet Communist Party had such a symbiotic relationship with Pravda and Isvestia has such a contemptable relationship existed. "What conflict of interest" may actually be the most investigative question that you've asked in the past 25 years. Well done. Keep it up.

Only in speedway can such a blatant conflict of interest be heralded as some kind of heroism. And you wonder why the sport has gone down the pan.

Isn't it? Any idea how a NL team is supposed to afford the travelling expenses, work permits, customs clearances and all the other complications that travelling to Europe in a post-Brexit world will involve now? Not to mention the differences in lockdown restrictions (the French won't be fully vaccinated this year) and the constant threat of closed borders, farmers strikes blocking the motorways, fishermen's strikes blocking the ports and harbours, French air traffic controllers strikes snarling up airline travel....

Quite right! - so imagine my amusement at others on various other threads, hoping and praying that Bradford, Oxford, Swindon and Somerset join the league next year. Guests, double-ups, triple-ups and who knows what tricks will need to be performed to fill another 28 "Sits Vacant".

OK, so who has speedway got in high (or even better, in low) places that can help? Seriously though, there will be a department within the ministry, staffed by civil servants, none of whom will probably have the first clue as to what speedway is, and if you their job will be to sift through the applications, bin the ones that don't tick the boxes and advance those that do...so how many politically correct boxes do you think that an application made by the BSPZzzz is going to tick?

I'm assuming that the tax payers money isn't just going to be thrown around like confetti, and that to get any money off the Government, the sports governing bodies will have to present Full Business Cases for how much they want, why they deserve it, and what they will do with it, that will be to the greater good of the sport that the communities that benefit from the sport. Included in that will be an Equalities Impact Assessment (the Public Sector loves those) to ensure that everyone from as diverse a cross section of the community will benefit... SO... let's play a game... let''s pretend that it's YOUR job to write that Full Business Case to support a claim for financial assistance for speedway. How would it read? AND when you've had a go at doing it for yourself, ask yourself who at the BSPZzzz you would trust to present a Full Business Case on behalf of the whole sport without trousering 40% of the money awarded, like Terry Russell did, the last time some collective financial deal was struck (Sky TV, anyone?)

Just checked Perry Barr's COVID-19 infection rate...it's 65% higher than the national average. Every reason for a local lockdown to continue. Not holding my breath on a 17th May season start.

BSPZzzz motto these days - "our way or the highway". No room for renegade promotions that do things differently, that do a bit of forward thinking, that innovate, that aim to do well, or that actually "promote". You march in step or you ship out...and sadly IoW have shipped out.

Yeah good job that was Newport v Birmingham and not against Glasgow. If that had been against the Tigers then the Scots would have had Kyle Newman lynched from the nearest lamp post for fencing Richard Sweetman not only once but twice.

You'll love this one then...

Interesting contradiction going on there.... On the one hand an opposition to doubling up, which is forced upon the clubs by the lack of enough riders to go round, and yet wanting 3 new teams to join the fray, requiring 21 more riders to be discovered out of nowhere. OR do we go for "tripling up"? Or does speedway do what we used to do in primary school, get two team captains, and line everyone up against a wall and the captains take turns in picking the riders for who's going to be in their team this week?

What list? Where was it published? How long have they had to get that right? And still they get it wrong :-( For communication to work, it has to be "heard" and it has to be "right" - failures on both accounts here by the looks of it.

If you slow the video down you'll see a definite flick of the Tomicek's back wheel into Lyons which causes Lyons to career into the fence. It doesn't really matter how much room there is outside, if you are pushed from the inside you are going to suffer the consequences. All that room on the outside does is give you a longer route into the fence.

Vera Duckworth & Lennox Lewis. That pair probably know the square root of diddly squat about speedway, and that would probably be their biggest advantage.

I take it that listening to Dancing Queen by Abba on the stadium PA isn't your idea of "something" then?

That app already exists - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.krygiel.speedway.programme&hl=en_GB&gl=US And some people still have black & white televisions, but that's no excuse for not developing 4K, BluRay, 8K, cable, satellite, IPTV and other hi-tech solutions as technology advances. If fans want to come to speedway on horseback, and refill their quill pens with Quink before filling out their paper programmes, then they are welcome to do so, as far as I'm concerned, but they shouldn't be used as an excuse to prevent progress. That regressive mindset is what's held the sport back for too long.

It all depends on which side of the border you live on and which team you support. Glasgow Tigers fans wanted Morris's head mounted on a pole for that, and are using it as justification for voting "leave" at the next independence referendum. Such is life when you are passionate for a cause. On the other hand, as a Brummies fan, the way I saw it, and as has been said above, he rode the same exit line out of that 4th bend that he'd used before and there was no attempt to ride into the side of the opponent, not in the way that Michael Schumacher or Sebastian Vettel have been known to do in F1 racing. Also as has been said above, he was in front and entitled to pick his own line. Glasgow fans will obviously disagree. To them every line on that track belongs to their riders and their riders only. Likewise when a gap closes, shutting the throttle off, doesn't seem to be the done thing. And finally, the one thing that nobody has asked or considered is what contribution that "safety" fence had on the injuries? Hitting an upright pole sticking out of the ground is going to hurt, possibly badly. It was too far around for an air fence to have been an option at that location but would the injury have been any lesser had the fence been of the solid board type? Now if you do want to see a "definite" nudge that caused someone to go into the fence, check out Lubos Tomicek on Jason Lyons.

Maybe Andrew Silver could stage a second comeback? Seriously though, before concentrating on Dads Army, shouldn't the sport look at enticing back some younger talent that it managed to lose? The likes of Zach Wajknecht, who's still doing his stuff on grass or Jack Parkinson-Blackburn, who hopefully will be recovered from his injuries by now?

As the assumption is that this is assumed, you can therefore assume that the assumption is anything you assume it to be.

It won't be Rory Schlein.

What's that got to do with the Championship? I assume that this thread is about how Championship team will be affected, isn't it? Or was Nicki Pedersen going to be the Secret Sauce in the new Plymouth team, that nobody knew about?

I think Birmingham's fan base will be amongst the most inoculated in the whole country. The problem is that the decision to open the doors to fans won't hang on whether the fans are inoculated or not, but on the infection rate in the region. A region which ignores rules on masks and social distancing, treats a trip to the supermarket as a family day out, thereby ignoring the "one shopper per family" rule and then squeals like little piggies, oops, no, can't use the word piggies, that might offend, er, squeals like really squealy things, that their community is the hardest hit by the pandemic. Speedway, or any other forms of hospitality or entertainment won't resume until these other houses are in order.

Please explain exactly how and why the EU imposed credit card "limits"? Were they to benefit the customer from being ripped off by the credit card companies charging whatever they wanted? And wasn't it precisely this kind of EU non-elected official tinkering with our lives that the Great British Public rebelled against and voted not to have anything to do with this any more? So now you want the British Government to rebel against the people who rebelled on their behalf? No, the will of the people was that they didn't want EU laws interfering with the British way of life. So there you have it...the rough and the smooth of it.

Great sentiments but... 1. To get Coventry, Oxford & Bradford up & running. - Have you seen the state of those stadiums? Who's got the millions needed to bring them back, fit for human habitation? 2. To standardise bikes for the 2 lower leagues therefore lower (overall) cost. - Didn't they try to reduce riders costs with the bulk purchase of those Gerhard engines? What a failure that was. 3. Cap pay rates in all leagues that are affordable via tracks income, - Dumbing down to the lowest common denominator? National pay rates governed by what Mildenhall and IoW can afford? Less pay will mean less spent by riders on bike maintenance, leading to more engine failures, leading to lower quality of racing leading to crowds seeping away. No, I don't think that's the answer either. 4. Stage creditable regular home fixtures @ all tracks.- someone needs a definition of "creditable". How do you guarantee a creditable meeting before the first race is run? 5. Stop double up/down & guest other than injury cover. - Have you done the mathematics? 24 current teams, plus Swindon plus Somerset plus the three Phoenix's out of the rubble piles that you refer to... you could need 168 - 203 riders, who you say have to be British based. I challenge you to name them all. If you haven't got the riders, you won't have the teams. Something has to give. 6. Introduce the use of smartphones as part of the live meeting experience (to get the young involved). - How exactly? I see kids on smart phones trying to cross the roads and nearly getting killed. What's the point of being at a meeting if you are staring at your phone all the time? 7. Getting promoters heads out of the sand, take a step back & look again. Mission Impossible...I can just see that lit fuse burning away at the bottom of my screen now