uk_martin

Pray for good weather then. One week later and the Swedish league starts, which could rule out star attraction, Robert Lambert.

Star attraction, Robert Lambert, will most likely be needed in Poland.

2 different angles on the same question. I'm assuming that for Coventry to return to action, someone with a promoters license will be needed, or will the fairy godmother approach of Belle Vue be relied upon here? This could get interesting if Horton retains the rights to the Coventry "franchise" and someone else runs speedway out of Brandon, as, er, "Brandon Bees", maybe, or the "Rugby Rebels" perhaps? Shades of AFC Wimbledon and MK Dons going on here.

Birmingham COULD have run on a Tuesday. Birmingham ran on a Tuesday when entertaining Poole in the EL Play-off final a few years back. Birmingham have also at various times run on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays Thursdays and Fridays. What day wasn't an issue. The BSPA's incompetence and vindictiveness towards Birmingham, because it thinks it knows what's "in the best interests of British Speedway" IS the issue. #speedwayshambles

When?

What will be Mick Horton's role in all of this? Who in their right minds is going to pump shed-loads of cash into a venture that Horton will be left to run (down) afterwards?

Is THAT why? Are you sure? Because how can you guarantee a date if you can't be certain that the semi-finals have been run? As it is now, no-one knows when or where the "Newcastle" semi-final will be run, always assuming that they want ALL the riders not to have any fixture clashes for that again, so how can any date for the final at any venue now be set in stone?

NO! It's just been announced that the BSPA have taken the fixture off Birmingham, mainly because they say, they wanted "a date when no riders would be involved in a fixture clash". Now that Newcastle's semi-final has been postponed, our beloved organisational body, has neither a venue nor a date for the final. What a typically shambolic state of affairs.

It was Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the dagger!

Maybe we should go back to riders in black leathers riding Douglas's and Rudge's around cinder tracks then? That's what most fans on the terraces would recognise. Maybe the old timers not recognising the sport any more isn't the problem, maybe the sport not being attractive to a newer and younger audience is the real problem?

So what this basically boils down to is an admission of failure by the speedway establishment, that they can't run a GB team competitively, for a toffee. There's no money coming in from TV, Terry Russell's SloSport International has failed to get any nationwide sponsorship.The ideas that Rob Lyon, Jonathan Chapman and Tai Woffinden had were far too radical over the years for the old fuddy-duddies to get their heads around. The SCB/BSPA can't afford it and no-one from within is bothered any more. Best just to let someone else have a go, give them the rights, let them take the risks, and see how they overcome the obstacles that the BSPA throw in the way when there's a fixture conflict between club and country at some point in the future. And who are VXR anyway? I thought it was a sporty Vauxhall car of some kind.

It's a "HE" so that kind of narrows it down a little...

Pretty much. In a world where the women make up more than 50% of the population, the number of women involved involved in speedway, and in the hands-on end of the sport is tiny. Yes we know about Marta in Poland, like we know that Peterborough, Buxton and Somerset have (or had) a female involvement in the promotion, and we know of 3 or 4 female referees. Add them all up and you still have some spare fingers on your two hands. The place where women are most visible are on the start lines. Take them away and to the untrained eye, speedway becomes a big boys club. where the only women you'll see to do with the running of the show will be those selling 50-50 tickets, those serving behind the bar, and those cleaning the loos. Charming. I've heard from some ladies for whom "promotion" is a job and a way of life that they actually enjoy. They earn good money, get to travel to places that you and I can only dream about, and live in some comfort. Has anyone ever asked them how they would feel about being handed their P45's because someone elses socio-political values deems their work to be non-grata any more?

The fact that you are scouring the world in order to quote exceptions kind of proves the rule.

Administrators = out of sight of the public Referees = out of sight of the public Riders and Mechanics...could be done, but they would have to get there on merit. None of your trendy lefty Corbynista women-only shortlists. And sad to say, wherever you go, whether it's in the pit lanes of MotoGP or F1, or speedway, none of the jobs that involve getting a bit of dirt under the finger nails seems to attract the women in. F1 & MotoGP has some female Press & PR people, probably for their "people skills", but you don't get that in speedway much, do you?

Take away the start line girls/ladies/women/females (delete according to your personal political correctness values) and you'll then have cries of "where are the women in this sport". And apart from the occasional co-promoter and less than a handful of referees, what actually would be the role of women in the sport?...and no, you can't count the very occasional track photographer that happens to be female.

It was all going so well, and then you compared British Speedway to a serious sport...never mind

http://www.speedwaygb.co/news.php?extend.34086 The quote " The rebranded Great Britain Speedway Team has been taken over by VRX Motorsport, led by Rob Painter and Vicky Blackwell, who have set up a dedicated team focused solely on making the national side the most accomplished and professional outfit in World Speedway. " kind of doesn't tally up to only having best pairs meeting though does it? For all the investment (would love to know how and where the investment was made) 5 or 6 minutes of action around Belle Vue had better be worth it. If they want to achieve their "sky high ambitions" and their desire to " re-establish Great Britain as a real force in World Speedway" they will need to prove competitively that they are up there with the best, and that has to mean taking on the other leading nations, and beating them. So how is it going to work? Central Contracts for riders, mirroring what happens in Cricket and Rugby? A test series in the middle of summer and in the height of the season? A test match tour of Europe, taking on Denmark, Sweden and Poland on their own patches? (actually, Team GB would struggle against France Germany and Latvia at this stage, but one must remain optimistic) You can just imagine the uproar from BSPA promoters about having their assets stripped away from them, and their riders needed for internatioinal duty in the middle of the league season. I'd love for this to work, but we've not been given any information on how it's going to work. The http://www.vrxmotorsport.com/ web site will need to be fleshed out with a lot more information about what's happening, rather than just providing a link to their parent Insurance Broking company (other insurance brokers are available)

Can't wait to see what happens if Rob Painter and Vicky Blackwell decide that they want to run test matches during the league season. Which BSPA members will then be supportive if their riders are needed and which SCB /BSPA licensed tracks will host the test matches, if there is an in-house conflict of interest between BSPA members over releasing riders.

And Leon is lucky to have sponsors like balderdash&piffle on board too. As for smart alec remarks about B&P's involvement, how sad that is to see.

And Leon's sponsors logos stay on his Kevlars, even if you've seen them before too.

Not a bad debut. Has started better than Zach Wajknecht did a few years ago so there's hope...

Hells bells, I know most of us are pretty old here, but we're not all clinically blind.

THe BBC should sign Laurence Rogers up to be the new Michael Fish :-)