uk_martin

Excellent idea...let's find some young kids who can do some laps of the track for half an hour before the meeting starts...and then some 2 minute shenanigans in the opening heats. The 10pm curfew will be upon us before we know it.

Buxton need something to cheer them up this season, even if it's only a good laugh.

A bit of rain? Well which Mickey Mouse team will turn up today? The one which was too afraid to ride on a decent track in Gorzow in the play-offs semi final a couple of years ago, or the one who rode through arctic snowstorms at their own place earlier in the season? Brilliant interview with Tai...telling the TV company a few home truths lol

Already it ooks like it's going to be a Stal Gorzow v Mickey Mouse final then...hopefully that will be worth waiting for. Thr tremmors will be felt far and wide...

The result speaks for itself. It didn't need stating again. 16th out of 16 for the rider who will be the fulcrum of Team GB in the SWC next year. Oh dear. Now we can see why Woofy wanted more international experience for British youngsters. There's more to world speedway than just British (and in Lambert's case - German) tracks.

This is confusing. How come UKAD have delegated the job of drug testing to the SCB? I know that the Speedway Authorities in this country are pretty good at extracting the urine, but I doubt they are qualified to extract blood. According to the UKAD web site, the procedures for carrying out drugs tests are well laid down, and don't seem to be "delegatable". Why say that the weather has interfered with drugs testing? Looking at the press, sports people in other sports (Rio Ferdinand springs to mind) have gotten into trouble for not making their movements known for spot checks to be carried out any time, any place. in theory therefore, a properly organised drugs test could have been done on a rider given only hours notice, with the testers going to where they are, not just waiting in the pits at a rained-off meeting, where they could be conveniently avoided by a mysterious van breakdown, or made-up-injury. This strikes me as being one of two things. Either the story as it's presented here has become distorted from the truth, OR the SCB have made a right hash of their drugs testing by announcing it to the public in terms that don't stack up to reality, showing they up to be a shambles of an organisation.

Would Scunthorpe not be suitable as a better template for a "smaller" track? How hard would it be just to clone that one?

In other words...move along please...nothing to see here.

That's a shame. Rugby Union is a sport that within my adult lifetime has been transformed from an amateur (and amateurish) game played by mainly ex-public and ex-grammar school men, in a disorganised and unstructured season of meaningless friendly matches between teams where they would have to chip in with their playing "subs" to be entitled to a shirt out of the kit bag. Nowadays, it's the definate #2 sport in the country, followed by millions, between professional teams, that draw crowds that many a football team would envy, in well structured national and international leagues. In the case of Wasps, they have even bought the Ricoh Arena, and have Coventry City as their tenants. Not only that but it's the sport in which England (or any British national team) was the last winner of a major World Cup. That is a transformation in fortunes that speedway would do well to try to emulate.

No doubt Jason Pipe will hark back to the epic Buxton victory over the Brummies in 2015, with cliche's like "will history repeat itself", "if we can do it once we can do it again", "all winning runs are there to be ended" and other such offerings... Who knows, he may even be right. "It's a funny ol' game Saint!" as someone once said about something completely separate to speedway, whilst we are on the subject of nothing to do with reality.

Which Daniel Halsey will turn up this time?

Not at all. These are places that make money out of selling food and drinks. Whether as a main attraction or as a sideshow is irrelevant. Staff are employed), costs are incurred and the revenue has to be generated.

Would you book a table at one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants and take your own packed lunch with you?

And that copy of Max Bygraves' Greatest Hits is still there.

Belle Vue is run as a business, not a social service. I dare say if you went to a pub with your own bought at a supermarket beer, or took your own food into a restaurant, you may get the same reaction, and for the same reasons. Who knows, there may even be licensing restriction insisting that the only drinks consumed "on premises" are those sold on the premises (a bit of a guess but it wouldn't surprise me) LOL Now here's the irony. Speedway fans are constantly complaining about the rules being too complicated. So Belle Vue have a simple one-line rule about "no food and drink", and now that's posing problems. Maybe we need a whole rule book about the ages that the rules apply to?,,,or the types of food and drink?...or the quantities?... OK, so "apply common sense" some may say...well, you write us a document defining common sense in clear and unambiguous terms so that everyone can apply it equally, and you might have something that can be used as a way forward.

Of all the people to try the "head hand and back injury" trick on, Drury is not the one. Poachers and gamekeepers spring to mind. Does Mr Mason need the stadium address to send his holiday postcard to?

Or the actions of someone who has been banging his head against the BSPA brick wall for so long that he's fed up of the headaches. And those fans who would like to see a successful Team GB

So I have no place in speedway? Well sod you too. Well there you have it...one of Speedway's pensioner generation knowing what's in the best interests of the sport again. Maybe if the pensioners actually retired and allowed younger people to take over the sport might stand a chance of surviving.

In Poland for the big one on Monday. Sector 58 tickets (next to the Ultras) so it's going to be fun. Fingers crossed for a great evening's entertainment and a Stal win if only to cause some tremmors lol

Ipswich need him in Glasgow.

Got to applaud this move.

Richard Hall = 31. Arthur Ssissis = 21 - I shall say no more as it is pretty much off topic. OK, so they now have two tracks. Apart from the aborted GP at Riga I wasn't aware of anything happening there. OK, so does Britain take credit for Ivan Mauger, Barry Briggs, Hans Nielsen, and uncle Tom Cobley and all too? God dammit, we're good aren't we?

Numbers of riders starting off in the sport is one thing but what when they do make a start, then what? There is a whole National League and some development leagues full of riders who have made the start. Lots of them....now compare that with the slack handful that ride in the USA and the dozen lads in Latvia who ride, and you will see that numbers in Britain isn't the biggest problem. What I find incomprehensible is that out of the dozen Latvians, on the one track in the country, 5 of them made it to the Speedway World Cup, by means of qualification, not seeding, and shamed the British team in the final. There aren't that many riders in the USA, and their tracks are even harder to stumble across, and are tiny compared to any in Europe, and always have been, but their strike rate of producing world class stars has been amazing. So what is going wrong with what we do here that strangles the potential of the kids who do make a start in the sport? How come we can't turn 50% of the riders who start in the sport here into SWC-level performers like Latvia do? Why can't we produce a string of world champions and stars like the USA have, again with less resources than we have here already?

Feel free to put together a full business case for how speedway at grass roots level will be good for an all-inclusive community, how it will help health and well-being, how it will promote social and cultural understanding, and of course dont forget to show how it will help celebrate diversity and promote equality, and all the other "politicaly correct" things that politicians and their civil servants look for in a plan, and then head straight over to the Sports Council with it. Now that we're Brexiting, the Government will soon have £350m extra a week to spend on stuff (it said so on the side of a bus) so how could you possibly fail?

Ah, but is the government funding directed at the Professional game, or at the grass roots amateur incarnations? Ask the Sports Council to give some millions to Arsenal and I suspect you'll get a different response to asking them for money to fund a project for community football in a run-down inner-city area. Same will go for any other sport I suspect. Why should the BSPA receive money from the FIM/BSI beyond the expenses for the riders and their crews? Does any other National governing body get anything? In fact your comment about the Aussies and the fact that the Russian riders had to pay their own way seems to answer that one adequately. Many FIM competitions that BSI are not involved in, such as the u21 championships require entrance fees, special liceses that have to be paid for and special insurance that the riders need to pay for. Just be grateful that the SWC sees money going the other way, presumably because of what BSI generate in TV revenues etc