uk_martin

If the ACU / SCB have hoops to jump through, you have to jump through them. It's obviously no good to say "he's good enough to jump through the hoop so why should it matter if he doesn't". The fact that the hoops in this case are silly one's doesn't mean that you can ignore them either. I have sympathy with the fact that not everyone has to jump through these hoops but that's another issue altogether. And I still don't understand why Rider Replacement can be allowed to a rider who is still not legal to ride and who hasn't ridden a race for the team. Maybe with 2 referees on site this afternoon (eventually) some kind of answer can be given.

It was on the BSPA web site on 23rd December last year. Is Jason Pipe guilty of complacency and underestimating the task of getting Mudgway registered? Don't these people know what it takes to register a rider, to get him licensed and to make him eligible to ride? This is almost as bad as a couple of years ago when promoters left right and centre were cocking up the work permit applications of certain Australian and American riders. They always think that they know best and are then found wanting. I agree that the ACU / SCB / BSPA (whoever the cap fits) is being petty over needing a passport document rather than a certificate of citizenship but if those are the hoops that all riders have to jump through then the promoters should know these things and sort them out. Buxton's management were shown up for a second time last night when they put out an undeclared #8 rider - Sam Wright - in Heat 12, as R/R, causing a delay to proceedings whilst his paperwork had to be provided to the match referee (by a runner from the pits) to prove his eligibility to ride. How completely amateurish. Good job it wasn't raining whilst we were being held up. I have absolutely no grasp of the logic that allowed R/R for an ineligible rider that had not turned a wheel in anger for some years. How the BSPA justify that, other than out of blind pity for a poor team, I don't know. All in all, Buxton + BSPA + SCB = Shambles.

Not sure if anyone else has given forewarning about this but... To anyone using the One Shop Stopping Centre Car Park...please note that the underpass from Walsall Road to Aldridge Road is now closed off, with a view to being filled in. Crossing of the roads will need to be at surface level only, preferably using the pelican crossings.

Forgive him, for he is a Falubaz fan... Just think Trees, last year, sat in the Stadion im. Edwarda Jancarza, watching Stal v Falubaz, you too were a vile football thug for the day...

As we are mainly British people discussing a matter of differing opinions (they are allowed you know) on a British forum, maybe a little bit more British principle can be added? It's what in British law determines who is responsible, and it uses something which anyone familiar with law will understand - a principle known as "proximate cause". The much quoted definition of this is: "The active, efficient cause that sets in motion a chain of events, which brings about a result, without the intervention of any new or independent force” ( Pawsey v Scottish Union & National Insurance Company (1908)) It's something that's been done to death in legal cases in courts up and down the country and legal & insurance examinationons for 108 years, but it's a definition that's stood the test of time. There's a good read about it, in pretty plain speak here - http://www.cila.co.uk/files/Certificate/Chapter%208.pdf All that's left to decide on is what is the active efficient cause that sets in motion a chain of events, which in my opinion is Dudek's engine failure, and whether or not Kildemand running into him is a "new and independent force" - which I happen to believe it was. In my mind, does an engine failure make a race stopage inevitable? No. Left to his own devices, Dudek would have slowed and let the other rider past, then rolled onto the centre green when safe to do so. Add a new and independent force (Kildemand) into the equation, and the result is altered. Therefore, Dudek is not the active efficient cause of the race being stopped. I should just add, that I'm not trying to say one rider is stupid for doing "this" or an idiot for doing "that"...neither is "at fault" in that sense, and this was out of their hands at the speed at which it all happened, but in establishing the primary cause of the stoppage, I think that the above definition helps to show where my opinion comes from. Damn it I'm a Stal Gorzow fan and I'm backing up a Falubaz rider. Something is going wrong here.

Disagree. If no-one had run into Dudek the race would have gone on and Dudek would have chalked up a retirement. So the engine failure was not the cause of the stoppage. The cause of the stoppage was PK running into Dudek. Now you can argue til the cows come home about who the "primary cause" of the stoppage was but from what I've seen, any rider riding into another rider has always been excluded, and if that is a precident, then PK has to be excluded as the primary cause of the stoppage of the race. Is that the same as saying was he negligantly at fault...probably not, but who said it was a fair world? If Dudek was not under power he had little choice as to where on the track he could be. How much if what was ahead of him, or even if PK was even looking in that direction, no-one knows, but on the balance of probabilities, I'd say Kildemand was more responsible for the collision than Dudek. So to me, PK should have been excluded for being the primary cause of the stoppage, and Dudek should have been excluded for not being under power at the time of the stoppage not to mention the fact that by raising his hand to retire from the race, he was out of the race anyway.

"On the payroll" doesn't describe how things worked. Like a lot of speedway (and other sports) teams, there is a great reliance on volunteers who get a few favours returned. I tried to stay out of the politics but could see what was going on. It was very unsavoury and I'm glad to be out of there. There's a book that could be written about the whole thing but the Brummies v Stoke thread isn't the place to publish it.

What time frame are you looking at? "Ever" is a long-tailed period of time. Attendances in the PL were the highest that the Brummies have had since 2007, which in the year under Patchett / Bratley started to decline. That decline was halted briefly with the elevation to the EL and then it started petering out again with all the rider and fixtiure re-aranging shenanigans that the EL brings with it. There was a board room civil war going on between the McLaughlin and Drury camps which pissed a lot of people off, as did other things. The good NL attendances are basically from my observation about the same as they were at the end of the EL era. I don't see crowds any more where everyone is shoulder to shoulder any more. To say that there are more supporters now than ever is extremely "optimistic". If there are numbers there to back that assertion up then all I can say is that these people find more and better places to hide these days because they certainly aren't on the home straight. The price thing has nothiing to do with it in my opinion. It was £15 (adults) in 2007 and I don't think it ever rose above £16, even in the EL. Now it's down to £13 and as I say, the crowd levels now are about the same as they were in 2013-4

Fair comment. Like you I'm not particularly impressed with British Speedway in general, and as for what's on offer at Birmingham, well for me it's a chance to meet up with old (and getting older) friends with the hope of a race or two that can remind me of what the sport can be if done properly. Whether I've "gotten used to it" or simply accepted it for what it is, who knows. What I have accepted though is that the Brummies are in the 3rd tier, and the days of them being this "big club" that you hear about every now and then, are over. It's kindergarten speedway at Perry Barr now, and that's the way it is, at least for now.

Wise not to be certain about it. I've not seen match DVD's on sale at any Polish "track shops" when I've been there. So much of the top tier of Polish speedway gets shown live (in 1080p HD) on TV that these broadcasts end up on YouTube, so why buy a (720p) DVD? If they want a physical disk. the fans can download the video off YouTube and burn their own DVD's or even Blu-Rays. No-one is going to make much of a business doing there what Clean Cut, Re-Run etc do over here.

Get Jon Armstrong in the team and they would become the Dads Army of the NL. I feel more confident about the 2016 Brummies team now than I did 12 months ago about the 2015 team. And let's not forget that Reidar Replacement, our stand-in #1 only got half of what our usual #1 would be expected to score, so it demonstrates not only some resilience within the Brummies team but also that Stoke got off lightly. This is the National League. Get used to it. It's only right that a higher league team should have first call on a rider. That way they stand to progress more quickly and earn more. It's not ideal but at least it's not as bad as when the Brummies were in the EL and had riders missing because a lower league team had first call on their services.

That's life at the bottom I'm afraid. Good luck to Zach though, I hope he has a good meeting at Somerset. It can only do him good.

"Brummies V Stoke Nt Good Friday" For a moment there I thought that was txt spk 4 NOT Good Friday

What I said on the other thread - http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=81167&page=20&do=findComment&comment=2752304

Interesting statement on the BSPA site - drawing as much attention to the BSPA / SCB being whiter than white, and "don't blame them", as it does to the shambles that happened on Saturday. One quick question though...isn't the SCB, through its referee, in charge of the meeting from 2 hours before tapes up? Therefore if the SCB referee did a track inspection didn't he/she have the last chance of calling the meeting off before too many people were let into the turnstiles, and parting with their money on catering, programmes etc? OK so the doors were open early, but some people could have been helped out. Could those people who had journeys to make not have been prevented from wasting their time, or at least have returned home a few hours earlier without standing or sitting out in the cold for nothing? The SCB, whiter than white? - I think not.

Interesting statement on the BSPA site - drawing as much attention to the BSPA / SCB being whiter than white, and "don't blame them", as it does to the shambles that happened on Saturday. One quick question though...isn't the SCB, through its referee, in charge of the meeting from 2 hours before tapes up? Therefore if the SCB referee did a track inspection didn't he/she have the last chance of calling the meeting off before people were let into the turnstiles, and parting with their money on catering, programmes etc? OK so the doors were open early, but some people could have been helped out. Could those people who had journeys to make not have been prevented from wasting their time, or at least have returned home a few hours earlier without standing or sitting out in the cold for nothing? The SCB, whiter than white? - I think not.

So, too much of this was used then?

Would love to have seen Chris Holders opinion on the Belle Vue track. Big events can be insured against cancellations. I wonder if it was insured...and if it was...will the conspiracy theorists not bang on about this all being an insurance scam?

Before the bulldozers went in, the "informed" predictions were that we were supposed to have had the worst winter since the ice age, due to global warming and all that. So, we knew that winter was coming, and the expectation was that it was going to be a bad one. So you factor that into your planning don't you? You add weather delays into your timescales when planning your work don't you? So with the mild winter that we actually had, the work should have been done ahead of schedule shouldn't it? I did a photo documentary of the construction of the Perry Barr track. It was started in January and was ready for racing in March. All sorts of work was done in respect of digging out the soil, sorting out drainage etc etc, but the foundations and surface of the oval from the start of the digging to the laying of the shale was completed within 2 weeks. The track was then allowed to settle whilst work on drainage, the pits, the changing rooms, fences, electrics etc etc continued. OK, so BV had to build a couple of stands too. But they could have been built simultaniously to the track work. The construction project manager has some explaining to do, but ultimately the buck stops at the top. Whoever allowed the turnstiles to be opened, and whoever didn't call off the meeting with time to spare should be up for the chop over this.

Will there be a restaging of the Peter Craven Memorial event at some time in the future? How much will the programme inserts be sold for?

By that argument why not allow MDL teams sign riders as tradable assets?

Go back to S4K's post which stated in the context of speedway riders that "Wages at all levels of the sport are getting extreme." So what's an extreme wage in speedway?

This is the BSPA that you're talking about isn't it? And we all know which organisation always knows what's in the best interests of British Speedway...at all times. In all fairness, I can see both sides to this one. On one hand, Buxton can be the first to spot someone with talent, but what do they have to offer him? Poole or Coventry or Swindon can come along, buy him a couple of bikes, a van, Kings Lynn gave Darcy Ward somewhere to live...all the things that are out of Buxton's reach. So who should a kid sign for? If you recall, we had a situation recently when the Brummies had Richard Sweetman in their team who was a Coventry asset almost from the point when he landed in the country. The Brummies missed out on Adam Roynon Tai Woffinden and Josh Auty in 2007 / 2008 simply because of the pulling power of EL teams. Peterborough hoovered up almost half of the population of Australia in the hope of finding a gold nugget in there somewhere. This is not a new phenomenon. There is no way that a NL team can possibly hope to "sign" these riders because they have nothing to offer. The Brummies recently ran a story on their web site about some of the team paying their way to get some pre-season training on the continent. Looking at that from another angle, there's a story about a team investing NOTHING in its riders and making them pay for the training themselves so that the team will later hope to get the benefit from it all. So what should Birmingham be set to earn from their non-investment? We've seen Zach sign for Lakeside. If Wolverhampton or Poole come along and say to these other riders, "how would you like a new bike to ride and an all expenses trip to Italy to do some pre-season training" - have a guess how long they will remain in Birmingham either. They always have been able to. It's just that when Birmingham were in higher leagues, we saw things from a different perspective and took advantage of the situation in the same way that we are being taken advantage of now. The Brummies took Jon Armstrong off Mildenhall, and Ben Taylor off Buxton in the PL days and I bet they came to us in exchange for nothing more than a big thank you to their former NL teams. The answer is that there's no incentive. Just like Birmingham Brummies have been shafted by the establishment since 1976, they always will be. But don't worry yourself about the Brummies knocking on the PL's door any time soon. The crowds didn't warrant it last year and by the sounds of it, there will be less of a crowd this year.

Hands up everyone who has ever changed jobs because they can earn more at X than they used to at Y....keep your hands up while I count...because you are the very people who should not be commenting on how much anyone else is allowed to earn. A speedway rider who risks his life and limbs every time he gets on a bike is just as entitled to earn as much as he can get as you are. Also, please explain what an "extreme" wage is. I'd love to know.

As I understand it, this whole asset thing is all about teams pumping money/vans/bikes/equipment/accommodation/whatever into a rider at the start of his career, in return for the value that he brings to the team later in his career. That value can be either in the form of points for the team or £££ in loan / transfer fees, So imagine for a moment that this didn't happen. What then? I don't remember any of this happening in the 1970's and 1980's, Back then riders sank or swam on their own abilities, Now they are helped if they agree to sell their souls. Back then if a rider was transferred it was a full blown transfer, not some kind of glorified loan. Now, things are a lot more complicated and intertwined. Back then, the whole world was a simpler and cheaper place. Now the costs of the sport mean that backers are needed. So it's an imperfect world and this asset thing is an imperfect part of it. But what are the alternatives? Anyone can say "bah humbug" but who can come up with the alternative solution? Is the American Football franchise system a better way forward? If the whole league owned all the assets in it, there would be no arguement over who's an asset of whom. If all the promoters were shareholders in the league, with each having a shareholding of a value of what they put into the league, in the form of assets, then they will all get a split of the profits of the system, according to their shareholding too. Damn, they might even all start pulling in the same direction on occasions. At the end of the day, as has been said many times, a rider will ride for who he wants to, so what difference does individual team asset ownership make to team strengths in that way? I dunno. Just an idea for the pot. But at least it's an idea.