uk_martin

Might as well present the Sparrows with all the knock-out trophies before the start of the season as with their trick track advantage no one will compete on aggregate. I shudder to think how Jack P-B will get on at Eastbourne. He was nowhere near the kerb at any point at Perry Barr the other night so gawd help him on an even smaller and oddly shaped track.

And as soon as word got out that promoters were making a profit BSF would be full of "Promoters ripping off the fans" threads...maybe?

On the subject of injuries it begs the question what the nature of the season ending injuries to the two Brummies riders are. Needless to say the fans have been treated as mushrooms again on this matter.

Which very quietly brushes under the carpet the fact that the Joe Thurley Memorial meeting seems to have been scrapped to make way for it...shame that.

Doesn't surprise me. And I doubt if there is a single person here who would hand over the running of their households to an independent person while they just did all the work.

Guess we'll have to wait and see what next year's league structure is and where the heave-ho's will be racing next year before guessing about who will be where.

And dead set against competitive sports and totally danger adverse. He'll make sure everyone is wrapped up in enough cotton wool to avoid getting hurt and every race has four "little winners" lol.

Some questions about this notional "independent body": 1. Who will appoint them? 2. Who will have the power to sack them if they prove to be no good? 3. What do they get paid? 4. Who pays them? 5. What happens to a promoter of a team who sticks two fingers up at the independent body and carries on to do his own thing? 5. Who do you have on your short list as being candidates for the job and do you realistically think that they would be remotely interested in spending their time on this task? Look, as long as the guy who gets the job pays his train fares, then he'll be an improvement on the guy who's in the job now. Until there are realistic answers to the "who pays the piper/who calls the tunes" questions above then this independent body will just be a fantasy.

Turn the clock back to the mid 1970's with Peter Collins, Malcolm Simmons, John Louis, Dave Jessup, Ray Wilson, Chris Morton, Terry Betts, and then Kenny Carter and Michael Lee, you'd have had a GP field in those day more than half British...would you have complained about that?

Harvie Banks might have recovered from his injury in time for next season.

8.20pm and no rain has fallen today. There will be some red faces if it gets rained off now, on the 30th.

Well there you go...we're just so much better than the Swedes aren't we? Damn it, we'll be beating them in the SWC soon as well won't we? I assume that Andreas "Big Issue" Jonsson, Freddie "Oxfam" Lindgren and co. will be seeking refugee status next time they land on our shores.

How sad. Not one British rider within 100 miles of even entering into this debate.

Just a guess but with there not being a limitless number of dates available, to re-run a play-off there may an "...in the event of a tie..." rule that favours the team with the higher league placing, or most heat wins, or something? The riders and staff obviously knew something to cause their jubilation.

They want to build a stadium that can bid for the SWC. Nothing has been awarded yet. We all know that the intention is to award it at some point, but will it be in 2016 or will it have to wait longer? The very interesting quote in that article is the one from Councillor Rosa Battle (what a name lol) - "The Belle Vue Aces are in on-going discussions with IMG on the potential for a five-year programme of World Cup-related events to be hosted at the National Speedway Stadium, including the World Cup Final.” - Five years of SWC involvement. So the British qualifier will be moved from Kings Lynn to Belle Vue then at the very least. And maybe for the first year all BV will get will be the British qualifying round to see how things go with a view to staging the final in 2017 when the venue has proven itself...who knows?

Quite correct. And just wait til they moan about the programme insert when the fixture eventually gets replayed. Can't wait to see the answer to this one... And another question for the pot, are 15 races at PL level worth more than 23 races at NL level? You paid about the same money, did you feel you got better or worse value for it?

If you are thinking of going, there are 3 realistic options: 1. Fly to Szczecin in Poland, hire a car there at Polish prices and it's an easy drive, for about 3 hours. 2. Fly to Berlin, and hire a car at German prices. It's less than 2 hours drive from there. 3. Fly to Hamburg and hire a car at German prices. It's about a 2 hours drive from there. Sadly Rostock does not have an airport connected with flights to the UK. Keep an eye open in case any of the budget airlines decides to re-open a route to Hamburg (Lübeck) though, as this will cut the traveling distance down by a lot. Ryanair used to fly to Lübeck but I gather that they discontinued the flights from there to the UK this year. Who knows what they may do again next year.

Here are some interesting links. The question now is, what is with all the Compulsary Striking Off shennanigans? Wouldn't it be interesting to see what the 2014 and 2015 figures would be for the "Debtors" which as this basically means SkySports, must be the value of the TV contract? GoSpeed Info at Companys House Check out the "Total Exemption" links for the 2011-12 & 2012-13 accounts Now it looks to my untrained eye here that this is a company where the "assets" are in the form of money owed to it (debtors) and that money owed is increasing year on year. Isn't there a point where money owed needs to be collected and counted as cash in bank, or spent on what it should be spent on? Terry Russell's previous company "Go Speed Ltd" ceased trading in 2010 - details here - one has to wonder where the new incarnation of Terry Russells company is going. With the apparent (and intended) beneficiaries of Go Speed being British Speedway, this is potentially concerning to all. Can someone who knows about accounting things kindly explain please?

I gather that for STANDING tickets on the grass bank, next year, they will be asking €60. Who knows what grandstand (or temporary grandstand) ticket prices will be. This makes Cardiff cheap in comparison. What on earth has gone on to cause this price to be decided on? Needless to say, my provisional plans to go have now been cancelled, and the German fans I was talking to in Gorzow are of the same opinion. Have the organisers & BSI really lost their marbles? They haven't just shot themselves in the foot but they've obliterated their foot with an entire artillery strike.

Looking at the fixtures... you have to hand this over to Rye House as Coventry still haven't arranged 2 of theirs (Eastbourne & Mildenhall) As they say, you've got to be in it to win it. With the cut off being the 13th, I'd fancy the Raiders to get more from 18 fixtures than Coventry to get from 16.

Zach has a career path that will take him to bigger and better things sooner rather than later. Wouldn't surprise me to see him a full time Somerset Rebel next year. Will that be an ultimate irony? Once a few deep breaths have been had this will all die down to become a storm in a tea cup.

Well done to the Birmingham Brummies. National League champions 1975 & 2015

Makes you wonder just how much is going on behind closed doors if the dirty linen is being washed in public with that statement. "Tip of iceberg theory" me thinks.

Now you see, it would make good promotion and marketing sense for the BSPA to get into bed with the NUS, so that students could get universal discounted admission, in return for cross promotion of the sport through NUS channels...but of course that requires a little foresight and work in setting the deal up. Young adults within a few years of being "full fare payers" are what the sport should be aiming at but no-one seems to be doing it. It seems that people of student age are not as important as small kids who are 10-15 years away from paying full fare at the gate. Work that one out.

Start saving then... I've been let into a fact by a PL promoter that I was chatting to that at PL admission price levels (full fare at his place = £16), the average cash in the till per supporter that the promotion gets is between £8-£9. That's the impact on a club's revenue giving discounts to pensioners is. There's a lot of places where pensioners make up the majority or a goodly proportion of the fan base, and where the "full fare" is paid by only a minority of supporters. I had to agree with him, it does not make for long term financial viability of the sport. Sounds from the above posts that there is a start being made to address this problem.