cityrebel

There are plans to stage some dragons amateur meetings at rye. Wether this happens or not, who knows. I think the first one is scheduled for the end of the month.

Only if you have deep pockets.

One home meeting in a month, when we are enjoying our best summer since 1976 says it all really. If people won't come when the sun shines, they never will.

I saw Nathan stoneman team ride home Alex spooner at Kent last night. So the art is still alive, you just don't see it very often!

If you charge top dollar for a crap product then people won't pay it. Wether it's in a department store, a food outlet or speedway. Joe public has had enough and is walking away. The promoters are not capable of grasping this.

Well before my time. I didn't go to my first meeting until September 1968. The firs looked like a good track though.

One of my local clubs rye house have gone. Lakeside and Eastbourne have one home meeting this month. What the hell is going on, do the promoters want to kill off what little fan base they have left. At least Len still runs regular meetings at Kent. No traffic jams tonight, please!

I have to agree, I know very few. The population has changed so much over the last 20 years, with a lot of Londoners moving out. I migrated to Surrey a couple of years ago, but I still work in London.

I'm pretty sure it was the British quarter final, that was abandoned due to a power cut. I remember going to the restaging on a Sunday that was won by Andy Grahame.

Isn't Friday 13th meant to be unlucky. Might be too suspicious to run on that day. Must be grounds for a call off.

The average age of the fans, will kill speedway in the end.

Everyone else did though. Rye has always been a marriage of convenience for South East speedway fans. That's why so many neutrals attended at weekends.

When Wimbledon reopened in 2002, The sport was given the keys to the crown jewels. The BSPA should have gone in there and layed a proper track and staged their top meetings there. The stadium was in good nick at the time with executive boxes for corporate customers. This was at a time when SKY were getting excellent viewing figures, and a track in London could have worked wonders for the sport.

Totally agree with you, we have always had good meetings and poor meetings. What we have lost is great big city venues. When you are watching a meeting in a big stadium, The sense of occasion can compensate for a poor meeting. A good example of this is Wembley, never a great race track, but always a good atmosphere.

When I worked at Wimbledon, we used to flood the track daily from Monday afternoon leading up to the meeting on Thursday evening, weather permitting of course. We had two huge water storage tanks under the centre green, which we used to fill the big water tanker to soak the track with.

5 - 1's in heats 13 and 15 made the score look closer. At no stage during the meeting did the warriors look like winning. With no tac subs in the NL, unless you have a high scoring reserve, there is very little chance of pulling back a large defecit.

There was some great racing on the island last night, but it seems that's not enough to bring the punters in.

I went a few weeks ago against Kent, and there looked to be about 200 there. A mixture of Coventry, Leicester, Kent and a few neutral fans, like me.

Too right, I cut my teeth as a kid at Wimbledon, Wembley and west ham. I was also a regular at white city. Let's hope Swindon can survive and prosper in a new stadium.

Back in the 1950's there were a lot of former speedway stadiums sitting idle, ready to go. These days those options are virtually non existent.

Would anyone support it though. Lakeside's crowds were terrible for NL racing last year. It's a big drop from top flight to third tier. I would go, because I watch speedway at all levels.

The land at Arena Essex has been sold for redevelopment, so it's just a matter of time before it joins the long list of defunct stadiums in the South East.

There was two ambulances and a paramedic land rover on the island last night. This is standard procedure for an NL club with very limited resources. An example to a lot of tracks, I'd say.

Why would anyone run professional Speedway there again, there is no money in it. You could run a few unlicensed meetings there like iwade and lydd, but what's the point. The stadium will probably end up running different types of motorsport with less financial risk.

I never expected this meeting to be on. I'm just surprised how long it took to pull the plug.