cityrebel

Jon Stevens is organising the dons reunion. Jon has put in a lot of work trying to contact ex riders in the hope they will attend. He will also have a collection of Wimbledon memorabilia on display which I contributed to!

I always enjoyed my visits to Carmarthen speedway, in fact my in laws still live there. Crowds were never good at the showground, running on the same day as Newport couldn't have helped. Good luck with your attempts at a revival.

I have good memories of both tilehurst and smallmead. Both were pretty sparse stadiums and both attracted really big crowds in the boom time of the 1970's. Smallmead was the better shaped track, tilehurst was too flat for my liking, although it did have a great chip shop opposite the stadium. I wonder if it's still there!

That is modern speedway for you. For that reason I never travel long distance if there is any threat of rain

I never got to Sunderland, but I did see the gladiators ride at rye house in 1974!

i've seen all of those plus woffinden.

indeed it is. I was there that night, a very sad occasion for me personally.

Sad to say shads I have to agree with you. The crowds in the islands last NL season were poor, with a lot of mainlanders boosting the numbers. Two years on and the state of british speedway is worse than it was in 2013. Hopefully all the hard work that has been put in will be rewarded with more support from the locals.

I was at eastbourne on Saturday and rye house on Sunday. Both meetings had very poor crowds, I doubt if there was much more than 500 at both tracks combined. Freezing cold weather with a threat of rain is enough to put most people off.

that hole was still on the first bend last Wednesday!

The track looked overwatered to me last night, considering the freezing conditions it was never going to dry out quickly. This led to a few nasty crashes in the early heats, but there was some decent racing once the track dried out. The crowd was poor, but this was understandable due to the Artic weather!

I'm not too impressed with the 6pm start time for these sunday meetings. Not very family friendly for kids with school on monday mornings, or for the likes of me who has to be up at 5am for work!.

Well run meetings are what I want. I can tolerate a poor match as long as there are not too many delays. You can't legislate for crashes and medical issues, it's the extended intervals and multiple tractor breaks that annoy me.

i agree I was at rye last night, it would never have happened in Len silver's day!

Last nights rye v peterborough meeting was pretty decent, but I have to agree that the Leicester v swindon sky match was an absolute shocker.

The track at rye this season has been a bit too slick for my liking, although the wet weather hasn't helped. Eddie kennett seems to be the only rocket able to pass on a regular basis, so a bit more dirt wouldn't go a miss. On the plus side I'd like to say well done to the new promotion in getting the last two home meetings on, despite the rain and the dodgy forecasts.

Meeting off

we certainly saw a few 'take offs' at mildenhall yesterday Eddie!

japanese speedway used to be raced on Tarmac, surely this has to be the way forward if the sport is to survive in this country!

Rye house held their nerve on Saturday when every forecast said heavy rain near to start time. The fact that the rain moved into the midlands instead of going east was a reward for their efforts. I doubt if Len silver would have been so brave.

more like a dry month!

it was the same at lakeside on Friday mike. Poor crowd, flat atmosphere and awful opposition. I left the meeting thinking how can they charge this much for such a crap product, and more fool me for paying it!

well done to coventry for getting it on. If Brandon was a lot closer to home I would have made the effort to go.

i bet sampers would have known!

I just think that sky along with the majority of fans are sick of meetings being called off in this country. I planned to go to rye today, but over four hours of dry and windy weather was not enough to get the meeting on. I'm not having a dig at any track in particular, but if the promoters and the riders can't be bothered, why should us fans.