MattK

Or fingers crossed that Charles Wright is included. It also begs the question, why aren't Richie Worrall and Kyle Howarth in the draft, as both have lower averages than the top draft riders?

Category A will have ten riders. Don't forget, Swindon effectively have last choice as Poole, King's Lynn and Coventry all have protected assets. Worrall will be protected for Belle Vue, and I expect Leicester will choose Auty, Wolves will pick Roynon/Blackbird and Lakeside whoever Wolves don't have. That leaves Birks (who has already signed for Sheffield so can't ride for Swindon) and Ellis or Nielsen.

That's not a bad top 5, although Poole will use Pawlicki. We won't get Auty in the draft. If Charles Wright is in, it will either be him, Blackbird or Roynon, otherwise it will be Ellis or Stefan Nielsen.

What terrible logic. Teams will use the extra points to strengthen at the top, not to give team places to secondstrings from last season.

Why? I like the idea of one big Premier League, but not all the other pointless trophys and cups which time and time again have proved unattractive for fans. North and South leagues are win, but 20 fixtures is not enough, it needs to be half as many again. Each league needs a play-off with at least four teams, this keeps the season alive for as many clubs as possible. The aim should be to provide enough meetings so that riders can make a living in Britain without having to double up, down, left and right. If we get rid of the "top" riders then there would be no reason why clubs can't ride any night of the week they want.

Problem is, if we do start from scratch, who would be available. The pool of quality riders prepared to come to the UK seems to get smaller by the year. If Kildemand rules himself out and Batchelor/Doyle due to their GP commitment, it doesn't leave many options left.

The bit at the bottom where he says “I’m not sure what is happening next year yet but hopefully I will be back at the Abbey.” kind of makes you question the credibility of everything else he says in the article.

A lot of clubs wouldn't have access to their stadium on consecutive nights. Four example, Swindon hosts greyhounds on a Friday.

Here's a wacky idea. Why don't the BSPA produce a list of riders and the pools and let the fans grade them? They could even do it online. Then simply collate the results and assign riders into pools based upon how the majority of fans ranked them.

Woffinden had a poor season in Britain, but we all know he isn't a poor rider. He finished 6th in the Ekstraliga averages for example. Also, Woffinden is on the ascendency, whereas Nicholls and Harris are arguably declining year-on-year. If you don't set gradings based on opinionand "soft" measurements then you may as well stick with averages.

You have to grade riders objectively, otherwise you may as well stick to the lopsided averages. For example, Woffinden's average is 7.03, but he would be in Pool A, whereas riders like Scott Nicholls (7.56) and Chris Harris (7.49) would be Pool B and Simon Stead (6.92) would be Pool C

I do quite like that format. I agree with your assessment that the reserves are too protected and this format gives more balance.

What you need is grading AND a points limit. Grade the riders into five pools A, B, C, D and E. A is the out-and-out heatleaders, B is your second tier heatleaders, down to E which is your lower secondstrings. Each pool has a value: A = 32 B = 16 C = 8 D = 4 E = 2 The points limit is 62. This means you can have one rider from each pool. Alternatively, you could have three from pool B and two from pool D. Or two from pool B and three from pool C etc. This gives the teams an element of flexibility when team building.

a) It would appear that Brandon has been sold to housing developers (or someone working with housing developers) The current stadium is in what I would class as a fairly residential area, so it will always be at risk of redevelopment c) A location away from houses (what about on the boundary of the airport?) will be at a lot less risk of threat from developers d) My plan means the stadium is owned by the speedway and you're not at the mercy of landlords who may be motivated by different goals.

I agree that it's a ridiculous situation, but hasn't it been caused, at least in part, by having a cutoff of 28 August for team changes? With the playoffs running into the middle of October it is clearly too early to allow teams to adequately cover for injuries and other unexpected circumstances.

Bad news for Swindon. PK has stated his aim is to quality for 2016, so his priority will be the GP Challenge and SEC and Batchelor's league form suffered with his GP schedule. Personally, I'd give both of them a miss, although it doesn't leave us with many options.

Your best bet is to cut a deal with the developers. In exchange for backing the developers plan, the speedway receives a downpayment of 10% of the profits of the housebuilding, in order to build a new stadium elsewhere. Say the plan is for 400 houses, with a profit of £100,00 per house. That is £40m, so 10% would be £4m towards a new stadium. Didn't Horton have plans for some kind of motorsports complex in Peterborough? Transplant that to Coventry and get the council to provide the land. You'd get a brand new, purpose built speedway stadium with the club as landlords - for free!

Kildemand has stated that his aim is to make the GPs in 2016, so his schedule next year is likely to be as busy and less focused on Britain than this year. For that reason, I think we should pass. Troy, if he's not in the GP, I would have back, but not as number 1. Morris, yes. Worrall, yes. Gustafsson, no. Greaves, no. North. Not sure. He has ridden well at home, but is very inconsistent. I think the GPs will be too big a commitment for Doyle, so it's a no from me.

15/10/14 1930 Elite League Grand Final 2nd leg According to: http://www.speedwaygb.co/

The thing is, councils are increasingly being encouraged to sell their assets on order to keep council tax bills down. This makes is even more "strange" that Manchester City Council are prepared to borrow £6m, take on the risk of building a stadium and then leasing it to private company.

How many unique riders are there currently in the EL & PL?

I think 6,024 is the total capacity. Grandstand: 1,842 seats South stand: 3,248 standing North eastern and western: 508 and 426 standing There doesn't look to be much space for additional temporary stands. http://www.publicaccess.manchester.gov.uk/associateddocs/selecteddoc.aspx?106133-dsp-0001.pdf

It's Coventry and Eastbourne's to lose now. Lakeside seem to be on the way down after some early season form and Swindon are simply too inconsistent to maintain a challenge.

If you look at the most popular speedway game on Android, it has received over 50,000 downloads. Presumably also a similar amount on iOS. 3D games are easy to build if you have a good eye for design using an engine like Unity. Personally, I'd go for a management style game, rather than a racing game. If you had 2,000 active users paying just £1 a month, that's a nice little second income.

How did they change the rules?