marko

It's certainly boring and predictable tonight, Nicholls had a good go in one heat and nearly caught Lawson after he tricked him off the white line

Track too dry, inside line or nothing!

There is one thing that has crossed my mind today, which is in the unlikely event work cannot start on the complex for another year plus, as the only tenants at the raceway, we could race any Saturday (every Saturday if the league was big enough) without any conflicts from four wheeled motorsport, clutching at straws a bit there but on paper that is currently our best case scenario, Saturday speedway at Arena, now that would be going full circle back to the late 80s when it was weekly on Saturdays at 7pm.

Yes it is a s**t hole but its our s**t hole, if I had Belle Vue or Poole on my doorstep I would go there but I don't, and unlike a lot of football fans, us speedway supporters follow our local teams.

Depends on Zach and Kyle, Zach has been very average at best when he has actually turned up for us lately whilst Kyle seems to be struggling due to lack of racing, all things being equal it would normally be a comfortable home win. No idea if the stadium is being used during the day but they will need to flood the track before hand, I wouldn't think about running junior races as they would be trying to race on a very wet track, probably too dangerous for their level of ability, of course it would be nice to give them the extra laps but it should never be at the expense of what people pay to come and watch and the track will require of a lot of careful detailing, if it starts dry then your down to the base in no time, and then your pretty much knackered. No mistake about it, its going to be a battle from now on in, to hold what support we have, every meeting has got to be on a good par or fans will walk away thinking, what's the point, it will probably close at the end of the season anyway, any vibe that the club is simply running down the clock even if they are not, would spell disaster for the already fairly poor crowd numbers.

In that case then we are probably knackered, but if you had told me back in the mid 90s speedway would still be going at the stadium in 2018 I would have been amazed so really I’m just glad it lasted as long as it did, no one ever really expected the place to remain untouched for ever.

That article mentions north and east, the raceway is actually west of the retail park and south west of the main shopping complex, so this is probably another area, maybe just maybe someone will buy the land who wants to improve what is already there, long shot? the complex needs serious investment though and more uses, its clear the family who currently own it were asset rich but actually in terms of cash were very poor, so the raceway was just left to get more and more run down. There are not many places you can visit having not been there for 30 years and say, ow this place hasn't changed one bit, Arena Essex is the exception.

Every Monday night, speedway dies another death.

The track looked more like a bigger version of Kent's, and with the same Len Silver preparation which is tarmac covered in a light dusting of shale, Dusting being the operative word.

Arena Essex is completely different, you cant have tractors going around whilst cars are racing a few feet away, that's dangerous, however I don't think there is any danger or a dog losing control and ending up on the speedway track (there is a fence there anyway) or a tractor ending up on the dog track , although if Swindon is like Romford dog track, they do have tractors grading and watering the sand based dog track anyway between the greyhound races. Don't even have to use a tractor, just use a hose on the bends, or how about buying some cheap sprinklers?

They cant water the track because of the dogs? I didn't know the dogs liked to use the speedway track and doesn't the dog track get watered? Poor excuse from Swindon

Dirty man Doyle, back to normal

I cant say what I think about that decision as I would be banned from here

who is the ref? its not Turnbull or Horley is it?

Dan would be better having a small track as one of his homes, he can cut it on the large ones but these smaller ones he needs to improve on to be a better all rounder, but time is certainly on his side. There isn't a club in the land who wouldn't want a Dan Bewley in their team.

This will sum up a lot of clubs seasons over the next month or two, dry warm weather and no speedway, then when meetings finally come around it will rain.

I am at home, I was being considerate and thinking about the poor sods there.

Its not going to stop raining, just call it off now and let everyone go home.

Ouch, yeah think your spot on there Steve, this looks dead in the water

yeah track looks very wet, but at least this track normally has dirt on it, a lot of them would be knackered because the rain on the slick surface would make it impossible.

FTG though could be the end result but that doesn't give a true picture as you can have FTG races where all four are very close but all riding the same line like they do in the early stages of the grand prixs hoping the guy in front makes a mistake but still not really threatening to pass, you can have FTG where the back two are strung out but the leader is under constant pressure from the guy in 2nd but can't nail it, and you can have FTG where all four are strung out. But you can also have close races where the guy behind is trying to pass but you can tell he is not going to be able to do that because the track has nothing, we saw a lot of this at Arena under Ronnie Russell and still do occasionally today where riders bust a gut around the outside but there is nothing for them, which isn't the riders fault, at best its miss judged track preparation and at worst its incompetent track preparation.

Maybe we have lost priority because we changed leagues? wonder then how that will affect the clubs who have had to move their race night this season due to the FRN, do they lose their race night priority because they had to move it through no choice of their own? Whatever it is, its a mess. When I first started going to Speedway, clubs like Arena Essex would run close to 23-25 home meetings a season, I don't recall them having problems fitting them all in, it was every Saturday at 7pm unless it was rained off.

I don't think Lakeside has had Saturday as their designated race since maybe 2003? and I am not even sure if it was Saturday that season. In my mind we have been a Friday night race track for a very long time, with a few Wednesday's thrown in a few years back when we had AJ for the first spell.

I think its time History started to take speech lessons, then it wouldn't need to keep repeating itself! I know this isn't a laughing matter, but in all seriousness how bad does it have to get before the BSPA actually say "now hang on guys, we need to start waking up and smelling the coffee here"?

I don’t know why Terry is having a go at Lakeside, I am pretty sure part of the agreement of Hammers selling Swindon Adam Ells would be to get Nick Morris on loan? Maybe Swindon even got Adam at a bargain price through that deal? And why is he complaining about Swindon not being able to race Friday’s when they had already been given a extra day (Thursdays) which is one more day than the other Prem clubs got?