marko

Not read through all the posts but want to touch on what White Knight said a couple of pages ago, he summed up my thoughts when i read the statement about these young riders no doubt going out to buy the best and fastest bikes they can and then racing above their level of ability and end up injurying themselves and possibly others. Not against the concept of pushing the younger riders but like everything with the bspa its always done in a way which suits them first and the sport second. One other thing, all very well having these new rules but whats going to be done to improve the match day experience? if meetings are still going to be long drawn out affairs on poorly prepared tracks with little or no entertainment then what is the point.

After the storms on Monday i wonder how many tracks have suffered damage and how many have been improved by it, by nearest track is Arena, no need to say which is the more likely outcome there then.

Would not be surprised if sky did have a problem with crowd levels at meetings they show, after all most sporting events are made to look better when there is a good atmosphere, a great race can only look so good if no one is there to see it and for the people at home tuning in its going to be a case of what is that? well there is hardly anyone there so it can't be that good, i will switch over. Said it once and i will say it again, the promoters got greedy, they took the money and ran instead of taking the ball and running with that instead.

Would like to make a comment on the point Arthur Cross made about where the next generation of promoters will come from. I immediately thought of the late great John Berry when he said that and about how back in the day someone young with vision was looked upon in a not too nice way by the powers that be! The bspa has always been a closed shop and it probably always will be, which is why you will never see an independant body in charge of the sport. But this is what the sport needs, younger minds with visions and the ability to think outside the bubble that the bspa have long been trapped in.

Lakeside have been getting decent crowds the last couple of months but nothing spectacular i would say but for the first couple of months and the 1st meeting in June when it was on sky the crowds were well down below what would be perceived as average. No idea of actual numbers but overall the pattern is not good because the drop off when the weather is not good or there is no kids a for quid deal is quite alarming.

Like others have said its down the promoters that the sky link up did not work, they had a great opportunity to show their product off but what did they do? The carried on making no more effort than normal to prepare tracks that would provide good racing and 95% of the time offer no incentive for people come to and watch rather than sit and home. Week after week after week, they just accepted the fact hardly anyone was going to turn up, it could not have bothered them too much otherwise they would be begging for sky to stay away as it costs them money. In short they simply took the money and ran and sod what happens in the future.

I always used to be keen on collecting programmes, there was a program I really would have liked to have got last season but they sold out and never done a reprint, I think being a lakeside fan you will all know the meeting I'm referring to. A few weeks back I turned up for a meeting a despite only a fairly average crowd they had sold out of programmes so I improvised and used my phone to keep track of results, in the end I figured what's the point in wasting £2.50 every time so now I don't bother, that's at least £35 a season the club has now lost. The trouble is programmes in general are a rip off and promoters rely on people wanting to collect them and refuse to publish team line ups to try and prevent fans making their own ahead of time.

Tac subs in the WTC are fine, Jokers are not and for the very same reason they should not be used in league racing but we all know the promoters will never get rid of them because its a way keeping scores artificially close without having to pay the riders more money.

Spot on Steve Brum, we go to watch Racing not this load BS, if this starts happening in league racing i would stop going tomorrow.

Exactly right Brummie it just goes to prove how much of a farce double points are, will Nicki be paid for coming 2nd thats the question?

Chris Gay got himself in a right mess with that heat but to be fair it did not help that the incorrect flag was shown to the rider in yellow, he was shown the chequered flag when he still had one lap to go having fallen earlier in the race, the ref actually robbed Shane Hazeldon of extra points because there is a small chance he could have got to the line ahead of Ben Holloway who was given 2nd even though he was 3rd when the ref incorrectly put the red lights on.

MJJ just F-Bombed again lol

These Polish team managers have a lot to learn from us when it comes to phone abuse, got to throw that thing down and follow it up with a curse word

who is this mickey mouse team we now have on

is it me or did Jensen just drop an F bomb

we wont be seeing a track like this tomorrow night thats for sure

LOL

If they dont get rid of the joker they should at least rename it as right now it has "its a knock out" written all over it and makes some aspects of the sport look like a joke. But here is strange thing, your also allowed to use a tactical sub so why cant we go back to this in league racing if its good enough for the WTC?

Very good meeting and i give it 8/10 would have been a 9 if it had been a bit closer at the end but thats life, Poland are truly the dominant force.

British Speedway now effectively 6th in the World, what a sad day for the sport in this country.

The closeness of the scoreline kept it interesting yes but from a racing standpoint there were only three passes all night, had this been a Lakeside sky meeting people would probably be riping it to shreads for being boring and ultra slick, i say this strictly as a neutral because i have no empathy with either side, the Heathens fan clearly enjoyed themselves what with getting the win and their riders done well adapting to this often hard to learn track.

Congrats to the Heathens on their win tonight, they did deserve it and their riders all got to grips with the track well. However i must say i dont know what the crowds have been like at Rye House for Hawks meetings but tonight i would be surprised if there were much more than 300 fans in attendance and that was with a decent few from the Midlands.

Probably worth pointing out that being a bank holiday and the start of a school half term the roads will be even worse than on a normal Friday evening so what ever figure you have in mind for getting along that stretch of the M25 i would at leaast triple it, its not unheard of for the whole area around Jnc 30 to get completely gridlocked on these occasions (roads directly surrounding stadium included) i only have to go from Chelmsford and i dont use the M25 going there but will still need to allow best part of 80 mins to get there if history repeats itself.

Crowd likely to be pretty poor i would think, of the 8 or 9 i stand with only maybe two or three are even considering going, the rest have said they are not interested in the Hackney stand alone meetings at all. For anyone coming to this one suggest a pretty nifty get away if you can especially if you need to go home via the M25 anti clockwise and if the meeting can be done and dusted before 9:45 as there is currently road closures being imposed around the area after 10 at night (mainly slip/access roads) and its an absolute pain in the neck if you need to go anti clockwise on the M25 because they send you over the border into Kent in order to effectively do a U turn, i went a quicker way last week but still ended up taking me over an hour to do a simple 30 min journey.

Was not at Rye House last night but do intend to follow Hackney when they are racing from Lakeside, I think the team has got a ton of potential in it and hope it does get well supported, hopefully too some more merchandise will be made available because although ive always been 100% Arena Essex/Lakeside im quite happy to through my weight behind this venture and support the Hawks.