IainB

Poland have already announced their plans for 2027 regarding rider availability and we've done absolutely nothing to mitigate this by starting our league transformation a year before them, it's not even been addressed... we seem to be just blindly sailing on, full steam ahead 🚢🧊

I'd settle for a 2 year plan at the moment!

I'm not blind to the fact that Cardiff was well past its best, but it was allowed to become what it was... but it was still the biggest Speedway meeting in the world for many many years and brought publicity and awareness to our sport. I'm not going to go through all of the Manchester vs Cardiff arguments again but there's no escaping the fact that we've gone from the 2nd highest attended Speedway meeting of the year to bottom of the SGP attendances.

Quite easily, it's this year to year existence that has got us to where we are. They should be issuing a statement now addressing the current issues and putting the building blocks in place for 2027 and beyond, start by scaling back doubling up and introducing a proper youth system... that's just for starters.

Yes, all that... but think of the intangibles i.e. profile, awareness, press coverage etc.

What were the (monetary) costs of Cardiff vs Manchester?

Cheapest ticket was over £60 wasn't it?

I think Hancock did have quite a serious injury (an arm or a leg break), pretty early on in his career though... and didn't he have knee trouble and was one of the first to use the knee brace... memory is a bit hazy, it was a long time ago!

So actually Manchester was bottom and bottom but one with 6k and 5.5k... quite the fall from Cardiff when even at its worst, would have come in 2nd.

Come on let's face it the final is going to be Poland, Australia, Denmark & GB unless we have a mare then it'll be Sweden. That's why the 5 team format suited this competition so well and the reality is there's been no other contender nations come forward since the time the 5 team format was dropped, maybe Russia. This competition would be better run in a group format with the top team of each group being promoted with the bottom being relegated... imo

Storm Goretti has nothing on the storm Garrity has created... I'll get me coat 🥼

There's already numerous topics setup for the AGM... do we really need another one?

A completely different competition 😂 This sport of ours really doesn't do itself any favours with credibility. Might as well seed Ipswich to the final 🤷‍♂️

Please don't mention those 2 names in the Leicester section!

Remind me why Australia have been seeded to the final?

Hoped for... not promised

@THE DEAN MACHINE 👀 If you signed for Leicester we'd have been able to fit Max Fricke in!!! 😉😂

My guess is there's not going to be one as neither will happen.

What a low key statement with many questions still unanswered and nothing really to address the future of the sport other than business as usual. ... a possible 6th team 🤷‍♂️ ... a possible 3rd competition in the PL, maybe they're going to finish the Jubilee Trophy off?

Footballers are employees of the club though and not self employed. I do believe that riders becoming employees of clubs would eradicate a lot of the sports problems overnight... well never happen though

And his Bendy Bully 🐮

okay... give it a shot, and I am being serious, and stay on topic 😃 I think if it's positivity people are looking for, this isn't the topic thread for them. There's plenty of positivity during the season especially on the meeting topic threads, suggesting that once the tapes go up there's nothing much wrong with the sport.

How do you interpret it?

Surely you can't think everybody has done a stellar job and the sport is going from strength to strength?

Yeah, give me the PL featuring no show Ben Cook at No1 (or Jack Holder or Brady Kurtz... or insert the name of your favourite No1) backed up by Joe Thompson and Sam Hagon at reserve 😁