IainB

Funnily enough... been there done that when I used to follow Cov, turned round at Gatwick, not ideal but something I accept as a Speedway fan with actual real rain... you know the wet stuff that falls from the skies Year before last... turned around at Carlisle when the Glasgow v Leicester final was called off due to wet rain, had the journey back in the Friday rush... then went again on the Tuesday! Once did a Good Friday a number of years back... KL in the morning, Cancelled, Ippo in the afternoon, heavens opened in the car park, off to Arena for an evening kick off, cancelled, went for Peterborough on the way home, rained off!! I'll never forget that day!

We've already established that @bigcatdiary doesn't know what a good speedway race looks like.

Tell me I'm wrong

And yet the match before last where we had to wait for the tractors to do their stuff produced some cracking racing... and the meeting after on a beautiful summer's evening didn't produce one good race worthy of the name... Go figure

It's on until it's off LEICESTER: Hans Andersen, Dan Thompson, Kyle Howarth, Nick Morris, Ryan Douglas, Joe Thompson, Zaine Kennedy. EDINBURGH: Sam Masters, William Lawson, Kye Thomson, Josh Pickering, Richie Worrall, Luke Crang, Nathan Greaves.

Bloody hell Lenny you sound like me! Where's your glass half full mentality?

They are, but there are only so many left between now and the end of the season and with clubs calling matches off on a whim (forecast) the fixtures soon start to pile up. You then only need a rainy October and you're left in this situation Below is what was cancelled in October 2019 due to actual real rain. Premiership P/O SF National League PO SF British Youth Championship Round 7 National League Riders' Championship Premiership P/O SF Premiership Supporters Cup Championship KO Cup Final Premiership Grand Final.1 National League Grand Final.1 Championship Grand Final.1 Championship KO Cup Final British Youth Championship National League Grand Final.2 National League KOC Final These should all have been plum events attracting big crowds yet were probably re-arranged on off race nights on wet tracks in front of inferior crowds

Like I said it's far easier for Poland to rearrange fixtures with them having first dibs on all riders, fixed race days and no doubling up. Take a look at the latest met office forecast for Eastbourne on Saturday night So now we're running a sport for the ease of the promoters?

They're rebranding to the Eastbourne Groundhogs... I'll post weather updates tomorrow, I only live a mile and a half away from the stadium

I understand both exception and norm. At the moment as I see it there is no rule, so a club can cancel a meeting at the drop of a hat, it might work for them but what about the away team? Look at Eastbourne vs Birmingham, what if this cancelled fixture is the deciding factor in whether Birmingham make the play-offs and survive as a club? What if other clubs take a leaf out of Eastbourne's book and don't want to host Birmingham? So without some kind of forfeiture this could well become the norm and not an exception.

But has Meg done a forecast for Lublin on Saturday night?

There's a woman in Eastbourne with a groundhog apparently

The way out is for the cancelling club to forfeit the match 0-75, 4 league points to the opposition if called off more than a specified time before the event.

I often hear the bikes going around Leicester during the daytime

It's not "rained" off though is it... it's "forecasted" off... anyway forecast off back to your Peterborough thread Sorry, couldn't resist that.

3 days out in a country notorious for its inclement weather, Wow! You'd never get a season completed if every club were allowed to do this unless they were to forfeit the match.

I hope you've given that finger of yours a good rest overnight and I know we can keep this to and fro jousting up without being disrespectful or hostile... But I'm not stirring it at all, I am in fact semi serious. Now we both know clubs are not going to get £300m each but from what RobGod was saying money is available to be applied for. I'm not going to use the word promoter but club owner, if you're a club owner at the moment there is no way out, even Matt Ford can't offload the Manchester United of Speedway, the only option he's got is to make the best out of a bad job and run his club according to the crowds he gets. At the start of the season you had the madness of clubs opening up under Covid crowd restrictions that they should have known damn well they couldn't sustain... and out came the begging bowl for some of them. If you can't sell your club and you can't make it pay on the crowds you are getting (for whatever reason) and there appears to be no plan to MSGA (Make Speedway Great Again) then you either close... or seek a coronavirus loan, if the government are stupid enough to loan money to failing businesses in a failing sport they can't really expect to get their money back and I can't see how the directors would be personally liable for that loan. There will be businesses out there (not Speedway) that will be taking Coronaloans, paying themselves a big fat salary, paying back director loans etc. and syphoning money out of their businesses, that's up to them and it's not what I'm suggesting Speedway should do. When I say let the administrators run the sport after it's all gone bankrupt, well my tongue is half in my cheek when I say that as really it's what's needed to get the sport back on the straight and narrow. So the choices are close (losing your money), make it pay (which most clubs can't) or take the loan and worry about it later and hope for a miracle that turns the sport around into a profit making business so that you can pay the loan back.

So Eastbourne are not only consulting mystic meg for the weather in Eastbourne and the Radio Times for the TV listings... they've now got to ask mystic meg to put together a forecast for Lublin on Saturday night! What if that's rained off?

I've said before, if you're going to quote me have the decency to @ me. If you don't think that was a good Speedway race you don't like Speedway! That was a better race than anything served up in the gate and go fest of Peterborough's last home match... which was so long ago I can't even remember who it was against. ... And I'm still waiting for anybody to suggest a cut off time of how early it is acceptable to call a Speedway match off based on a weather forecast.

What exactly was the point? What do you consider a bumper crowd. All I said was a bumper crowd is relative. It may be a bumper crowd compared to those they were getting while under covid restrictions but they certainly ain't bumper compared to even 10 years ago. Just joining the simple debate, no need to be condescending

I also run a limited company and like you would never dream of doing such a thing and I am of course (half) joking... but we have seen shady dealings by some promoters in the past. DogFartGate, JackHolderGate And I have a perfectly good Snooker Cue thank you very much!

Not bumper relative to 10 years ago

I don't see how you can go to jail for your limited company not being able to pay a loan back. The whole point of a limited company is the limited liability of the directors... which is why so many directors will be taking loans, paying themselves a handsome salary and then declaring bankruptcy. The government will end up writing all that debt off

There's only Jack Holder who rides Ekstraliga isn't there? Race nights, like Neil Watson has said, its to enable doubling up. But if postponing on forecasts becomes common place there's no way other clubs will be able to complete their fixtures