IainB

You're no oil painting yourself

What's the weather forecast looking like?

Have you any idea how much a 2 minute clock costs? Maybe they could do like they did with the track covers and ferry it about between clubs... come to think of it, whatever happened to the track covers? Maybe it's with Colin Meredith's elastic band starting gate mechanism replacement kit

I've been watching the "rewind" meetings on the British Speedway YouTube channel... I thought it was quite comical watching last night's Coventry vs King's Lynn match from 2011 with riders seemingly attached with invisible elastic to the tapes as they kept rolling backwards and forwards to and from the tapes... And the week before Danny King quite clearly exceeded the 2 minutes time allowance before the first running of the final... Like in society at the moment once you let these little things go anarchy soon prevails

I know it can't be helped... but isn't it ironic that the BSPL went with the Eurosport TV deal to attract Polish viewers & sponsors and we in Britain all end up watching Polish speedway on Premier TV

From what I've seen so far (on Premier/FreeSports)... there has been some close racing, no more than British Speedway though IMO, there was a close last heat decider last night but ironically the racing wasn't up to much. It's probably the atmosphere that makes it, when the stadiums are full, I watched the footy last night, the first half with "canned laughter" the second half with actual stadium noise and it really was "a game of 2 halves". You can include in the atmosphere, for a TV broadcast at least, the commentator and as with everything else, that's personal opinion... some people on here even watch it with Polish commentary!!! I do feel he's been given a tough job to do on his own... Tonder and lightening did make me laugh out loud though I think the tractor racing Mike is referring to are the track grade/watering breaks which seem to happen for 6 or 7 minutes after every 3 or 4 heats. I must admit I can't say I'm too keen on the race format in the Polish league, the riders seem to come out in different pairings for every race. This can't lead to great team riding and I wonder if this had anything to do with the Lambert/Lebedevs clash the other night. Also, from what I've seen on the UK coverage, the riders don't seem to have much personality, with the exception of Leon Madsen who actually turns to the camera and interacts... we often see the back of a riders helmet as he rushes over to the TV to watch how brilliant he's just been

Did it even rain do we know? Nobody knew if it actually rained when the last round's matches were called off a day prior

Holder's hardly "one for the future" though is he... he's been in decline since he won his world title. Will Holder score well? Worth a punt I suppose. Like this country, they do seem to be tying themselves up in rules, for what should be a relatively simple sport... all this business of getting Ruskies on Polish passports etc. Maybe... it'd be nice to see though wouldn't it? That's the beauty of riding Speedway on track instead of a forum

I suppose it depends on what your definition of world class is... For me I'd say somebody who genuinely was in with a shout of becoming world champion. So I'd say Gollob, Hampel, Dudek & Zmarzlik... I know KK finished 2nd one year but could you honestly see him being world champ?

I'm not suggesting that GB have done any better, clearly they haven't. Robert Lambert is nowhere near world class yet in my opinion... that's not to say that this season he won't make the breakthrough to become world class... just like Leon Madsen and Jason Doyle (to name 2) did a few years back. So far he's had 2 matches, 1 excellent and 1 average. All I'm saying is that a lot of these young Poles are (may be) overrated by some people at this stage of their careers, we just don't know yet. Again I say 2 world champions in 20 years... compared to 12 WU21 titles in the same period... surely they must be wondering where it goes wrong for their riders when they join the big boys?

No I'm not, on the face of it they do have a good crop of riders, Zmarzlik, Dudek, Janowski... the rest aren't what I would call "World Class". I was brought up on Speedway in the 80's when the Danes truly were dominant. Erik Gundersen, Hans Nielsen, Jan O Pedersen and Tommy Knudsen all genuine contenders for world titles and 3 of them managed to achieve it. They would win the individual, pairs and team world events... true domination. You look at the Polish league and most of the big hitters are foreigners. I just think we can get carried away sometimes declaring everybody to be future world champions when often times riders come from seemingly nowhere. I'll admit they do seem to produce quantity... not always quality. For every Drabik, Kubera and Smektala, I'll give you a Dawid Kujawa, Karol Zabik and Robert Miskowiak. A good junior doesn't always lead to being world class... or anywhere near it All they had to do was stop holding it in Poland with them being seeded through to the final

Polands "dominance" of a competition that was last run over 2 years ago and they only consistently win on their own tracks?

So Lambert excluded?

Are you suggesting that the ref should have stopped the race prior to Lambert doing a blatant left on him and excluded Lebedevs for inconsiderate riding?

That was his brother If they don't fancy him now... wait until it rains I'm new to the Polish league but from what I've seen so far "left turns" seem to be accepted common practice in Poland

Lambert's fault 100% rode straight across him halfway down the straight... his own team mate too! Who did the ref exclude?

It's still very early days in the season don't forget. It's only everybody's 2nd match. However much they've been practising it's no substitute for actual racing. And with statements like that about Ivan Mauger, however many world titles he won you do appear to be living up to your username

I was thinking to myself last night I wonder if the team managers are under as much pressure in Poland as the riders. With the riders it seems that if you have 2 duff rides you're out of the meeting, maybe even the team. Is there a high turnover for managers in Poland or is it like in the UK where you've got the job until the manager decides he doesn't want to continue?

I think the Drabik error was more due to the track having just been watered than him looking for Woffy... he was probably looking to see if Woffy was going to hit him.

You only have to visit a British GP to see that a lot of Poles have little consideration for others

Seriously? That's pretty poor... the laziest form of journalism. You see it a lot these days on the newspaper websites when they're looking for public reaction to events they just hit Twitter and do a copy & paste job.

Looks like Premier Sport have dropped all of the Sunday evening fixtures... also no mention of tonight's https://www.premiersports.com/our-sports/polish-speedway

fair enough... like I said it "looked like" he refused after heat 2

Who is their programme controller Mr Michael Mouse? From what I've seen of Premier Sport so far I can't see myself subscribing again next year (assuming there is live Speedway to attend), missing the first heat of a match, total confusion over the scheduling, EPG not being updated, insufficient commentary "team" and that's after just one week. There seemed to be hell of a lot of "left turning" in yesterday's meeting also From the UK coverage it looked like young Lampart refused a TV interview after he'd tried to put young Karczmarz into the fence. I remember it being reported back in the day that riders in the British League used to refuse TV interviews and that was one of the reasons why British Speedway was absent from the TV screens from the mid 80's until 2000. It looks like a new breed of prima donna maybe being brought up in Poland... they should not bite the hand that feeds them as unlikely as it seems at the moment, the TV coverage may not always be there. Abuse on Twitter (or any other forum) is absolutely out of order... but Dave Goddard did say in a previous tweet that "EVERY" Friday and Sunday match would be shown live, he also says "I do not control what is shown on our channels", while I accept he has no control over scheduling and he was told that every Friday and Sunday match would be shown live, he does use the phrase "our channels" indicating he is a Premier Sports employee and therefore I do feel complaints (not abuse) are valid so he can refer them back to the "powers that be"... just in the same way I would complain to any company employee if I thought I wasn't getting the service I was promised for them to feed back.

Is ZG v Czes only being shown at 12:45 am Monday?