AndyJ

Seems like only yesterday when I had the pleasure of witnessing a 16-yr old Joe Screen making his debut for Belle Vue. A debut that involved him winning his opening race in 62.2 (not a clue why but that race win stuck in memory and refuses to budge) and scoring a mightily impressive 10pts. Over the next few years his races were often worth the entrance money on their own. Absolutely breathtaking to watch him stalk an opponent for 3.5 laps before blasting round the outside and claiming a well deserved standing ovation. Still can't believe so many years have snuck by since then and that Joe's retirement is nearing. All the best Joe and thanks for the memories!

Seeing imaginary zeroes SCB?! Didn't the quote say 3-400?

Given that a drop from £17 to £10 would require either a 70% increase in adult attendance, a dramatic cut in costs, a lucrative sponsorship deal or some combination of the three methinks it extremely unlikely that promoters will ever price the product this way. A real shame because the product on offer and the facilities on offer are realistically only worth £10. Irrespective of the costs involved the simple fact is that £17 is considered overpriced by many potential customers. As an example I used to attend Belle Vue with 3 mates every week back in the days when we had Joe Screen, Jason Lyons, teams with 3 heat-leaders, a far healthy crowd/atmosphere and basically a far more entertaining experience. These mates drifted away after their college days but recently showed interest in popping along again - until they discovered the £17 cost and literally the consensus was "Ouch! How much?! £10 and we'd be there!". I didn't push too hard to persuade them because I feared that one experience of today's £17 racing would likely kill their interest for good. To me Speedway promotions have been squeezing the wallets of an ever dwindling band of die-hards for far too long. The costs have been driven down by diluting the standards yet the entry has continued to rise. I don't doubt that the promoters are having a torrid time with most losing money hand over fist - and dropping the admission would certainly add to their woes - but this doesn't change the fact that Speedway is dying on it's feet with crowd's worryingly low. Dropping the admission to £10 will certainly increase the crowds but, without the associated drop in costs, it'd be financial suicide.

EL and PL should be merged in 2014 as a £10 sport. NL is a £5 sport

Cheers Chadster. Was indeed Tokyo Melody I was thinking of (although I recall it sounding far more impressive blasting out of the Hyde Road speakers than it (Youtube upload) did when played via my laptop just now!).

Haven't trawled back through this thread to see if this has already been mentioned, but 'Fanfare for the Common Man' is eternally wired into my brain as a Speedway tune. Not one that is heard very often but the tune immediately conjures up images of the good old Hyde Road days. Quite a few 80's tracks do this too but annoyingly the songs/artists are refusing to co-operate with my memory. There is another one springing to mind that I can't for the life of me recall the name of. Perhaps some Belle Vue fan can make sense of my inane attempts at translating the tune into writing... Dum dum de dum dum Ner na ner na ner ner ner. Anyone?!

Isn't the point in the other thread the ALL posts should be a link to specific racecard - with zero discussion (and thus no requests)? Glad to see that somebody else (Phil) appears to prefer the old-style racecards. Consolidating scorecard and racecard into the one big mess makes it far harder to follow imho.

I recall reading an article from a former promoter who, when we hosted the World Final at Wembley, said his own share of the profits was enough to buy a couple of houses. I believe these events were promoted by the BSPA who then shared the proceeds and, theoretically, kept the money directly in the sport. Whether it was actually put to any good use for the benefit of British Speedway....?! Not a clue who promoted the one-off World Finals directly before IMG/BSI involvement though. Suspect it was on similar lines to the above but with some input from Sweden, Denmark and Poland?

Very unexpected news SGP and I can only hope that your sources are solid!

Not sure if there are any geographical limitations enforced but the excellent Eurosport Player (http://www.eurosportplayer.co.uk/subscription.shtml) for £2.99 a month (if you subscribe for 12mths) will give you access to the GP coverage. Not sure if WTC is also on Eurosport too...? As for the EL, I suspect that the only streaming you're likely to acquire would be 'pikey' versions of the Sky Sports coverage. Doubtful that EL promoters would see much value in selling streamed coverage.

As I understand it Ticketline (presumably whose office you were in when trying to purchase these tickets) were only provided with certain blocks/rows. I rang them to try purchasing as ticket as near to the start as possible- yet the best they could offer me were either corner or backstraight. Finally managed to source tickets in U9, courtesy of a BSF member, and there were hundreds of free seats behind us. Not quite sure who was actually selling these!

Watched the majority of the replay on Sunday and, aside from the fact that Scott and Sophie appeared to have been cut out of the shortened coverage (unless they were on before or after the segment I viewed) I was extremely happy with what the £2.99/month Eurosport Player coverage looks like. Wonder what the chances are of them stepping in to fill the breech if/when Sky drop league speedway.....? EDIT: yeah I know that the GP coverage involves them paying for a feed whereas league speedway would involve the expense of filming and producing - so probably not very likely at all....

No matter how hard a speedway rider works it is surely impossible to burn 1500 calories in such a short period of time. Perhaps if a speedway rider rode continuously for an hour then this figure would be believable - but 5 races or 5 minutes of effort?! No chance! A boxer apparently burns in the region of 1100/hour!

Whilst I don't doubt that racing speedway is physically taxing methinks Tai is exaggerating somewhat! A heavy person running at 8mph for an hour would burn less than 1500 calories. 5 minutes of speedway racing would burn far less than a tenth of that.

OK, perhaps flagship may have been the wrong word. What I meant is that British speedway is perhaps at its lowest ever point and this is a meeting where the bulk of our regular supporters are likely to be attending. Supporters who are already frustrated by many issues. A shambolic GP is hardly likely to improve this.

Fingers firmly crossed that this resolves it. Given the current state of British speedway we can I'll afford for our flagship meeting to be shambolic.

Cheers for your feedback both I've sent you a PM Phil....

Perhaps naively I rang Ticketline to try and purchase a ticket as near to the start line as possible; thinking that something must be available in the 8-11 range. All they could offer were L29, M16, U16, U17 and U25. Seemingly only certain blocks of tickets made available to them. With Ticketmaster no longer offering the tickets via online sale am I correct in assuming that the best chance of acquiring a half-decent ticket is (in person) from the WRU Store at the stadium? Anyone had any success in buying a decent ticket on the day?

I've sent you an email Rob (just in case it lands in your junk mail)

Probably not feasible because it'd require the official to be at the track much earlier. Doubtful that speedway officials are paid enough to negate the need to have a 'day job' - so the extra demand on time would most likely be problematic for them.

Can't argue with any of that (assuming the rulebook allows such an agreement to be made between both teams at such a late stage). I'd hope that, faced with such a decision, Poole would consider the bigger picture and act in the best interests of the sport rather than selfishly chasing the easy points.

Whilst it's hard to argue against the fact that a mistake was made and, applying the letter of the law, that punishment is deserved it does appear that Belle Vue are just the first to be 'found out' and being made the scapegoat in order to send a strong message to all. Assuming the "flooded track" story was concocted in lieu of any valid-by-the-rulebook cancellation reason, the biggest concern I have is that we may find the impact to be damaging to the sport. Personally I'd much rather a meeting featuring non-competitive teams be cancelled early enough to prevent travel by both sets of fans (riders flights being a separate issue) rather than pay to watch it. My view being that it is more damaging to have spectators paying good money to watch a weakened product. All clubs are struggling with sparse crowds and need the product to be as entertaining as possible. For the home team to field an understrength team, that is almost certainly going to be battered, is unlikely to be considered entertaining by the bulk of the paying customers....

Early 90's Kirky Lane with Kelly Moran, Joe Screen, Jason Crump and Tony Rickardsson. A track that these days is widely condemned but, having grown up with Hyde Road and shed a tear in the belief that nothing else would ever match it, I've got to give Kirky Lane some credit for some amazing racing over the years. Kelly Moran stalking and passing Hans Nielsen 4x in one match if I recall correctly. Joe Screen in his first spell with the club and regularly deserving standing ovations for some of his passes. Tony Rickardsson was involved in some of the best races I've ever seen- can't recall if Joe or Jason were the ones duelling with him. Tough call selecting just 4 with Andy Smith, Kaj Laukkanen and Jason Lyons also absolute legends at Kirky Lane.

Question: has anyone else taken out a Eurosport Player subscription (http://www.eurosportplayer.co.uk/contact.shtml) in order to watch the GPs via PC or tablet? If so, any complaints? I cancelled Sky in the mistaken belief that the GP coverage wouldn't be renewed and have no desire to re-subscribe. Looks like the £2.99/mth option for Eurosport could be a great alternative- albeit having to also pay separately for Android or iOS versions.

An independent adjudicator is a fantastic idea in principle but, in a sport that appears already to be sinking under the burden of costs, talking about adding even more is unlikely to find favour with the promoters. Who would take this responsibility and administrative overhead? How would they be funded?