European Club Championship

[MattK]

You're forgetting is the logistics of a Euro League. It's not like Champions League football, where all you need to do is shepard 22 men and a kitbag onto a private plane.

 

How are riders expected to move bikes, equipment etc around Europe for a single meeting? It wouldn't be cost effective to have a full setup in each country for one meeting a month, compared to the 4 or 5 meetings a month that they ride now in Poland, Sweden AND GB.

 

And what about the "attractiveness" of such a competition. For the football Champions League the attractiveness is getting to see players that don't compete in the Premiership, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Zidane etc. This isn't the case in speedway. Already the best riders in the world come to Swindon twice a season with only a very few exceptions. Where's the attractiveness of watching Swindon against a Polish team full of unheard of Polish riders?

[Kevin Meynell]

It's not like Champions League football, where all you need to do is shepard 22 men and a kitbag onto a private plane.

 

Yes, but you'd only need to ship seven (or even six) riders around. I'd imagine that you'd ship the bikes and equipment around by van the same way that they do now for continental meetings. Furthermore, you could reduce travelling by combining two or more away matches on each trip to each country.

 

Already the best riders in the world come to Swindon twice a season with only a very few exceptions. Where's the attractiveness of watching Swindon against a Polish team full of unheard of Polish riders?

 

I'd argue that by having less opportunities to watch the top riders, people would be more likely to turn-out and watch them when they did come to town. Variety is the spice of life, and one of the main problems with British speedway is that there's far too much repetition. We're so used to seeing the same riders over-and-over again, that fans have just become indifferent to watching them, whether they're the top riders or not.

 

As for watching unheard of riders, I think some of the most exciting meetings used to be the World Championship rounds when unknown (in the UK) riders took part. In any case, if you had a proper European League, you'd soon get to know who was riding for the opposition.

[TonyM]

You're forgetting is the logistics of a Euro League. It's not like Champions League football, where all you need to do is shepard 22 men and a kitbag onto a private plane.

 

How are riders expected to move bikes, equipment etc around Europe for a single meeting? It wouldn't be cost effective to have a full setup in each country for one meeting a month, compared to the 4 or 5 meetings a month that they ride now in Poland, Sweden AND GB.

 

And what about the "attractiveness" of such a competition. For the football Champions League the attractiveness is getting to see players that don't compete in the Premiership, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Zidane etc. This isn't the case in speedway. Already the best riders in the world come to Swindon twice a season with only a very few exceptions. Where's the attractiveness of watching Swindon against a Polish team full of unheard of Polish riders?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I take the point re distance by riders manage for one off meetings such as GP qualifiers, under 21s etc - if the money was there riders would travel

 

The attractiveness would lie in the fact that this would be the premier team competition in Europe, probably the only chance to see GP riders ride in a proper team event (dont count the world cup as this is individual format racing, but with cumulative scores)

 

You miss the point with your Swindon example, increasingly less and less of the top riders are riding EL and the gulf in standard between the top and bottom riders in the EL is getting larger. The Euro league would allow the GP riders to ride only Euro league (plus a domestic league if they wanted) with the second tier below the GP standard probably riding one domestic league (perhaps two) plus the Euro league, thus it would not be a team of unheard of Poles, we are talking about national leagues being more home based (not necessarily home nationality) so tell me who would be riding each week at Swindon then? This is the logical step to riders saying it is not worth travelling all over Europe EVERY week for the odd meeting without a big pay out thus we end up with the foreigners who are willing to travel who with the greatest respect are not always the best

[Mylor]

We'll agree to differ on the structure then Kevin, your assymetric full blown, full time Euro League on the North American pattern verses my 'Champions League' approach where teams compete in the 'EL' and Europe which will still allow for qualification, local derbies etc.

 

 

Yes, but it's unworkable in speedway because teams from different countries have the same riders.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You missed my workaround for this point posted a few days ago..........

 

I favoured a different route Matt, one where riders riding for more than one team would nominate which ONE of those teams they'd ride for in the European Club Championship.

[Kevin Meynell]

We'll agree to differ on the structure then Kevin, your assymetric full blown, full time Euro League on the North American pattern verses my 'Champions League' approach where teams compete in the 'EL' and Europe which will still allow for qualification, local derbies etc.

 

The best structure for a (theoretical) European League is debatable, although I think a North American structure would work better for an international league. It would still provide plenty of local derbies while maintaining national interests for as long as possible. However, the main point is that any league should be standalone to avoid having two competing 'products', namely an ECC and BEL, with one potentially being perceived to be inferior to the other. Look at the example of BEL and BPL tracks that also ran a BCL side. The BCL fixtures got much lower attendances because people perceived it to be a worse product.

 

You missed my workaround for this point posted a few days ago..........

 

I understood that, but whatever way you look at it, you're still effectively tracking different line-ups in different competitions. Where a rider was unable to ride for one team because they'd nominated for another team, you'd need to promote a replacement. If it happened to be your BEL No.1 that was riding elsewhere, you might prefer to also drop another weaker rider in favour of bringing-in two stronger second-strings. You'd very quickly end-up with somewhat different line-ups.

 

Like I said, parallel European and national competitions might work, but only if the European competition some sort of ongoing membership. You could use the national leagues for initial qualification and for determining replacement teams, but the bulk of the member teams would need to stay in European competition on an ongoing basis (in fact, this is how I think the UEFA Champions League should be run, with the UEFA Cup being used as a promotion competition).