Scottish Wc Squad

[Bavarian]

Great to see a response by Bert Harkins. However I am still at a loss if there is a Scottish national speedway team manager or not. Who could do the job to organise such Tests with either the USA, Germany or any other interested nation? Is it entirely up to the Glasgow and Edinburgh promoters? That's not ideal, since they would always have their clubs interests as a priority.

 

There should be someone (Harkins, or Dick Barrie or Kenny McKinna or who knows who) appointed Scotland manager and deal with the organisation. This would be the first and most important step towards international recognition of Scotland as a speedway nation of its own.

 

I don't think that the reason Scotland can not take part in FIM team events as a nation on their own has anything to do with not having an FIM approved speedway track in their country. Canada doesn't have one either for example.

 

The real reason is that the Scottish ACU isn't directly affiliated to teh FIM. The British ACU for the whole of Great Britain is, and since each federation are only allowed to enter just one team in the world cup, it is either England or Scotland, or as it now is Team GB.

 

The British ACU decided that for the inaugural year of the new look Speedway World Cup (SWC) to send a Great Britain team as their representative side rather than an England team. In earlier years the FIM allowed the British ACU to hold their own (UK) world team cup qualifying round involving the then still ACU affiliated Australia, NZ, England and Scotland.

 

In the World Pairs, on occasions the FIM even allowed the national federations to enter more than just one pairing. This happened with Sweden in 1972, when there were two Sweden pairs riding in a world Pairs Final. Sweden A and Sweden B even had a run-off against each other for the bronze medals. In those early years of the world pairs, when there were initially not a lot of nations interested to participate in thsi competition, the FIM allowed the ACU to enter up to four pairings representing the respective nations of England, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand (Wales was not considdereed to up to the neccessary international class).

 

This FIM policy changed in the mid-1970, when more of the continental nations joined in. And when in the mid 70'S Australia, and a few years later New Zealand too, broke away from the ACU in London and established themselves as independent FIM members, Scotland fell by the wayside.

 

Scotland never did what Australia and New Zealand did and remainded under the roof of the British ACU - and eventually got frozen out of international competition when the British ACU was restricted to just one entry in the world pairs and team events. England it was to represent the British ACU in the world team cup rounds against the now independent Aussies adn Kiwis, with the emerging USA taking the fourth spot that used to be given to Scotland in earlier years.

 

In theory, Scotland, England and Wales could still have held their own preliminary meetings to decide which of the home nations goes forward to the FIM rounds, but with England's domination this would have been no contest. So Scotland (and Wales were frozen out completely) until in 2001, the ACU changed their policy and decided to sent a Great Britain team instead of England to represent them in the future SWC. That was the end of the road for the England team, and that is the current status quo.

 

 

 

Let me tell You that in football there are several unrecognized "nations" (by the FIFA), who nevertheless organise their own international matches. For example Catalonia (A part of Spain, captial Barcelona) have their own national team and played against top teams such as Brasil to a sell out crowd of 100,000 at the Estadio Camp Nou in Barcelona last year.

 

Scottish speedway should follow this way, no harm done in trying to set up a national team. It worked well in years past (teh 60'S adn 70's), and it would give the riders and fans up north of the border something special. I am certain that Scotland's official test matches would be a tremendous success.

 

Scotland would also be welcome to visit Germany again. Get in touch with the German team manager Mr Schaefer, I sure something can be arranged. I'd love to see You come over here, though I'm not sure if Scotland away from home would be strong enough to challenge Germany? Maybe You should rather visit Norway or Holland instead?

 

 

[Topcat]

 

The SACU gives awards out to the speedway community at the end of the year. Why it can't go the whole hog and issue licences etc i don't understand.

Maybe now talks should take place to allow Scotland the chance to compete in the world arena.

[tomcat]

Would love to see a Scottish National team up and running again.

I can vividly remember those UK World Cup rounds held at Ipswich

in the 70's, when we had England, Scotland, New Zealand and

Australia doing battle.

Bert and Bobby Beaton stand out as the more memorable riders

for the Scots, along with I think, Jimmy McMillen and I cant remember

who else was in their team back then.... memory isn't what it was.

 

And I can even remember when those nutty Scots turned up wearing

their Kilts too, I'm sure I still have an old speedway star somewhere

with a picture of Bert Harkins sat on his bike wearing a kilt.

[Humphrey Appleby]

The SACU gives awards out to the speedway community at the end of the year. Why it can't go the whole hog and issue licences etc i don't understand.

 

The obvious reason is that the FIM recognises one federation per country, and the UK (actually Great Britain in the case of motorcycling) is the internationally recognised entity. It's important for international reasons that only recognised federations issue licences, otherwise you get into no end of confusion as to who's allowed to issue what.

 

Secondly, it's probably a matter of logistics and cost. Somebody needs to process the applications, and the ACU already has staff paid to do that. The SACU doesn't strike me as being well resourced as it is, and it probably isn't worth their while employing someone for the relative handful of licences it would process.

 

At the end of the day, a licence is a licence, and it really doesn't matter who does the issuing.

 

[Humphrey Appleby]

Scotland never did what Australia and New Zealand did and remainded under the roof of the British ACU - and eventually got frozen out of international competition when the British ACU was restricted to just one entry in the world pairs and team events.

 

Scotland wasn't in any position to do what Australia and NZ did. Whilst they originally fell under the ACU for historical reasons, they were independent nations and therefore fully entitled to separate recognition by the FIM. Scotland is not an independent nation, and no matter how much the nationalists may jump up and down, unless they gain independence or the policy of the FIM changes, then they're not entitled to separate representation.

 

Let me tell You that in football there are several unrecognized "nations" (by the FIFA), who nevertheless organise their own international matches. For example Catalonia (A part of Spain, captial Barcelona) have their own national team and played against top teams such as Brasil to a sell out crowd of 100,000 at the Estadio Camp Nou in Barcelona last year.

 

The problem is though, if everyone started doing this, international competition would be quickly reduced to inter-regional competition.

 

The UK home nations have separate representation in the sports that were first organised in the UK, and therefore were the only form of representative competition in the early days. For historical reasons they've been grandfathered into modern day competitions, but it makes no sense to introduce representative teams of constituent nations in sports that have no history of this.