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British Speedway Promoters Meeting


dantodan

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So it seems the 20 NL (or whatever) Brits are to be selected by Phil Morris and Neil Vatcher - the joint U21 Team GB managers - prior to the allocation!

 

Presumably those selected will have been spoken with first and only 'put forward' if they want to progress and agree to whatever the 'terms' are??!!

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will have to see what the actual format turns out to be but if you look at season ending teams theres only 3 teams who's top 5 were under 32 points funnily enough they were 30.68,30.61 and 30.51 the 2 highest were 35.61 and 37.09

if they were all under the 32 points then you could argue it was stronger next year but not looking at this years averages

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So all EL teams have to have two NL riders but PL teams don't? Some PL teams are going to have stronger reserve pairing that the EL!

 

Take out the riders not eligible for the NL any more and to get the 20 NL riders needed you're looking at rider on 6.00 NL averages in the EL. They're only just out of reserve in the NL!

 

I'd stick a couple of 3 pointers in my 1-5 personally, as they're going to wlak all over the NL reserve riders. Would give me loads of points for my top 2. Poole are laughing! Ward, Holder, Grajczonek, Howarth. Can fit in a 5 point man with that lot.

 

This is so bad it's actually funny.

 

 

 

I will be very interested to find out who proposed this rule, wouldn't mind betting its someone who has the best 2 NL riders already in place.

Edited by bigcatdiary
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This smacks of trying to keep the TV people enticed. We keep the attraction of the top stars (who still want to ride here), but cut costs at the bottom end of the team. Very much a fix for next season only, to keep the all important TV money. A lower points limit (as was rumoured) would have meant more of the top boys being forced out and would have made Terry Russell's salesman job all the more difficult.

 

If Sky do sign up again, does anyone want to hazard how many times Pearson - prior to the reserves races - says "their points count just as much as the heat leaders"?

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A few years ago didn't Mildenhall & Rye House get shafted because other promoters didn't like the fact that Jon Armstroing & Steve Boxall were doing well. Still, it couldn't happen again could it?

Premier League 2006 ... 3 levels of graded reserves A-B-C with each rider retaining his grade for the whole season and each team was limited to picking an A-&-C pairing or a double-B pairing ... it was announced after the 2005 BSPA AGM as a 2-year scheme for that league with the only re-assessment of grades (or forcing up into the main team) supposed to happen in the 2006-07 close season.

 

However, as you rightly say, Mildenhall's Jon Armstrong and Rye House's Steve Boxall each scored shedloads in every meeting and simultaneously had their A-grades stripped in either June or July with the whole system quietly forgotten about the following year instead of getting its originally planned 2nd season ... from what I remember, Boxall was averaging over 9 so had to go straight from A-grade reserve to number-1 !!

 

Even by the BSPA's usual dysfunctional standards this is a staggering decision to revive a failed Premier League reserve-grading system just 8 seasons later in the Elite League where the gap between the top riders and the bulk of the reserve-graders is going to be far wider than it was in that 2006 Premier League.

 

Jon Cook says the "top 20 young Brits" will be graded and allocated Elite League reserve places while the BSPA statement says "National League riders at No.6 and No,7" ... in practice, that probably means dishing out 10 A-grades and then regarding all the other National League riders as B-grades but only allocating 10 of them to start with.

 

But if the gradings are strictly limited to National League riders, are there actually 20 young Brits from this year's National League who'll be able to commit themselves to a mostly week-night schedule of 36 Elite League meetings while still fitting any National League or Premier League commitments around their jobs outside speedway that are vital towards funding their involvement in the sport ? !! ... actually, given an inevitable rate of injuries, you're either going to need a pool of about 26 graded reserves (so that you're likely to have at least 20 of them fit once the season's in full swing) or it'll boil down to about the best 6-or-7 A-graders and best 6-or-7 B-graders scooping up guest bookings galore as the crashes take their toll.

 

Stand by as well for guests and rider replacements galore in the Premier League (despite it being the best level for National League riders to steadily step up the ladder) because they'll still need to use the best National League prospects in the lower half of their line-ups but will now have a full-time double risk of losing those riders to injuries while riding for another club.

 

Overall, a lovely idea sitting round an AGM table on a chilly day in November ... spectacularly unworkable once the season's a few weeks old.

 

By the way, I love the BSPA's emphasis on Tai Woffinden working his way up from National League to World Champion as an example of how this daft idea can work ... they've conveniently overlooked that Tai's steady progress included his Premier League spell at Rye House rather than a fast-track into the Elite League ... in fact, Tai's first ever Premier meeting (at Sheffield, either on or a few days after his 16th birthday) saw him score 0 points from several rides and probably gave him one of his best-ever lessons in working his way up the ladder rather than being fast-tracked.

 

One final thought ... which A-grader or B-grader is going to be dumped just a few meetings into the new season to make way for Robert Lambert ? !! ... because he's bound to be in demand for one of these Elite League team places but doesn't turn 16 until early-April so is too young to take part in the early weeks of the Elite League campaign !!

Edited by arthur cross
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Someone has just put on Twitter, that the NL reserves will be graded A & B and those will be allocated to the teams by the Management Committee.

not very fair to the teams like Coventry and Kings Lynn who support riders by having NL teams and then don't get to select own riders

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