Brummies v Belle Vue Wed 20th June NL

[brianbuck]

When I first started following speedway in the early 1950's, teams consisted of 8 riders - 6 in the team-proper and 2 as reserves. The top 6 men each had four rides and the reserves two with the reserves allowed two extra rides each as a replacement for any of the top six who were out of form. The criteria for selecting the reserves was not based on averages though - any rider who had failed to achieve more than 50% of possible points over the previous 6 matches could be named as reserve. This gave considerably more scope to team managers' who to a degree could pick his reserves tactically.

This was surely a much fairer and better way of team selection - reserves could still be match winners without the nonsensical situation of taking part in nearly 50% of the heats, and a clever team manager could pick his team according to his knowledge of his own riders' like or dislike of a particular away track? 

An in depth re-think on both team selection and of the race formula wouldn't come amiss in my opinion.

[uk_martin]

Interesting thoughts Brian. Another alternative is what happens in Poland, where they don't have "reserves" as such, but instead the #6 & #7 in the team are "juniors", who have to be under 21. This year they have also introduced a #8 who can be a rider under 23, who doesn't get any programmed rides but can be used tactically as and when, I think.

Polish juniors keep their #6 & #7 slots irrespective of their success on the track. It's what was the making of so many of them, like Dudek and Zmarzlik. No added pressure too early, so they just kept on doing what they did, and the teams that unearthed the top juniors got the benefit of their endeavours too.

Mind you, how that fits in to the NL where ideally most of the team (other than the Stoke Pensioners) should be under 21, I'm not sure, but if there is a root and branch re-think of all the leagues then this ought to be considered as an option.