Birmingham Brummies 2019

[IronScorpion]

4 hours ago, HGould said:

BSPA have stepped in and told Swindon that Brummies have priority as Friday is CL priority day.

Told you so.

Rule 16.1.1

[the hobbit]

The facilities are on the whole very good but, there is no real outside seating. There is however an excellent indoor restaurant with superb seating and viewing 

car parking is available at the stadium for a small charge but spaces are limited

mist people park at the one stop shipping centre snout two minutes walk from the stadium and it is free 

[*JJ]

29 minutes ago, the hobbit said:

The facilities are on the whole very good but, there is no real outside seating. There is however an excellent indoor restaurant with superb seating and viewing 

car parking is available at the stadium for a small charge but spaces are limited

Most people park at the one stop shipping centre about two minutes walk from the stadium and it is free 

Alternatively, I park in the Walsall Road outside the tile warehouse: much easier than the One Stop.

[Pieman72]

I went to Birmingham Speedway last year the facilities were awful  and for two of us potentially a very expensive night out consuming rubbish. Never to be repeated. Can I add the Greyhound company are responsible for the facilities.

[Sings4Speedway]

35 minutes ago, Pieman72 said:

I went to Birmingham Speedway last year the facilities were awful  and for two of us potentially a very expensive night out consuming rubbish. Never to be repeated. Can I add the Greyhound company are responsible for the facilities.

By facilities do you mean food? Not sure ive heard the facilities at Birmingham been called rubbish before by anyone (except for the old 2nd half pits and even thats been resolved) 

[ProudtobeaBrummie]

4 hours ago, Pieman72 said:

I went to Birmingham Speedway last year the facilities were awful  and for two of us potentially a very expensive night out consuming rubbish. Never to be repeated. Can I add the Greyhound company are responsible for the facilities.

If you like to sit in the warm and watch the meeting there is no better track around than Perry Barr the grandstand is tiered with plenty of tables and seats that can accommodate approx 800 people although the stadiums wiki page states it can accommodate 2000. Toilets and clean and tidy both upstairs and downstairs .There is a bar for drinks both upstairs and downstairs which is very pricey £4.30 a pint .Food outlet is located downstairs does hotdogs,burgers,chips etc again over priced not eat much from there but its pretty standard for events cantering .There is now a small hut on the terrace outside where you can buy club merchandise and race programmes (which can also be purchased at the turnstiles) . overall all the facilities are decent . The prices at the bar and food outlets are set by the GRA and we have tried numerous times to get them more affordable but they wont budge. The temporary stands ,pits area,merchandise hut , turnstiles ,changing room ,junior pits,track,kick boards and all the machinery are Maintained and owned by Birmingham speedway and a lot of hard work has gone in over the winter by officals and supporters to maintain these.

Would you care to expand on what was so awful about the facilities and we could pass it in to the management .They are always after feedback and are always looking to improve the supporters experience.  

Edited April 18, 2019 by ProudtobeaBrummie

[ProudtobeaBrummie]

On 4/12/2019 at 11:28 AM, Pieman72 said:

Has anyone been to Birmingham Speedway recently? What are the facilities (i.e. food, drink, cover, seating, spectating) like now?

I think you may of been caught out here pieman little bit sad really .

So you went last year but a week ago you was enquiring what the facilities were like hmmmm. 

Edited April 18, 2019 by ProudtobeaBrummie

[The Dog]

On 4/18/2019 at 12:15 PM, Pieman72 said:

I went to Birmingham Speedway last year the facilities were awful  and for two of us potentially a very expensive night out consuming rubbish. Never to be repeated. Can I add the Greyhound company are responsible for the facilities.

Intrigued to know how you think the facilities are 'awful'? Birmingham has a superb grandstand with excellent viewing, toilets are always clean and indoors, and the eating area is always clean with plenty of seating. 

[Pieman72]

If you do nothing else it''s probably affordable but we also do Grasstrack, Drag Racing and I Mountain Bike and Run. £4-50 for a pint is extortionate and £50 for us to have a seat is a bit unreal. Am I right in saying that no food or drink is allowed in the stadium other than what the caters sell? We tend to avoid eating fast or processed food particularly chips.

Edited April 19, 2019 by Pieman72
Grammar

[The Dog]

£4.50 does sound a tad expensive but is probably in line with most stadiums/events nowadays. Can only suggest that you fill yourself up before the meeting and hope you survive the 90mins or so without the fear of malnutrition my friend.

[ProudtobeaBrummie]

21 minutes ago, Pieman72 said:

If you do nothing else it''s probably affordable but we also do Grasstrack, Drag Racing and I Mountain Bike and Run. £4-50 for a pint is extortionate and £50 for us to have a seat is a bit unreal. Am I right in saying that no food or drink is allowed in the stadium other than what the caters sell? We tend to avoid eating fast or processed food particularly chips.

Yeah running costs a arm and leg these days hahahah. Yeah your right though you are the only person who attends or has attended Birmingham speedway who has other hobbies because were all a bunch of saddos who only have speedway in our lives.

You clearly have a issue with Birmingham speedway for what ever reason and to be honest it rather unhelpful and harming. It is also not true .It costs no extra to sit in the grandstand my father sometimes does both if it gets a bit nippy after the interval. Its costs £50 a season if you would like a table of 6 reserving and that is for the whole season which works out to around 60p a meeting per person roughly. There are plenty of other tables and seats where you can sit for no extra charge.

So your moaning about the cost of food you dont even consume unless you go to perry barr that is for some reason bit odd that.

To be honest i dont actually believe anything you have said so what sports  stadiums lets you bring your own food and drink in please ? To be honest my Dad and his pal always bring a flask and i always bring food and juice for my young boy and no one has ever said anything.

As for the price of beer if you want a cheap pint pop to the weatherspoons over the road but the vast majority of people go to watch the speedway .

[ProudtobeaBrummie]

7 minutes ago, The Dog said:

£4.50 does sound a tad expensive but is probably in line with most stadiums/events nowadays. Can only suggest that you fill yourself up before the meeting and hope you survive the 90mins or so without the fear of malnutrition my friend.

They own i think 6 or 7 stadiums and the price of everything is set nationally. The club have and are in continuous talks with the owners to address this issue but they just wont budge i am afraid. 

[cityrebel]

43 minutes ago, ProudtobeaBrummie said:

They own i think 6 or 7 stadiums and the price of everything is set nationally. The club have and are in continuous talks with the owners to address this issue but they just wont budge i am afraid. 

The GRA only run Perry Barr and Belle Vue now, and the latter is due to be redeveloped. I'm pretty sure the council own the land at Brum, otherwise that would be flogged off as well, just like Hall Green.

[Pieman72]

I think is is listed as a Heritage site?

Edited April 20, 2019 by Pieman72

[Pieman72]

17 hours ago, The Dog said:

£4.50 does sound a tad expensive but is probably in line with most stadiums/events nowadays. Can only suggest that you fill yourself up before the meeting and hope you survive the 90mins or so without the fear of malnutrition my friend.

I'd suggest you go to Coventry but it has closed.

[brianbuck]

It's unfair to criticize the GRA over bar prices at Perry Barr. They also think that these are too high but they have no option but to charge what their London masters say that they have to charge. The GRA now only operates Belle Vue and Perry Barr as has been said, but they are not an independent organisation - they are owned by a larger London group called RCP, but as far as Perry Barr is concerned, the GRA management and staff have been more than helpful and co-operative towards the speedway club in every respect. 

Perry Barr Stadium is owned by the City Council but leased to the GRA. Part of the grandstand is a Grade 2 listed building and there is a covenant on the stadium which states that it must be used only as a sports venue. The stadium was a gift to the City made by Lord Alexander in 1888, and it's original name was The Alexander Stadium and was the domain of Birchfield Harriers Athletic Club until the late 1970's when the City Council constructed their present home - originally styled "The New Alexander Stadium."  The Council planned to sell the old stadium to Sainsburys at the time, but were prevented from doing this because the Alexander family would not agree to lifting the covenant. The old stadium, then derelict, was leased to The Perry Barr Greyhound Club in 1985, and the Greyhound Club was sold to the GRA in 2002.

The original speedway/Athletics track was 402 yards slightly shorter than Belle Vue (Hyde Road) and Norwich but very similar in shape to both of them. The new dog track constructed in 1986, covered the home straight and the two bends of the old speedway circuit, but extended further over what used to be concrete terracing on the back straight, and the new speedway track, laid in 2007, inside the dog track of course, was of a very similar shape to the original although with much shorter straights.

For anyone with an interest in local history, at the high point of the rear of the central part of the grandstand can be seen the leaping deer emblem of Birchfield Harriers surmounted by the club's motto "Fleet and Free."

Here endeth the history lesson!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[cityrebel]

Very interesting. I remember having a look at the present stadium, which was in a derelict state, before attending a meeting at the Ladbrokes Perry Barr track across the road back in the early 1980's.

[HGould]

Of course the (new) Alexander Stadium Brian refers to, now home to Birchfield Harriers and also HQ of British Athletics is being upgraded to facilitate Stadium for 2022 Commonwealth Games and although plans are for it to be scaled back to Capacity of just over 20,000 after the Event may make a longer term option for UK Speedway (if a temporary track could be laid) somewhere below the 50,000+ of CARDIFF Millenium (which cost is too much rent for Domestic use) yet well above the very restrictive spectator capacity at the NSA in Manchester.

[brianbuck]

It's a nice thought, but back in the old days, Birchfield Harriers were always obstructive towards the speedway despite the Brummies being a major source of income for them. Speedway could and should have been back there from 1961 onwards but the Harriers put forward every conceivable reason to refuse to do a deal - even when the would be promoters Doug Ellis and Phil Hart offered to pay the rates for them (which the Harriers claimed had been tripled by the Council.) The new Alexander is a beautiful stadium, but I for one, wouldn't like to have to be beholden to Birchfield Harriers in the way that we were in the 1950's.

One of their favourite tricks was to suddenly hold an athletics meeting on a Saturday afternoon (when the speedway race night was Saturdays) and then deliberately drag it out so that there was not enough time to prepare the track properly for speedway. 

[brianbuck]

Thank you for the kind compliment. All kinds of history has a fascination for me and the City of Birmingham has a remarkable speedway history with racing having taken place at six different venues in the City plus a one-off test trial at a seventh venue. Sadly, only two of these stadia (Perry Barr and Bordesley Green) are still in existence, with the much maligned Bordesley Green track now having a tarmac surface which seems to rule out speedway ever re-appearing there again in the future. Perry Barr seems safe from the developers until at least 2023 (I wouldn't bank on the safety of the covenant which I know from past experience, is not foolproof) but one of Tony Mole's last acts of his time in charge was to extract an undertaking from the City Council that if the stadium site was to be included in a future re-development programme, an alternative venue  for speedway and greyhound racing would be provided.

Where such an alternative venue would be, I have no idea - but the Council do own the Bordesley Green site and there is more than sufficient unused land there to construct a speedway circuit - so perhaps?

Edited April 22, 2019 by brianbuck