Rob Godfrey interview in Speedway Star

[IronScorpion]

40 minutes ago, Speedtiger said:

Individuals funding loss making clubs is why the sport is now in terminal decline. Speedway (currently) is a professional sport but mainly run by rank amateurs or enthusiasts with very little intelligence or business acumen. Godfrey and Chapman are living proof....and they and others are to blame and why the sport is bust.

 The stadium is a dump, the track is sort of okay but it’s hardly an oval, it’s a circle, throttle on blast round no technical ability required.  Boring. Just saying. 

Started from scratch in 2005 & fixtures/buildings added when financially possible. Not a greyhound stadium leased for speedway & not council owned with millions thrown at it.

Sheffield & Belle Vue, both your tracks, although slightly different, are "throttle on blast round" as you conveniently say.

[E I Addio]

If the future of the sport is in the hands of Godfrey and Chapman we might as well shut up shop now . Godfrey behaviour last season was beyond the pale. As  50+ year follwer of the sport since knee high to a grasshopper, I now find motivation to see another meeting ver difficult, and it’s almost entirely due to Godfreys machinations last year. The sport can’t afford to lose a single fan yet Godfrey has just turned thousands away. The man is a complete and utter plonker. As one promoter said to me last season, the way things are going we will finish up with the same two teams facing each other eeek after week, nothing else left. 

[Fromafar]

2 hours ago, tmc said:

I'll have to read the piece in full later today before commenting but his throwaway line (used as a pull quote) along the lines of today's racing being much better than it was in the 60s, 70s & 80s certainly raised an eyebrow here. He obviously never saw PC - to name just one - in his prime.

While you can agree or disagree with his assessment with the standard of the racing,Imo the problem is the sport cannot be taken seriously as professional with regards to the rules and regulation brought in for “best interest of the sport “ and the interpretation and manipulation of the rules to suit the situations as the problems arise.Fixtures and averages  are an example.

[iwright71]

1 hour ago, PHILIPRISING said:

NOT saying whether I agree or disagree with Rob's comments and am certainly not generally a fan of decisions made by the BSPA, but ... without people like Rob, funding speedway tracks that for the most part are not even profitable, there would be no speedway. And with regards to Scunthorpe... he created one of the best tracks in the country and if racing was good elsewhere the sport might not have some of the problems it does today. Just saying ...

Pretty much agree with this.  I don't agree with his assessment that racing is better than ever. It might be at Scunthorpe, Belle Vue and Somerset but unfortunately that is not enough to prop up the sport  in this country.  Fans have got eyes, so have those who watch the TV coverage on BT sport. As much as they bull it up how many classics have you seen from Swindon, Leicester, Wolves, Poole, Kings Lynn recently.

[Midland Red]

17 hours ago, Suffolkpunch said:

In this article he mentioned if an away team won it was not good news for the promoter of that winning club because of having to pay his riders too much money the same as a big home win. Not sure how but maybe it is time for a different pay structure for riders is introduced,and not paid per point maybe clubs would not loose as much money each year hence not go out of business.

Speedway must be one of the only sports that pays solely on performance only, perhaps this is one reason why this great sport is not going forward.    

There wouldn't be this problem if the staging promotion paid both teams, at standard rates, a maximum of 105 points per league match

Would be a help in budgetting, knowing virtually exactly what outgoings would be in terms of rider payments

[brylcream boy]

1 hour ago, Speedtiger said:

Individuals funding loss making clubs is why the sport is now in terminal decline. Speedway (currently) is a professional sport but mainly run by rank amateurs or enthusiasts with very little intelligence or business acumen. Godfrey and Chapman are living proof....and they and others are to blame and why the sport is bust.

 The stadium is a dump, the track is sort of okay but it’s hardly an oval, it’s a circle, throttle on blast round no technical ability required.  Boring. Just saying. 

If you care to read the comments posted by your fellow Tiger fans from last year as your team powered almost unopposed to the wooden spoon, 99.9% were less than complementary about the state of the track. 

[Speedtiger]

1 hour ago, PHILIPRISING said:

THERE isn't exactly a queue of people lining up take the places of the "rank amateurs and enthusiasts" and even if there was who would pay them? I seriously doubt that any promoter in the country would not seriously consider selling if a suitable offer came along. Bit it ain't going to happen. Not even the most successful track in the country (Poole) can attract a buyer.

...and that is my point. The sport has been run onto the ground by incompetent fools, who think they know best, to such a point that no one in their right minds would currently want to invest in speedway...either to own or even sponsor a club. This season will be just like the passed few and see the sport quickly slipping further into decline and more clubs going bust. As the SS financial fortunes are closely aligned to the sport I would have thought your journalists would have been asking some serious and pertinent questions of Godfrey and Chapman. I can only imagine the amount of worry and frustration You and the Staff at the SS have to see the sport in this perilous state.

[TonyMac]

The five-page interview with Rob Godfrey in this week's Speedway Star certainly provides food for thought. Firstly, we can only take what we see quoted at face value and perhaps he said more which couldn't be included for space reasons. Benefit of the doubt.

While I don't profess to know his background or what he does or doesn't do for the sport today, I've never spoken to the man, there are a number of points raised that I'd like to respond to and are worthy of further critical analysis (sorry to waffle on and hope you stay awake till the end!:

SEMI-PRO OR AMATEUR?

Rob alludes to, if not quite advocates, the idea of British speedway becoming semi-pro in the future, which (as I suggested in another recent BSF thread) it needs to do NOW in the short-term if it is to survive with any credibility left. He effectively spells it out just why this is the case when referring to the recent demise of Championship treble winners Workington. And the nail is well and truly smashed on the head in a separate, much smaller, item in the same issue of the Star in which Workington promoter Laura Morgan reveals that running the second tier club has cost her around £750,000 in total and that another injection of £75,000 would be required simply to run this year, when Comets would surely expect to incur at least the same loss, if not more given how hard it would be to repeat their 2018 triple.

Later in the piece, Rob cites his own Josh Auty as one rider who "seems to make it pay" competing only in one league. If Auty can, who don't many others? As long as promoters keep paying them collectively more than what turnstiles and sponsorship income, they will continue to spend (waste?) money on expensive machinery, engine tuning, mechanics and fancy transport. Only the promoters can stop this happening.

FULL-TIME PROMOTERS

The question of professional promoters is a double-edged sword. Rob says that of the modern day regime, "not one of us needs to do it". Therein lies one problem: rightly or wrongly, they are not running their clubs on a full-time, 24/7 basis and don't depend on the sport for a living - unlike the likes of Fearman, Ochiltree, Silver, Dunton, Wilson, Thomas, Mawdsley, etc in days gone by. It was their livelihood - yes, of course, there were less counter-attractions competing for fans' money and -  but they still had to work hard for it.

For many (if not all) of today's ilk, speedway is a hobby they can indulge (for a while at least) to feed their egos. Unfortunately, the sport in Britain has been denigrated so much over the years that there is no turning back.

COUNTING THE COST

Rob reveals that winning the league (Div 2) in 2012 cost Scunthorpe 30 grand, suggesting Sheffield probably paid a similar price in their pursuit of honours. Later, he gives Glasgow as a prime example of a club that has the slickest PR machine in the country . . . yet still cannot attract sufficient crowds to meet their running costs.

This, in itself, tells you all you need to know about promoters over-paying riders. The sums just don't add up. Yes, of course, riders deserve to be paid handsomely for the risks they take. But no business will survive, long-term, if it continues to ignore the basic rules of life: don't pay out more than you can afford.

COMPARING THE PAST

As for Rob's line about speedway today being "far, far better than it ever was", provocatively reproduced on the Star's front cover, I reckon thousands of our customers at Retro Speedway would vehemently disagree! To be fair, Rob is duty bound to promote his club and modern speedway in general, and in doing tries to discredit the past and (to paraphrase Harold Macmillan) convince his punters that "you've never had it so good". So we must assume that he never had the privilege of enjoying the likes of great entertainers such as Peter Collins, Chris Morton, the Morans, Bruce Penhall, Michael Lee, Ole Olsen, Jan O. Pedersen, Simon Cross, Malcolm Simmons, Mark Loram (started in 1987) . . . the list really is endless and I've not even mentioned the innumerable BL2/National League favourites who thrilled the crowds week in, week out.

If he was talking about the Grand Prix, compared to the old and long-winded World Championship qualifying system, I'd be inclined to agree. The GPs routinely serve up tremendous entertainment and invariably top quality racing, where riders of equal ability are well matched.

But comparing the GPs with the Elite League matches I've seen on telly is more often than not chalk and cheese. Riders strung out by half-a-lap isn't entertainment, nor any sort of advert for domestic speedway.

From what we read, the point Rob doesn't seem to grasp here is that the days of a reserve or middle order man popping out of the gate and holding a world class rider at bay for all four laps are long gone and now rarer than a truthful MP. Speed, and the riders' unquenchable thirst for it, has helped kill the sport as a spectacle, although here the promoters of the mid-70s must shoulder a lot of blame for failing to nip the four-valve revolution in the bud before it sent costs spiralling out of control and that's where we are today.

PROMOTING - HIGHLIGHTS PACKAGE

I was encouraged to read of the BSPA's plans for a revamped website with hopes to include free-to-air matches. In the same issue I read that Poland will be airing a magazine-style show every Monday.

So it begs the question: why haven't the BSPA done a deal with Go-Speed and all the individual DVD filming companies covering the tracks to put together, say, a weekly 30-minute show showcasing the past week's highlights, complemented by interviews with promoters and riders on current topics and burning issues? Would not a sufficient number of fans not be prepared to pay a nominal 50p or £1 per week throughout the season to cover production costs? The show could be offered as a download from the BSPA site with the same show being uploaded to YouTube a week later (if it hit YT at the same time, there would obviously be no point in paying the small sub). For obvious reasons, these edited highlights would not include any from 'live' BT Sport matches. British speedway desperately needs to harness its relationship with BT Sport if it is to have any hope of attracting a national sponsor, or backers for each of the three divisions (alas, Rob did not mention this failure on the BSPA's part).

The BSPA already has the ideal experienced and knowledgeable anchor man/presenter on its pay roll in Nigel Pearson, while two or three of the best people producing DVDs could be tasked to edit the best action clips and interviews.

Reality is, though, a weekly highlights download via the BSPA site or uploaded to YouTube probably won't attract one new supporters, especially a youngster who can't take his or her eyes off their smart phone for more than a few seconds. This will sound crazy to some, but promoters' priority should be to do all they can to KEEP their existing supporter base and TRY to win back those who have been disenfranchised over the part 10 years. Forget chasing new, young fans . . . speedway just doesn't cut it with them and very probably never will again. So forget them for now and focus all energies on keeping what you have and winning back the old faithful with fresh ideas, well prepared tracks and a professionally run sport.

Only last week we at Retro Speedway were delighted to take on five new subscribers to our bi-monthly Backtrack magazine. OK, five in a matter of days is really nothing. But not in the context of where British speedway is now it isn't. They are five people who enjoyed reliving past memories but are now engaging with the sport again. Facebook is the biggest factor in this: whether you personally log on to FB or not and regardless of your personal preferences (FB, forum or Twitter), more and more of the older generation are signing up to Facebook's social media platform to 'chat' to kindred spirits - and that is where the BSPA should be looking to re-recruit former fans who might be tempted back into stadiums. This is where they will find their target audience.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Rob again uses Glasgow as his best example of a club that does social media very well. But he is wrong to excuse others clubs for not emulating them, or even going close to doing so, by using costs as an excuse. Having a good mate who runs a successful non-league football club, I can confirm that a good promo video was produced for them for as little as £750 . . . or, to put it another way, the equivalent of what some riders in UK speedway earn in one night.

Running  good Twitter and Facebook platforms is very inexpensive - all that's needed are the right people to manage and execute it to an acceptably professional standard and who have the imagination to offer what supporters should expect from these services.

DOUBLING-UP, GUESTS AND RACE FORMAT

While Rob was of course asked about how the rampant use of guests and doubling-up does untold harm to the sport's image, he dismisses very lightly the suggestion that the problems would be eased by cutting team numbers from seven to six and adopting a new heat formula (six-man teams have been used in the past). Am I missing something here? British speedway doesn't have enough riders of a certain minimum standard to staff its three leagues, and yet the hierarchy blindly sticks with seven-man teams even though virtually every club in the land is inevitably soon forced into calling up guests and doubling-up riders. Rob admits: "We don't have a big enough crop of riders without doubling-up, which is what causes all the problems".

We know what the problems are, Rob. What we desperately need from people like you who govern and run the sport are solutions and ideas. Six-man teams (even in the short-term, until the young Brits coming up are up to scratch in a few years' time) won't eradicate the needs for guests, R/R and doubling-up but surely it's a no-brainer as at least a starting point . . . or please tell me why it isn't?

What disillusions me more than anything when I read comments from promoters in the wake of another BSPA AGM is the chronic lack of ideas and innovation. I mean, why aren't one or two competitions run on slightly different formats and rules? Where's the variety - if not in terms of team numbers, then at least in competition formats? Even the rightly much-maligned England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) had the gumption to realise that fans needed more than a staple diet of four-day Championship games and the sport has generally reaped the benefit of introducing two DIFFERENT limited-overs formats, the 50-over one-day league and T20 knockout comp, which are replicated in all major cricketing countries.

I'd like to see a promoter come up with something a bit radical and off the wall. Put on a 16 or 20-heat meeting that embraces different sections: team racing and individual events; perhaps throw in a couple of match-races (Golden Helmet & Silver Helmet - remember them?); a few handicap races where the top riders start off the back grid; a 4-heat 250cc juniors event; maybe even a ladies' race (look how much national publicity is afforded to women's football and cricket at domestic and international level ). Indeed, why not run the KO Cup along these lines for a season on an experimental basis? Supporters might actually look forward to attending, because it's DIFFERENT.

But with British speedway, it's the tired, predictable same old, same old. Lots of ongoing, familiar problems, very few solutions.

[bigcatdiary]

4 hours ago, PHILIPRISING said:

NOT saying whether I agree or disagree with Rob's comments and am certainly not generally a fan of decisions made by the BSPA, but ... without people like Rob, funding speedway tracks that for the most part are not even profitable, there would be no speedway. And with regards to Scunthorpe... he created one of the best tracks in the country and if racing was good elsewhere the sport might not have some of the problems it does today. Just saying ...

It’s interesting that we get continued comments that the racing at Scunthorpe is brilliant, yet every time I have been their is only a couple of hundred watching, and that includes a healthy few from my club.

Over the last few years I must have been a dozen times or more but the crowd is always the same, clearly not everyone feels the same otherwise the place would be rammed most weeks.

[PHILIPRISING]

9 minutes ago, bigcatdiary said:

It’s interesting that we get continued comments that the racing at Scunthorpe is brilliant, yet every time I have been their is only a couple of hundred watching, and that includes a healthy few from my club.

Over the last few years I must have been a dozen times or more but the crowd is always the same, clearly not everyone feels the same otherwise the place would be rammed most weeks.

WHAT did you think of the racing?

 

[bigcatdiary]

16 minutes ago, PHILIPRISING said:

WHAT did you think of the racing?

 

Being honest I have seen some good racing at the venue a number of times but i wouldn’t say it’s always brilliant.

[Sidney the robin]

5 hours ago, Vince said:

I think it should be one of the major promotional points along with the danger.

Each to their own but in 50 ish years of going to Speedway I've never bothered with filling in a programme, then again I like individual meeting more than most team racing so I'm aware that I'm very much in the minority. If you want to keep the fans coming back following free entry I would suggest some good racing, a couple of spectacular crashes and a punch up between a couple of riders would be most effective.

I'm with Rob Godfrey (for the first and very likely only time) on this one. I believe that although there were some great riders and racing in the past overall the quality of racing is higher now.

Vince you are a guy who i respect big time, but you are way off the mark here  speedway today generally is nowhere near yesteryear,I go some weeks and by 9 o'clock i want to go home be tucked up in bed  in the last five years i have not seen a lot of great racing..

[orion]

57 minutes ago, PHILIPRISING said:

WHAT did you think of the racing?

 

That is not the point he is making ..Thou racing is good it's not  made the crowds come in ...it one of biggest myths about crowds and good racing . People need to feel  like the match matters ..the problem is to most that feeling has gone ..

Another myth is about racing being better in the old days ..it never was, most of the time is was poor just like today . When you have crowds and big names it always felt like the racing was better but really most the time it was gate and go .

 

[Chadster]

In the late 60s and early 70s I cut my speedway teeth watching at Hyde Road. There were some great meetings, some good ones, but a lot of poor ones , too, particularly when the Aces were at their strongest and some teams turned up beaten before they started. As has been pointed out, attendances were so much higher so that contributed to a sense of occasion that may have made up for poor racing. When I came to London, I started watching White City and then, on moving house, started going to Wimbledon. The racing at Plough Lane always seemed better because of bigger crowds and a much better atmosphere.

[orion]

Just now, Chadster said:

In the late 60s and early 70s I cut my speedway teeth watching at Hyde Road. There were some great meetings, some good ones, but a lot of poor ones , too, particularly when the Aces were at their strongest and some teams turned up beaten before they started. As has been pointed out, attendances were so much higher so that contributed to a sense of occasion that may have made up for poor racing. When I came to London, I started watching White City and then, on moving house, started going to Wimbledon. The racing at Plough Lane always seemed better because of bigger crowds and a much better atmosphere.

Spot on post 

[PHILIPRISING]

51 minutes ago, bigcatdiary said:

Being honest I have seen some good racing at the venue a number of times but i wouldn’t say it’s always brilliant.

OF course, a good track alone doesn't guarantee great racing. Ultimately that is down to the riders once they have been given a stage on which to perform.

[TonyMac]

10 minutes ago, orion said:

That is not the point he is making ..Thou racing is good it's not  made the crowds come in ...it one of biggest myths about crowds and good racing . People need to feel  like the match matters ..the problem is to most that feeling has gone ..

Another myth is about racing being better in the old days ..it never was, most of the time is was poor just like today . When you have crowds and big names it always felt like the racing was better but really most the time it was gate and go .

 

Where did you watch speedway?

Fans, at Belle Vue in particular, would no doubt disagree. To see PC and Mort in full flow, using all the mutliple lines Hyde Road offered to a genuine thinking racer, was a sight to behold.

Ditto Hackney (my track), where Bengt Jansson, Barry Thomas, Bo Petersen, Dave Morton and Zenon Plech, routinely scored points from the back by using the throttle AND their brains to pass opponents.

Ditto Sheffield, where the Morans would miss the gate and pick their way through the field, almost at will, when the Owlerton track was well prepared.

Ditto at King's Lynn, where 'Mike the Bike' in his prime would usually outwit and pass any opponent quick enough to beat him from the start.

Ditto.... at most tracks and fans of the old (Div 2) National League will bear me out here. Examples are endless.

Yes, of course, there were a lot of predictable heats won from-the-gate back in the day. As there always will be. It's the nature of speedway.

But, by and large, there were many more opportunities taken, especially in the pre-1975 four-valve era, for lesser lights to shine at the occasional expense of superstars. Not so now.

Edited February 10, 2019 by tmc

[orion]

3 minutes ago, tmc said:

Where did you watch speedway?

Fans, at Belle Vue in particular, would no doubt disagree. To see PC and Mort in full flow, using all the mutliple lines Hyde Road oftrfered to a genuien thi9nking racer, was a sight to behold.

Ditto Hackney (my track), where  Barry Thomas, Bo Petersen, Dave Morton and Zenon Plech, routinely scored points from the back by using the throttle AND their brains to pass opponents.

Ditto Sheffield, where the Morans would miss the gate and pick their way through the field, almost at will when the Owlerton track was well prepared.

Ditto at King's Lynn, where Mike the Bike in his prime would usually outwit and pass any opponent quick enough to beat him from the start.

Ditto.... at most tracks and fans of the old (Div 2) National League will bear me out here.

Yes, of course, there were a lot of predictable heats won from-the-gate back in the day. As there always will be. It's the nature of British speedway.

But, by and large, there were many more opportunities taken, especially in the pre-1975 four-valve era, for lesser lights to shine at the occasional expense of superstars. Not so now.

You see great racing at Belle Vue now you see great racing at Somerset you see great racing at scunny ….so as said good and bad racing then and now .As I said old fans always fall into same trap ..it was better because the crowds were bigger and it  made seem better.

[TonyMac]

2 minutes ago, orion said:

You see great racing at Belle Vue now you see great racing at Somerset you see great racing at scunny ….so as said good and bad racing then and now .As I said old fans always fall into same trap ..it was better because the crowds were bigger and it  made seem better.

No, the standard of racing in British Speedway (BL & NL) generally WAS better! It really isn't a myth. Nothing to do with atmosphere.

Please tell us where you watched speedway in the 70s & 80s?

Edited February 10, 2019 by tmc

[orion]

12 minutes ago, tmc said:

No, the standard of racing in British Speedway (BL & NL) generally WAS better! It really isn't a myth. Nothing to do with atmosphere.

Please tell us where you watched speedway in the 70s & 80s?

The standard of riders was the racing was not ...Speedway was much better in the 70's and 80's no doubt about it but it was because of the whole event .No good going  on about where you watched speedway the bottom line is no matter what  era most of the  races are  won from the gate ..

Edited February 10, 2019 by orion