Poole Pirates 2021

[ruckerroo]

6 minutes ago, daz9100 said:

It's only ceased until they can reopen with a public crowd. - "Poole Greyhound Stadium closed until further notice, until public is allowed to attend"
They can't run at Poole behind closed doors due to the financial loss involved.

The moon is made of pancake batter too. All the trainers have been offered other avenues. Stadia uk are great at shutting tracks, not very gd at reopening them tho

[mikebv]

15 minutes ago, lisa-colette said:

Yes, I thought the agreement with Poole Council was that you had to have both greyhounds and speedway running. You couldn't have just have one or the other. Though it may have just been to stop the greyhounds trying to kick speedway out? Unsure how the council are going to play this? 

Worrying times I would think...

Councils will be under huge pressure across the country post Covid 19 as budgets from central govt. will no doubt have to be slashed to pay for the billions of pounds of borrowing it has done to pay for the current crisis..

And from what I remember of my visits to Poole, you could get a good many apartments not too far from the waterfront in a 'nice' (and quite expensive) area of the country.. 

 

Edited May 23, 2020 by mikebv

[Supersub]

Don’t believe the rumours. Reckon it’s only a temporary measure but doesn’t look good for any speedway at Poole this year. 

[greyhoundp]

From what i understand most of the Staff at the Stadium are on furlough at this time, I cant see the suspension of Greyhound racing affecting the Speedway at the moment, from the emails sent out to some trainers the situation will be reviewed when crowds are allowed, its then that the decision will potentially affect Poole speedway, right now with no crowds being allowed it does not affect Poole speedway. The long term affects for Greyhound racing could be that these Owners/Trainers of Greyhounds move elsewhere thereby the possibility of not having enough dogs to race should they wish to do so could impact long term.

[Supersub]

UK stadia operate the car park, bars & restaurant & provide other services for a speedway meeting so I would suggest it may be difficult to run speedway not forgetting the financial implications of putting a meeting on with what will probably be limited crowds, if racing gets the go ahead.

[ray c]

21 hours ago, cityrebel said:

Rumours of Poole town looking at a return, could be a solution.

and how many wiil that bring in not a lot cant see stadia uk running the football club just a matter of wait and see

Edited May 24, 2020 by ray c

[Lefty]

Will all this lead to the first bend toilets being reopened?

[Crabba59]

Think the difference with Poole dogs only run on night racing, where they need crowds to make it profitable.  Where the dogs at wolves and Birmingham run bags meetings in the day, don't need crowds and I've been told they will start running again from beginning of june also don't need betting shops to be open as most is done on internet. But hopefully Poole will be able to run when the season can start, nobody in speedway would want to any team lost, seen to many tracks lost over the years . 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2020 by Crabba59
Wrong wording

[Supersub]

If no dogs, can’t see speedway happening as I’ve explained previously

[stevehone]

On 5/23/2020 at 8:17 PM, daz9100 said:

I thought there was some sort of covenant on the land saying that it had be for sporting use. 

think Coventry Stadium has too, what developers want they tend to get

[greyhoundp]

Poole greyhounds had just one streamed meeting, they have switched that to Swindon (also operated by GI) so that they can keep Poole furloughed, here is the list of streamed greyhound meetings restarting on June 1st..  https://www.arenaracingcompany.co.uk/media-centre/news/greyhounds/arc-and-gmg-confirm-provisional-greyhound-fixture-schedule

This is a copy of the communication sent to Poole greyhound trainers.

Edited May 24, 2020 by greyhoundp
further info

[arthur cross]

Several things worth mentioning (with the benefit of greyhound involvement as well as speedway) ... hopefully the following helps explain several bits of recent posts on this thread ...

Firstly, of the 7 dual-usage greyhound and speedway tracks in either the Premiership (Sheffield, Swindon & Wolves) or Championship (Birmingham, Kent, Newcastle & Poole), it's only Poole that has separate home straights for each sport and, therefore, each sport's spectator accommodation set up very differently - the west side at Poole is the dogs'  home straight with the indoor-dominated areas for that crowd whereas the east side at Poole is the speedway home straight with plenty of outdoor but covered seating - all the other 6 dual-usage tracks have adjacent home straights that lead to much more shared usage of the crowd facilities (albeit a far greater proportion of speedway's fans want to watch their action from outside rather than inside).

Even if anyone ever thought before a few months ago about savagely-cut crowd capacities for social distancing, no-one surely went as far as reckoning indoor and outdoor capacity-cuts at the same venue could be regarded differently, yet that could actually now be the case at Poole given that outdoor sports crowds are likely to be welcomed back (eg, football, rugby or cricket) on an earlier and busier basis than indoor sports crowds (eg, snooker or basketball) - the logic is that any coronavirus symptoms disperse far more easily in an open-air situation than an enclosed one.

Secondly, whereas tracks like Sheffield and Newcastle have had 4 greyhound meetings a week on the lucrative betting-shop schedule for many years, Poole has only had 2-&-a-bit greyhound meetings a week on that schedule - what's more,  none of those slots have been in the prime territory of lunchtimes or mid-afternoons.

Instead, all Poole's had are Sunday nights and Tuesday nights all year round plus mid-winter Saturday tea-times as a means of filling the gap left by UK & Irish jumps horse racing finishing well before 4pm darkness at that time of year.

That's why Poole's greyhound management reckon the scraps of closed-doors greyhound action they'd be likely to get when that sport resumes (probably but not yet absolutely guaranteed next Monday on 1st June) won't be enough to justify re-opening for that sport until they can welcome their crowd back (not just on those Sunday & Tuesday nights but also their Saturday night each week for a meeting that's only for the local crowd rather than the betting shops) - hence, just a couple of days ago, they've directed their greyhound trainers towards helping to fill the racecards at sister-track Swindon (who do have a wealthier lineup of betting shop meetings).

Where this has already caused great controversy and scepticism among greyhound folk is the dismal past record of Poole's parent company for falsely promising new stadiums given the closures of Milton Keynes and Reading (plus the many years of Swindon's redevelopment very lengthily discussed elsewhere on this forum !!) - until trackside crowds are welcomed back and then Poole's greyhound management resume their action, most greyhound folk (Poole or further afield) will inevitably reckon last Saturday's announcement effectively marked the end of Poole greyhounds - already some of Poole's trainers have begun looking to sell at least some of their dogs, suggesting an initial shortage of available greyhounds even if the Poole management surprisingly do seek a greyhound resumption in due course

Goodness knows where this leaves the Pirates for any speedway in either late-2020 or 2021-&-beyond - I note their website has yet to make any announcement or comment about the greyhounds'' decision and its potential knock-on effects.

   = = = = = = = = = = =

As for greyhound racing's resumption in general, like horse racing it's set itself up to resume next Monday as that was the target date set by the government just over a fortnight ago for closed-doors professional sports with broadcast audiences to resume - however, it was just that general category of sport that was mentioned by the government rather than specific sports and, yesterday, the British Horseracing Authority admitted that while it's still very confident next Monday will be resumption day, it reckons there will still need to be a positive review of the current 3-week lockdown spell by the government this midweek followed by specific sports being told that the 1st June target date can then be activated.

Of the other 6 dual-usage greyhound and speedway tracks, all of them have been staging fitness trials for their dogs in the past week and will carry on with that this week, ready to resume racing next week.

Four of them are on one side of greyhounds' media rights schism (The Racing Partnership quartet of Birmingham, Newcastle, Sheffield & Swindon) and that side has already published its full day-by-day resumption schedule pending any government go-ahead - however the others (the SIS pair of Kent & Wolves) are still awaiting a similar day-by-day schedule being published by SIS.  

[Mike0310]

I remember many years ago playing football against them at Wimborne road they had to put artificial corner flags down because of the shape of the pitch/stadium.i think the league we were both in back then was the beazer homes league.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Mike0310

[cityrebel]

17 minutes ago, Mike0310 said:

I remember many years ago playing football against them at Wimborne road they had to put artificial corner flags down because of the shape of the pitch/stadium.i think the league we were both in back then was the beazer homes league.

I saw Poole Town play Newport County there in the FA cup back in the early 80's. It seemed a strange football ground with no terracing behind the goals.

[ray c]

57 minutes ago, cityrebel said:

I saw Poole Town play Newport County there in the FA cup back in the early 80's. It seemed a strange football ground with no terracing behind the goals.

It was a not the best of places to watch football I was there as well Sunday afternoon

[Catalan]

its actually an awful place for football

 

[SteveLyric2]

Poole Town FC are in more of a financial hole than either dogs or greyhounds I would suggest.

One huge stumbling block for them to move anywhere away from their Tatnum Poole ground is that they would have to re-pay all the FA loans that they've had for ground improvements.  They can't afford to do that - in fact they can barely afford to continue operating normal fixtures without begging for more and more financial support.

[arthur cross]

1 hour ago, Skidder1 said:

Poole Town FC are in more of a financial hole than either dogs or greyhounds I would suggest.

One huge stumbling block for them to move anywhere away from their Tatnum Poole ground is that they would have to re-pay all the FA loans that they've had for ground improvements.  They can't afford to do that - in fact they can barely afford to continue operating normal fixtures without begging for more and more financial support.

The coronavirus ending to the Southern League South Division season was catastrophic for Poole Town FC because the relentless rain during the autumn & winter making their current home too boggy (plus a decent run in the FA Cup qualifying rounds before that) meant they played just 9 home league games for crowd-income in the 7 pre-coronavirus months of the season while keeping their away league schedule more than up-to-date by playing 18 of those with all the costs that entails (the travelling in their division stretches from Truro in Cornwall to Surrey & West London) !!

Incredibly, thanks to the 3rd most away-points in their league, they were only 7 points off a play-off place when the season was declared coronvirus-void with at least 2 games in hand on everyone above them plus a crazy run-in  (all to be squeezed into 7 weekend and 6 midweeks) of 12 home games & only 3 aways !!

They were appealing for their fans to prop up their away-funding even well before the virus struck so they're utterly skint and with no clue yet when they can start having a crowd pitchside for their 2020-21 season.

[SpeedwayPortal]

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by SpeedwayPortal

[Steve Shovlar]

Don’t forget, the greyhounds do not own Poole Stadium. They are leaseholders from the council. Should the greyhounds go pop, the lease would return to the council. The land also has a covenant on it that it was given to the council for the sole use of recreational sports.