In our best interests....

As per usual, British Speedway has failed to make it through a week without further descending itself into farce. So here to discuss it is your friendly neighbourhood blogger....

What a cook up 

As everyone likely to be reading this will be aware, Craig Cook's proposed move to Peterborough was blocked by the BSPA, citing rule 16.3.5 which states that the BSPA management committee monitors all proposed moves and has the sole responsibility to approve all (re-)declared team line-ups having been satisfied they are in the best interests of the sport.

Essentially a rule that trumps all other teambuilding rules, and allows the BSPA to block any move they see fit at the drop of a hat without having to make any justification other than these moves not being in the best interests of the sport. But what is in the best interests of the sport? Foreigners scoring big points in protected reserve races, a heatleader list that has actually achieved teams not being able to build to the points limit and Elite League riders having their average decided by converting their premier league averages are just 3 of the decisions they believe are in the interests of the sport in this country from this year alone. Logical? Nope.

There are issues on both sides of this and I'll try to give a balanced view looking at it from both sides.

Fixture clashes are listed as the main reason the signing was blocked in the press release from Rob Godfrey, in which he explains how both Belle Vue and Peterborough are officially listed as Friday night race tracks. Despite this, there would only be 3 home clashes due to Belle Vue's changeable race night and Peterborough riding so many Sundays. There would also be 5 clashes when Peterborough are away, too which doesn't seem to have been brought up, including in Peterborough's official statement. I don't think is an unreasonable amount for any double upper signed mid way through a season and these numbers could either increase or decrease during the season. However the likely hood of future clashes is slightly increased by the race night issue. It's hard to have too much sympathy with Peterborough on this front, though, as since they ride less than 50% of their meetings on a Friday, why did they submit Friday as their official night? Foot well and truly shot. At the same time it's very petty on the BSPA's side to not look at at it in enough detail to see that Peterborough aren't really riding Fridays.

Peterborough were clearly told the move was unlikely to go ahead so why did they go ahead and announce the signings and sack riders before it had been approved? You also have to question the BSPA's 'news' policy, as they posted the signing via the official speedway GB website prior to approval. If this hadn't happened then it would have been a lot easier to deal with the consequences of it being blocked.

Godfrey makes a bizarre claim in his statement explaining the decision, as he says that if this was allowed everyone would be doing the same thing. What? Teams would want to sign riders who were never riding for them, costing the rider money and leaving the teams without their own riders? It's quite clear this wouldn't be a regular occurrence.

The suggestion seems to be that you cannot sign a double up rider doubling up who rides on the same 'official' race night as the other. If that's the case, why isn't it a rule? This controversy wouldn't exist if that rule was in the rule book rather than the deliberately ambiguous 'interests of speedway' rule. And since this ambiguous rule exists, and no actual rule to stop Cook from riding Peterborough, why couldn't they allow it based on the lack of Friday clashes? They have also allowed Daniel Bewley to sign for both Edinburgh and Belle Vue, which are both officially Friday night tracks. As per usual a massive lack of consistency from those in charge.

Cook should also really look at his decision to want to move to a track that rides on so many Sundays though. It would mean he wouldn't be able to pick up a Polish team place during the season if his form dictated there would be one available for him, which is where he wants to be riding. An odd decision.

My conclusion is that since Peterborough are breaking no actual team building rules by signing Cook, the move should really be allowed. Peterborough have handled it badly, though. If they want to stop this from happening, put it in the rule book. Now they have declined it though, they shouldn't be swayed by a petition. They need to have a backbone and back their own decision, even though I don't believe that decision is correct. 2 wrongs and all that...

GP Qualifiers


Like most seasons, we're in a situation where we are unlikely to have any Brits through to the next round of the GP qualifiers. Lambert and Cook were both unlucky to miss out, with Lambert having bike problems and Cook having an exclusion where they both missed out by 1 point. Harris went out in a meeting he really should have qualified in, though.

You do have to question the lack of preparation our riders get for meetings like this though. The qualifiers are individual meetings of a high international standard which the likes of Cook and Lambert get no opportunity to ride in. The perfect opportunity for them to test themselves at that level lies in the European Championship, a series that we fail to recognise as an international event, and subsequently refuse to grant facilities for it, and also refuse to enter. It's time we stopped being stubborn and gave ourselves every opportunity to succeed in the future by entering everything we can to give our own riders the same opportunities those from other countries get. It would no doubt also benefit us by the time it came to the world cup.

Harris is rather different and has ridden in the GP series a number of years. When people have slagged Harris off for reclaiming his GP status via the qualifiers every year, I've always suggested that Harris is probably around the 15th best rider in the world and that's why he continues to qualify but ultimately do poorly in the series itself. I can't do that anymore though, with riders like THJ, Karpov, Lebedevs, Kurtz, Ljung, Huckenbeck and Covatti all qualifying through. He's just an average Joe these days. Very entertaining at league level and always a pleasure to watch but it's no longer possible to justify his place amongst the world's top riders.


TV admission

It's no longer possible to get good crowds for sky meetings except for the play-offs and so most clubs now offer reduced admission to try and bump the crowd up. Swindons £5 in advance offer last year was the pick of the bunch, the place was packed and looked great on cameras. Potentially £5 for the SKY meetings are a better option than £10. It might cost the club a little bit of money short term (although based on how many were there for Swindon last year it probably wasn't much) but if a potential sponsor is watching the meeting surely they are far more likely to be impressed and get involved when seeing a busy stadium rather than an empty one? Perhaps it's time to look at the bigger picture.

This week, Coventry stated on their website that people attending the National League meeting against Cradley would gain £10 admission on Monday on the production of their ticket. This has since been changed to allow everyone entry for a tenner, with Neil Watson stating this was because of the large take up of the offer on Friday.

Whilst hard to believe, I don't actually like complaining and the fact it's £10 for everyone is much better promotion than the original offer as it doesn't rule out Wolves fans from claiming the same offer. However, I do feel like the promotion have been slightly dishonest and used the offer they were probably always going to make open to everyone anyway to try and sell more National League tickets. Neil Watson's comments make little sense, since at this point, no one has taken Coventry up on their offer as the Elite League meeting hasn't happened. How many people took them up on their offer can only be worked out after the EL meeting has happened. What he must mean is that there was a healthier NL crowd on Friday than previously. That was always going to be the case with Cradley in town as it's a local derby and Cradley provide a lot of travelling support (I would estimate they were around 70-80% of the crowd on Friday).

I was 50/50 whether to go on Friday and the offer for both meetings swung me into going. If I had known the SKY meeting was going to be £10 anyway I may well have only gone to that, so they've got £12 more from me (and others) they might not have got if they'd announced £10 to everyone. That's why I feel lied to, despite the fact both meetings will still cost me £22, the same as it was before the offer was changed. I commend the promotion for making the offer open to everyone, but it's just been poorly handled yet again by the club. We never do things the easy way, do we?!

Belle Vue'd it

Belle Vue are finally up and running and the track looks great, one thing that they haven't managed to 'do a Belle Vue' to! Too often new tracks are built where the shape really could be a lot lot better (Kent and Leicester 2 obvious examples) but Belle Vue have got it spot on and it looks like it'll produce fabulous racing going forward. They did still manage to do a bit of classic Belle Vue with the car park fiasco but if that's the biggest of their worries this week then it's a massive improvement for the promotion so far this season.

What a find Daniel Bewley is, with such a small amount of racing experience the lad is winning races for fun and I can't wait to watch him ride in the flesh. It's riders like him that get fans excited about National League racing, it's just a shame we don't seem to be able to find any for the Storm!

I find it odd that I've been able to watch 5 or 6 heats from the meeting since the filing ban though, maybe the Belle Vue Rebels would be a better name than the Colts?!