ITEM: It's rare that a speedway reporter becomes the story rather than
writes it but Josh Gudgeon suffered that fate this week. His crime? He
found out that Swindon had re-declared their team, bringing in Robert
Miskowiak for Simon Stead, and reported it, on Twitter.
Stead's form had not been good for a while, so it was no surprise that he might have lost his place in a team looking to win their first title for 37 years. What was surprising is that Stead didn't seem to know he'd been dropped.
With Alun Rossiter and Gary Patchett otherwise occupied when the story broke, and unable to provide confirmation or denial, the Swindon fans turned on Gudgeon. Half couldn't believe their promotional team would do such a thing to Stead the day after his testimonial, and so accused Gudgeon of lying, and the other half, willing to sacrifice principles for success, accused Gudgeon of breaking the story before it was ready to be made public.
Journalists have no obligation to sit on a story. Their job is to report news, and by its very definition news needs to be reported while it is fresh. If Gudgeon did anything wrong it's fail to seek clarification from the Swindon promotion. But, then again, he may have done - like I said earlier, they were incommunicado.
Speedway journalism would never win the Pulitzer or even the Paul Foot Award for investigative reporting. It is polite, uncontroversial, and often willing accessory to the wool being pulled firmly over the eyes of the fans. It is extremely rare that the Speedway Star will report any controversy, or criticise the sport's controllers.
The thing is, we're not in the 1950s any more. The news that promoters would rather you didn't know leaks out, with it without reporters like Josh Gudgeon. Last year I built up quite a team of informants, willing to pass on info they thought should be in the public domain. I was even passed a piece on the perilous financial state of one Elite League side by a respected speedway journalist. My protestations that it should be the centrepiece of a larger investigation in the Star were met with a shrug.
No-one wants to shame our sport. But as long as we are complicit in hiding its abuses they will continue. Young girls will be in danger from leery riders, rules will be ridden roughshod over, riders will go unpaid by unscrupulous promoters, and the product we pay to see will further be diluted and become a joke to all but the hardcore of fans.
Will the next generation of reporters like Josh Gudgeon make a difference? It's too early to tell, and I'd like to hope so, but my gut tells me he'll be pulled into line by his peers and the speedway establishment before he's reached his mid-20s. I don't like being wrong but I wouldn't mind this time.
ITEM: Speedway if often accused of being a slapdash sport. Some of this criticism is wildly inaccurate and unfair, but it does seem a truism that if speedway can find a way to make a mess of something it will.
British speedway is unique in the sport (and possibly in any sport) in that its competitors stage their home matches on different nights of the week. In the Elite League we have two Monday tracks, two Wednesday tracks, three Thursday tracks, two Friday tracks, and a lone Saturday outfit. This makes compiling a fixture list extremely difficult, especially when you have to take overseas commitments of the riders into consideration.
But the Elite League throws a further spanner into the works. The lone Saturday track, Eastbourne, is limited in the amount of unopposed Saturdays it can run due to the Grand Prix competition that runs just about every fortnight between May and October. Their reasons for not wanting to stage a meeting while the GPS are on are obvious - rider availability and fans staying at home to watch on TV - and they find sympathy with an EL eager to keep as many teams as possible.
To this end, with a 10-team membership, the league chooses to operate a complicated system by which all teams meet each other home and away once, and some others meet twice. This is, clearly, far from ideal, in two important ways.
Firstly, it does not enable a level plating field. This is negated somewhat by the play-off system, but it's still obvious that a team which faces Belle Vue home and away twice, and Poole home and away just once, will have a clear advantage over one that had the reverse of that situation.
Secondly, it makes for a very uneven fixture list, with some teams visiting a track twice in one month, and others just once - which may be 18 months since their last tussle!
With the complications I've already outlined it's obviously not an easy thing to fix, but it HAS to be fixed. Firstly, Eastbourne have to be brought into line and find space for 18 home fixtures. Then we have to have someone looking over the fixtures before they are finalised to ensure they are evenly spread. Lakeside's Jon Cook took on the job of sorting out the complicated new formula so perhaps he'd be the one to do it.
Speedway promoters don't like being told how to do their business but if speedway is to be taken seriously, and taken into the 21st century, it's got to get ship-shape. This is just a start.
ITEM: Unlike many other fans, I don't mind the guest system in speedway. It means you get seven-man teams, and the individual nature - and points-based payment of riders - usually means the guest will try hard to score points for his temporary team. Yes, it may seem odd that a rider will often be helping his own team's rivals, but this rarely happens in a direct manner, with most riders careful not to guest for teams fiddling with their own for titles or play-off spots.
Indeed, I much prefer a guest to the Rider Replacement option, which leaves a team short-handed and can massively enhance the shortcomings of an already struggling side.
Last week, at Birmingham, the Bees operated both facilities, with R/R for the injured Scott Nicholls, and a guest for concussed number one Chris Harris. Although the remaining Bees' riders adequately covered Nicholls's absence in their R/R rides, Harris was a different story.
With all due respect to Christian Henry you could hardly call him a suitable replacement for an Elite League number one, even one with a currently low average like Harris - Henry is ranked in the low-30s in the PREMIER League averages.
He wasn't the first asked but he was the first willing to ride and able to get to Perry Barr, which is to his enormous credit. Some were simply unable to break other commitments, or were at home abroad, whilst others wanted too much money: one PL heat leader apparently cooked up a figure of £500 a point!
There are two simple answers to this. You either establish a squad system or allow teams to bring in guests who are not currently riding in the UK. Each has its problems - I'm told there is a fear that the richer clubs would pay top riders NOT to ride and park them in their squads, and that the logistics of bringing in a guest from overseas is expensive and difficult - but it's worth trialling, surely?
Przemyslaw Pawlicki, a Coventry asset with an average under Chris Harris's, was in the country last Thursday and could have ably deputised, if the rules allowed. The Bees lost by seven points...
ITEM: It's British Grand Prix weekend and everybody who's anybody is heading to Cardiff.
I'm kind of jealous because I'd like to be there but left it far too late to get time off work to go. Not for the racing, of course, which - as a GP - never merits more than watch on Sky and moan on Twitter, but for the community happening.
I love meeting new friends, especially ones I've "known" through Twitter and Facebook for some time, and I suppose I'll have to sort something out one day.
But for now, for those of you making your way to Wales, have a great time, don't forget your #RICO shirt, and make sure Harris & Nicholls hear you every time they take the track.
Stead's form had not been good for a while, so it was no surprise that he might have lost his place in a team looking to win their first title for 37 years. What was surprising is that Stead didn't seem to know he'd been dropped.
With Alun Rossiter and Gary Patchett otherwise occupied when the story broke, and unable to provide confirmation or denial, the Swindon fans turned on Gudgeon. Half couldn't believe their promotional team would do such a thing to Stead the day after his testimonial, and so accused Gudgeon of lying, and the other half, willing to sacrifice principles for success, accused Gudgeon of breaking the story before it was ready to be made public.
Journalists have no obligation to sit on a story. Their job is to report news, and by its very definition news needs to be reported while it is fresh. If Gudgeon did anything wrong it's fail to seek clarification from the Swindon promotion. But, then again, he may have done - like I said earlier, they were incommunicado.
Speedway journalism would never win the Pulitzer or even the Paul Foot Award for investigative reporting. It is polite, uncontroversial, and often willing accessory to the wool being pulled firmly over the eyes of the fans. It is extremely rare that the Speedway Star will report any controversy, or criticise the sport's controllers.
The thing is, we're not in the 1950s any more. The news that promoters would rather you didn't know leaks out, with it without reporters like Josh Gudgeon. Last year I built up quite a team of informants, willing to pass on info they thought should be in the public domain. I was even passed a piece on the perilous financial state of one Elite League side by a respected speedway journalist. My protestations that it should be the centrepiece of a larger investigation in the Star were met with a shrug.
No-one wants to shame our sport. But as long as we are complicit in hiding its abuses they will continue. Young girls will be in danger from leery riders, rules will be ridden roughshod over, riders will go unpaid by unscrupulous promoters, and the product we pay to see will further be diluted and become a joke to all but the hardcore of fans.
Will the next generation of reporters like Josh Gudgeon make a difference? It's too early to tell, and I'd like to hope so, but my gut tells me he'll be pulled into line by his peers and the speedway establishment before he's reached his mid-20s. I don't like being wrong but I wouldn't mind this time.
ITEM: Speedway if often accused of being a slapdash sport. Some of this criticism is wildly inaccurate and unfair, but it does seem a truism that if speedway can find a way to make a mess of something it will.
British speedway is unique in the sport (and possibly in any sport) in that its competitors stage their home matches on different nights of the week. In the Elite League we have two Monday tracks, two Wednesday tracks, three Thursday tracks, two Friday tracks, and a lone Saturday outfit. This makes compiling a fixture list extremely difficult, especially when you have to take overseas commitments of the riders into consideration.
But the Elite League throws a further spanner into the works. The lone Saturday track, Eastbourne, is limited in the amount of unopposed Saturdays it can run due to the Grand Prix competition that runs just about every fortnight between May and October. Their reasons for not wanting to stage a meeting while the GPS are on are obvious - rider availability and fans staying at home to watch on TV - and they find sympathy with an EL eager to keep as many teams as possible.
To this end, with a 10-team membership, the league chooses to operate a complicated system by which all teams meet each other home and away once, and some others meet twice. This is, clearly, far from ideal, in two important ways.
Firstly, it does not enable a level plating field. This is negated somewhat by the play-off system, but it's still obvious that a team which faces Belle Vue home and away twice, and Poole home and away just once, will have a clear advantage over one that had the reverse of that situation.
Secondly, it makes for a very uneven fixture list, with some teams visiting a track twice in one month, and others just once - which may be 18 months since their last tussle!
With the complications I've already outlined it's obviously not an easy thing to fix, but it HAS to be fixed. Firstly, Eastbourne have to be brought into line and find space for 18 home fixtures. Then we have to have someone looking over the fixtures before they are finalised to ensure they are evenly spread. Lakeside's Jon Cook took on the job of sorting out the complicated new formula so perhaps he'd be the one to do it.
Speedway promoters don't like being told how to do their business but if speedway is to be taken seriously, and taken into the 21st century, it's got to get ship-shape. This is just a start.
ITEM: Unlike many other fans, I don't mind the guest system in speedway. It means you get seven-man teams, and the individual nature - and points-based payment of riders - usually means the guest will try hard to score points for his temporary team. Yes, it may seem odd that a rider will often be helping his own team's rivals, but this rarely happens in a direct manner, with most riders careful not to guest for teams fiddling with their own for titles or play-off spots.
Indeed, I much prefer a guest to the Rider Replacement option, which leaves a team short-handed and can massively enhance the shortcomings of an already struggling side.
Last week, at Birmingham, the Bees operated both facilities, with R/R for the injured Scott Nicholls, and a guest for concussed number one Chris Harris. Although the remaining Bees' riders adequately covered Nicholls's absence in their R/R rides, Harris was a different story.
With all due respect to Christian Henry you could hardly call him a suitable replacement for an Elite League number one, even one with a currently low average like Harris - Henry is ranked in the low-30s in the PREMIER League averages.
He wasn't the first asked but he was the first willing to ride and able to get to Perry Barr, which is to his enormous credit. Some were simply unable to break other commitments, or were at home abroad, whilst others wanted too much money: one PL heat leader apparently cooked up a figure of £500 a point!
There are two simple answers to this. You either establish a squad system or allow teams to bring in guests who are not currently riding in the UK. Each has its problems - I'm told there is a fear that the richer clubs would pay top riders NOT to ride and park them in their squads, and that the logistics of bringing in a guest from overseas is expensive and difficult - but it's worth trialling, surely?
Przemyslaw Pawlicki, a Coventry asset with an average under Chris Harris's, was in the country last Thursday and could have ably deputised, if the rules allowed. The Bees lost by seven points...
ITEM: It's British Grand Prix weekend and everybody who's anybody is heading to Cardiff.
I'm kind of jealous because I'd like to be there but left it far too late to get time off work to go. Not for the racing, of course, which - as a GP - never merits more than watch on Sky and moan on Twitter, but for the community happening.
I love meeting new friends, especially ones I've "known" through Twitter and Facebook for some time, and I suppose I'll have to sort something out one day.
But for now, for those of you making your way to Wales, have a great time, don't forget your #RICO shirt, and make sure Harris & Nicholls hear you every time they take the track.
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