FL, PL, Regulations & Tribulations

ITEM: Where to start about Freddie Lindgren! The Swedish star, a loyal servant to British speedway (although, of course, he's gained both experience and wealth from that arrangement) over the past decade, and recipient of a testimonial earlier this year, cocked a snook at his Wolves paymasters and decided to fly to Russia a day earlier than expected for the second round of the European Speedway Championship.

 

The logistics of getting to Togliatti, three hours even from Moscow and on roughly the same longitude as Tehran, are difficult but Hans Andersen, Sebastian Ulamek, and Tai Woffinden (riding in the same meeting as Lindgren on Friday) had all worked out a way to fulfil their Elite League commitments and get to the track in good time for the championship meeting. It appeared Lindgren had too, but a change of heart left Wolves travelling to Coventry with a National League rider at number one. As it happens, the Bees made hard work of seeing off their opponents, but the end result remained the same - no points for Wolves when they're chasing play-off glory.

 

In the meeting itself - which wasn't the best in terms of on-track entertainment, but still a good spectacle in front of a noisy, capacity crowd - Lindgren started well but faded, failing to make the semi-finals, and looking for all the world like he'd wasted his time going there early. I'm sure Wolves' fans allowed themselves a wry smile on top of the joy they must have felt at Woffinden - hurried travel arrangements and all - making the final.

 

So why did Lindgren choose to let down his team and their fans? The answer is simple: money. The revamped European Championship is backed by Polish marketing firm OneSport, who are looking to carve themselves a slice of the pie that BSI have been noisily consuming for the past fifteen years. Lindgren is struggling in the Grands Prix and is unlikely to regain entry to the series for 2014 unless the organisers take pity of him as the token Swede in the series. Therefore, it's in Lindgren's best interests to keep OneSport happy because a seeding into the SEC for 2014 is his best chance of making some money next year.

 

Where does that leave the Elite League? As usual, second best. There have been rumours for a while that Lindgren was looking at 2013 to be his last season in the UK, possibly sniffing the way the wind is blowing, at least for top riders, in world speedway. With the FIM reported to be looking at ways at restricting the number of leagues each rider can compete in, Sweden and Poland would seem to be the logical choices for a Swedish rider, with the UK - despite the earning potential from upwards of 30 meetings at decent rates - a distant third. That's fine as long as Sweden and Poland remain the cash cows they have been recently, and nobody can begrudge a rider a good living.

 

What is most concerning, however, is that Lindgren was only able to ride in Saturday's meeting with SVEMO (Sweden's governing body) permission. This should have been withdrawn once he opted out of the EL match at Coventry but wasn't. SVEMO (and the PZM and DMU) have agreements in place with the ACU that contractual commitments be honoured wherever possible, in accordance with the FIM calendar introduced this season. With the DMU allowing Hans Andersen to ride for his Danish club instead of Swindon - against that agreement - earlier this season, it's clear that the FIM calendar is being taken more seriously by some nations than others. The question, then, is what to do about it...

 

The ACU (or, more realistically, the BSPA) could begin to refuse to allow SVEMO- or DMU-licensed riders to compete in their competitions, for the very good reason that these organisations are not adhering to mutual agreements signed by all parties. Given that, top riders apart, the majority of the Swedes and Danes riding abroad do so in the UK, and that most of them would be unable to make a living from the sport without Elite and Premier League bookings, the impetus on those riders would be to lobby their federations to honour the agreement or switch to a neutral license, depriving the federations of much-needed license fees.

 

It's early days, and the landscape for 2014 in the UK still looks very much unsettled, and it may be that the attitude of the top riders is beginning to suit the aims of a league system that could very well do without them. Freddie Lindgren and Hans Andersen may very well, through their selfishness, cost some of their peers a comfortable ride for decent rates, in favour of chasing new money all over eastern Europe. You reap what you sow, they say - I only hope that's true in this case.

 

ITEM: The National League Fours is one of the third tier's Big Days Out. All eight teams will be represented, and a good crowd can be expected to be in attendance at Stoke's Loomer Road stadium. Missing from the event, however, will be two of the league's top stars - Joe Jacobs and Stefan Nielsen - and all because of a humdrum league meeting in Glasgow the same day.

 

The Premier League, for a second division, enjoys a position over the other leagues it doesn't really deserve. Riders are said to double-up with Elite and Premier teams, with the emphasis placed squarely on the "up", although that's a turn of phrase that doesn't really mean what the PL claims it to be. PL teams have first call on riders doubling-up, even if those riders are assets of the EL team they also ride for - the logic, one presumes, being that they are by and large heat leaders for their lower division clubs and therefore more difficult to replace than in the positions they occupy for their EL teams.

 

This is a logic not followed through for those riders doubling-up between the Premier and National Leagues, where - once again - the PL gets first call on their services. I'd argue that this, more than the EL/PL relationship, makes sense. Riders improve by racing against better opponents, and those NL riders also riding in the PL will benefit from the increased competition. But shouldn't that also be the case for PL riders doubling-up in the EL? The Premier League, it seems, is having its cake and eating it.

 

Mildenhall will cover for Nielsen on Sunday, although as their number one rider he will be missed, but Coventry look to be an outside bet already, with Rob Branford dislocating an elbow riding in, yes, the Premier League, and also missing the big day. This will leave Coventry tracking a quartet ranking 3rd-6th in their averages, instead of the top four the competition is meant for. If the league system stays anywhere near the same next season, the hierarchy of priority needs to seriously looked at, with a top down approach overruled by all shared events. To leave it as it is rewards mediocrity and will do nothing to help our sport find the forward momentum it so badly needs.

 

ITEM: Okay, if you've been reading the last few blogs you'll know that I've been suggesting new rules that could be adopted for the 2014 season. I do this with no expectation that they will be, or even that those with the power to do so will even be aware of what I'm writing (although I suspect that not to be the case!) but rather because I - as a paying fan - can see some things that are wrong with the sport, and how they might be put right. You never know - if the wind of change is blowing in the right direction we might get some common sense in our sport one day!

 

* Sort out the racesuits

                    On the surface of it, racesuits are a good idea. Having all the members of your team look more or less identical is good for the image of the sport - how would it look if Manchester United took to the field, each player with different coloured shorts and a slightly different shade of red to the shirts? - but it only works if all the members of the team look more or less identical. With teams chopping and changing riders, and with guest riders an inevitability in our sport, quite often teams are taking to the track with a mixture of team kevlars, race jackets, or those horrible raceshirts (or even, in the case of Birmingham on Sky last week, an oversized football shirt!). There are two obvious solutions: 1) if we are to continue with team racesuits each team must provide spares for guests and new signings to wear until they have a racesuit of their own. Speedway riders don't come in too many varieties of body size, so this shouldn't be too difficult. 2) use race jackets, like the old days (and as still used in the PL and NL), and if Sky insist on black legs, then mandate that all riders' individual kevlars have to include black legs. Or we could carry on looking a bit of a mess?

 

* Put a time limit on meetings

                    One of the biggest complaints from fans is that meetings take too long to run. Sometimes meetings run long because of incidents - burst airfences, injured riders, etc - but often they just run long. Perhaps the referee is too officious with restarts or not quick enough on the two-minute warning, or perhaps the interval drags on. Whatever the reason, except in very exceptional circumstances, this is unacceptable. In most forms of entertainment, you know when it will start and pretty much when it will finish. If speedway is to attract the casual punters' pounds (and keep its own fans happy), it needs to sharpen up on the timing. The referee is key to this, with the two-minute warning the best weapon in moving a meeting along. Not allowing riders back into the pits after a quarter of a lap is also a good tactic, but whatever the weapon used, it needs to be deployed. Cricket has a minimum number of overs per hour that have to be bowled, and teams can be fined for not keeping up with it - I'd suggest a similar tactic in speedway might prove very effective with cash-strapped promoters. Fifteen heats should take no more than ninety minutes to run - with a 15-minute interval, a 7.45 tapes up results in a 9.30 finish, leaving ample time for a second-half, a drink in the bar, or an early getaway, depending on the whims of the fans.

  

ITEM: I have no interest in becoming friends with speedway riders. I don't particularly want to work for any speedway promoter, paid or unpaid, and no real desire to lead any kind of fans' movement. Watching speedway is my hobby, and I find that if I get involved in my hobbies I end up ruining them for myself and others because I can't get my own way. That's not to say I wouldn't accept the same sort of deal offered to John Berry in the 1980s, to oversee the entire sport with no interference from the promoters, but that's more to do with my megalomaniacal tendencies than any desire to work in speedway.

 

I write this blog for my own amusement and because if I didn't I'd explode through frustration at the tiny things that annoy me about our sport. I also do it because I like to talk about speedway, but rarely is it motivated by any kind of selfish urge to push through my own agenda. Rarely. I have one weakness, of course - Poole Pirates. Or rather three or four individuals associated with that club. I begin to lose all rationality when it comes to Poole, a surely understandable reaction to Matt Fords attempted murder of my club in the winter of 2010/11, and especially when it comes to a rider who should have used up all his second chances a long time ago.

 

I'm not alone in this - across the Elite League fans are sick of the Pirates and their shenanigans, and if you were charitable you could say they are pantomime villains, the team everybody loves to beat, and that having them in that role is healthy for the league and the greater narrative of a season. However, you can go too far down that road and there is no coming back. Instead of being the team everybody likes to beat, they become the team nobody wants to see, despite the star attractions of their top riders. Let me dip into a wrestling analogy for a moment, if you'll allow me that indulgence...

 

In wrestling there are heroes (babyfaces) and villains (heels). The job of both is to get "over" - for a babyface that means having the crowd behind you as you mount your inevitable comeback against the dastardly heel, and for the heel it means having the crowd boo your every move, worried for the safety of their beloved babyface. The animosity the heel generates is called "heat" but there is also such a thing as "fuck you heat". This is where the heel has misplayed his role to such an extent that the crowd genuinely hate him. They don't want to see the babyface beat him because they don't want to see him at all. He is bad for business and won't last long unless he enjoys some special protection by the promoter.

 

I can't speak for everyone but to me - and certainly a very vocal minority of Bees' fans - Poole have slipped into fuck you heat territory. We don't want to see them any more than we have to, which is obviously troublesome given Nigel Pearson's "editorial judgement" of focusing on "winners" to the detriment of everything else, but at least if you only draw them once at the start of the season you can expect to get that over with and not see them again at your home track, right? Well, no, as it happens, because - as part of the loan deal that sees Greg Hancock become one of them - Mick Horton has instigated an annual challenge match against the Pirates, not quite understanding his core audience, it seems.

 

And this is where I wish I could use this blog for my own selfish ends, wield any power I might have to stop this happening. As it is, my power is restricted to not going on the night, even though the meeting is included in my season ticket and so I can't even deprive Mick Horton of any cash as some kind of feeble punishment. I love my club, and if it's a fair evening and the mercenary Hancock deigns to appear, they should get a good crowd and some much-needed cash. But, not for the first time in life as a sports fan, I just wish that principles could overcome cash. I won't give up wishing but every blow is another step towards not caring any more, like so many before me. And that would be a very bad thing.