ITEM: As I write, Coventry's home meeting with the Swindon Robins on Friday will go ahead with the Robins tracking only one member of the current team - Nick Morris. Ironically, Morris would ordinarily be missing but his Premier League club Somerset have no fixture on Friday, and an unofficial rule says that even if they do arrange one, his Swindon fixture must come first.
The Robins are expected to fill their team with guests, and operate rider-replacement, and there has been much grumbling from fans on both sides about the fixture going ahead with such diminished representation from Blunsdon regulars. For Coventry, Olly Allen is injured and Krzysztof Kasprzak also misses the fixture - the Bees acted swiftly to book Birmingham's Chris Harris, the Brandon Bomber, as a guest. So, come tapes up on Friday, only six of the expected fourteen riders will be on parade, surely a record of some sort?
How has this come about? A mixture of things, but mostly the scheduling of the semi-finals of the World Championship qualifying rounds the day after. This robs the meeting of Hans Andersen, Troy Batchelor, Edward Kennett, Peter Kildemand - as well as the aforementioned KK - and has been in the FIM calendar since before the Elite League fixtures were announced earlier this year. Why it was ever agreed to in the first place is a mystery, although the majority of EL teams will have riders who would have hoped to progress to this round of the qualifiers, and so whoever drew the short straw was going to be hamstrung.
Swindon did reportedly raise the issue in mid-March, but with Coventry committed to racing on a Friday - and unwilling to take the losses from an "off-night" staging - there seems to have been little wiggle room. One solution could have been to petition Sky to show the meeting, but their choice of televised encounters seems to be chosen entirely by random, a game of chance that usually results in a terrible spectacle for the fans.
Fans of the Robins - who are also missing Kacper Gomolski to an official, but pointless, open meeting in his native Poland, and Ashley Birks, whose Premier League side race on a Friday - claim they cannot be expected to get behind their "team", although Kennett, Gomolski, and Birks have only made a handful of appearances in Robins' colours, and the mercenary nature of the sport can often mean dozens of riders appearing for your side every few years. Fans are entitled to feel short-changed, but the call is entirely down to the home promoter - if he chooses to risk a potentially smaller crowd, it's his decision to make.
The fixture list says Bees vs Robins, of course, nothing more. And, come Friday, there will be two teams of riders representing those sides. They may look unfamiliar, at least on the away side of the pits, but the riders will not give any less effort - their livelihood depends on a good pay packet and a solid reputation as a guest to be trusted.
How do you avoid this situation happening again? The easiest solution - although there is no easy solution - is to sign only those riders who are not chasing an unrealistic dream - with the best will in the world, the majority of those missing their bread and butter league fixtures this weekend will never make the Grand Prix series, let alone be competitive in it.
For now, we just have to get on with it, and trust the promoters to come to some accord in avoiding such clashes next season. They can add it to the list...
ITEM: The Midland Development League - along with its northern equivalent, the Northern Junior League - is run by eager volunteers and filled with riders who are doing it for the love of the sport, and perhaps with an eye on the National League if their progression - aided by regular, competitive racing - warrants it.
So far it's an unqualified success, in that nothing much was probably expected of it when it began, and it has delivered half-a-dozen to a dozen really good prospects for the next tier of racing. My local National League track, the Coventry Storm, are using three graduates of the two leagues this season, and that's something emulated up and down the NL, with few exceptions.
Second-half racing has a warm spot in the hearts of many longtime speedway fans, although I'd wager their idea of a second-half was individual, rider-of-the-night style clashes, rather than team affairs. Myself, I grew up on watching the Smith & Sons Lada Young Bees after every senior Bees meeting, home and away, getting 21 heats for the price of 15, and picking up on the next big things coming through the speedway ranks.
I still stay behind when I can to watch the Vikings, Coventry's fourth-tier side, and have enjoyed nothing more this season than tracking the progress of James Shanes, a 16-year old grasstrack prodigy from Dorset. I did wonder, after I'd told everyone how good he was supposed to be and he subsequently fell in his first outing, if I'd made an error, but young James has come on, leaps and bounds, and is beating the field - established NL riders apart - in every MDL outing.
His reward is a team spot in the Storm team, where he will partner Luke Crang - himself spotted racing NJL at Redcar - and the cycle will continue, with other Vikings, Knights, Spitfires, and Invaders eager to catch the eye and move on up.
If you're one of those who rushes off after heat 15, why not try and stay behind if there's a second-half. The racing may be a bit harum-scarum, the riders occasionally wobbly, but it's well worth half-an-hour of your time. And better still it's free!
ITEM: Saturday's Grand Prix from Gorzow was an above-average affair with a final and winner few predicted. It's events like this that keep the spirit of the series alive, rather than predictable and processional GPs like Western Springs and Gothenberg.
Much was made of the great stadium and passionate speedway fans that Gorzow enjoys, and it certainly is one of the better places to watch speedway today. You could look at their set-up with some envy, but even a brief look at Gorzow's sporting and industrial heritage tells the story of just why it's been possible.
With a largely-agricultural even until quite recently, Poland industrialised far later than its western European counterparts. With industrialisation came organised sport - in England, in the industrial towns in the north and midlands, that was either football or rugby league. With Poland undergoing the process later, and with a Communist government keen to centralise sporting excellence in as few places per sport as possible, Gorzow became a hotbed for two pastimes - water polo and speedway. The success of Eduard Jancarz cemented speedway's hold on the town, and even now its football team play in only the second division, and have never enjoyed any success to speak of.
When the Iron Curtain fell, and Poland was gradually absorbed back into Europe, the newly-privatised companies and town councils carried on as their counterparts under the hammer and sickle had, supporting the local community through backing their sports teams, and this is the environment in which Polish speedway teams operate. Their equivalents in football, such is the largess that has struck that sport, are unable to compete with their western rivals, and even with the oligarch-backed superclubs to the east. In speedway, however, there has never been the likes of a Roman Abramovich or even a Dave Whelan, and thus the Poles rule the roost.
For now, at least. Times are hard all over Europe, and Poland is no exception to this. There will come a tipping point where the current model is no longer sustainable - does that sound familiar? Until then we can marvel at speedway in Poland, and some of you definitely enjoy trips over there for grands prix and the odd league match. But don't make the mistake of trying to compare our league with theirs - it's just not practical to imagine that we could operate under their very unique circumstances.
ITEM: Promoters are always pulling one shenanigan or another, often with the approval of their peers on the BSPA MC, but it's not often that you find proof of it, especially not published in black & white on the BSPA's own website!
When Lakeside announced that they wanted to bring in young Adam Ellis alongside Sebastian Ulamek as part of a double switch with Kim Nilsson and Robert Mear, they were told quite unequivocally by fans familiar with the rules that it wouldn't be possible. Ellis would have been a double-up rider, and to double-up you have to have a greensheet average from the previous season. Ellis, who only began riding last summer and has made enormous strides, doesn't and thus was ineligible.
Still, this apparently did not stop Lakeside, who announced that he would be making his debut at home to Coventry, a match which was eventually washed out by some heavy rain in the Thurrock area. As the match did not go ahead, and no-one saw the programme, Lakeside apologists denied that their club was ever going to make the change.
Lakeside did redeclare their side to Ulamek, however, in place of Nilsson, and this is where they came unstuck again. In submitting their redeclared 1-7 - and presumably having it accepted by the BSPA, who published it on their website - they went over the points limit by almost a point. Obviously, this was an illegal change. Further muddying the waters was the fact that the published set of greensheet averages/team declarations that included this 1-7 was numbered 12 - the previous one was 10, and 11 was missing altogether!
The Hammers didn't have any fixtures between this redeclaration and their next one, which took advantage of the new averages released in June to track the same side but this time under the points limit. Then, wonder of wonders, the missing greensheet 11 appeared on the website, containing Adam Ellis in the Hammers' 1-7, and thus, once again, proving that someone at the BSPA approved their illegal line-up.
It's all very silly, and given that the Hammers rode no fixtures during this period no actual offence was committed. But given that Lakeside's co-promoter Jon Cook is the BSPA vice-chairman, and on the BSPA management committee that approves such changes, it doesn't look great. I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable answer as to why all this happened. I just don't think they'll ever tell us.
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