Wobblers (and other things)

ITEM: This is where, if I were any kind of decent human being, I'd write about the play-off semi-finals, and the upcoming final. However, there'll be plenty of stuff written about that, all of it congratulatory and masturbatory, so for once I'll err on the side of the redundancy. Suffice to say, this year's final is the nadir of the Elite League's 16-season history, and a fitting death rattle as we go into the most important winter the sport has seen for almost fifty years. Will that do?

ITEM: What entitles you to a say in how your club should be run? Note that I say "should be", because we know - from bitter experience - that speedway fans have almost zero input into the structure, wellbeing, and future of our sport, perhaps less than any other fan-supported sport. That accepted, what actually makes your opinion worthwhile, over the cacophony of rubbish spouted by people who can barely spell their own name?

Do you have to be a fan-sponsor? Putting money into clubs' and riders' pockets so that there's a little more money to waste on frivolities than there would be without you? How about a season-ticket holder, stumping up cash in advance, with no guarantee of anything other than a minimum number of meetings for your buck, yet ever filled with hope that this will be the year? Or a regular attendee, paying your £10-17 a meeting on the gate, and able to duck out of going if something better (or less worse) comes up? Maybe you're even one of those fans, who don't go any more (or just a few times a season) yet still think that they should be heard on just where their club (who they no longer support, remember) is going wrong, without offering anything positive to change it, or provide finance for those changes to happen?

The truth, as always, is a huge mass of grey, and - of course - everyone who cares enough about their club to be hurt by a defeat or lifted by a victory deserves to have their voice heard, at least a little. However, I'd argue that by going to meetings and actively supporting your team you become a stakeholder, which is one of those horrible modern words that politicians like to use for people who are affected by something without having much of a say in how that thing is run.

Worse still are those who no longer go to meetings all that much but still spend "speedway money" on overseas trips to grands prix. I've argued before about how much money is "lost" to British speedway every time the British GP is staged in Cardiff - millions of pounds, if you remember - and, while the total isn't so great, to avoid league speedway in favour of GPs abroad is worse still. It shows an utter lack of awareness for the bigger picture, and a contempt for the sport bordering on insulting. Still, better Stockholm and Prague than Swindon and Redcar, eh?

All of that, which is an unfortunate and growing phenomenon, is made worse by those people expecting a say, even at social media level where the words and ideas expressed are unusual and unrealistic and mostly illuminating for all that, in how domestic speedway is run. It's like leaving your wife for a trashier model (although ugly as sin under all that make-up) and still expecting to tell her what to do, who to see, and how she should perform in the bedroom. In that situation you'd expect to be told to "do one", although perhaps not quite in those terms, and also maybe the subject of a police enquiry into your behaviour.While no-one is calling for the police to investigate the GP whores just yet, I think the sentiment should remain the same: if you want to tell the DJ what songs he should play, you have to dance with the one what brung ya!

You'd have to be an eternal optimist to believe that, one day, we might get a say in how the sport is run. Maybe a handful of us might come into some money and buy a place at the table as club owner or promoter - currently the only way to have your voice heard - but in the event that the unthinkable happens we have to be in a position to take advantage. That means all of us with an interest in the future of the sport staying loyal to our national leagues, and playing an active role as - shudder - stakeholders.

The administration of speedway in this country is in poor shape but the product is largely right. Carry on going to meetings, keep on suggesting changes and point out the potholes that the BSPA often seem so intent on driving into, and we may get through this. Together. As it should be.

ITEM: Whatever the outcome of the 2013 World Championship, after Saturday night's final SGP at Torun, we're going to have witnessed an incredible effort of one kind or another. Either Tai Woffinden recovers enough from a re-broken collarbone to score enough points to secure his first title, or Jarek Hampel rides exceptionally well to overhaul Woffinden and win his first championship.

It's been a stop-start season, GP-wise, which is perhaps a side effect of a too-long series where each individual event means less the more they add, and the timespan between the first and last almost six and a half months, a full nine weeks longer than the inaugural series. Injuries have also played their part in the continuity of the series, with Sayfutdinov, Ward, and Holder all potential winners affected, to different degrees, by serious injury.

This has all contributed to no clear narrative, so important in telling the story of a season, and if Woffinden wins the title with anything but a blockbuster performance in Torun it will be well-deserved but anti-climactic. If Hampel triumphs, it will be a great on-the-night story, but his win will always have a "but" attached to it.

Regardless of the result, the Torun GP has become an end-of-season party for fans, and I know more than a few of you are making the trip out there (after spending lots of money on domestic speedway all season!). Enjoy the trip and don't worry too much about "narratives", "ifs, buts, and maybes", and whether we get a British world champion for the first time in thirteen years or not. There should be nights when it's about four blokes racing around a track. Make it one of those, yeah?

ITEM: In a couple of ways, I witnessed a possible future for British speedway this past Saturday. In the Midland Development League - whose Riders' Championship I attended at Leicester - we have a grass-roots organisation providing opportunity and track time for future stars and those who can turn a bike enough to race but will, in all kindness, never progress beyond this level. Also at Leicester was a demonstration of Pete Seaton's Formula2 Speedway bikes, ridden by Les & Aidan Collins, and intended to be a cheap entry into the sport for less-affluent aspirants and hobbyists alike.

If you look at the history of British speedway - and why wouldn't you? - it's, for the majority of its existence, a story of a handful of professional racers backed up by thousands of local heroes working a nine-to-five before setting off for the track. They didn't expect to earn enough from their speedway endeavours to make a living, unless they hit the very, very top - in which case their billing on a racecard probably bringing in enough extra fans to make them worth every penny. For the rest speedway was a hobby, one that earned them a bit of pocket money and the attentions of some female fans but a hobby still. John Berry wrote a few years back that, of his all-conquering Ipswich team of the mid-1970s, only two or three were full-time speedway riders, and the rest had regular jobs. That was a title-winning side in one of the sport's heydays.

For some reason, and I'm not quite sure where it changed but it probably had something to do with the wholesale introduction of foreign makeweights into the British leagues, clubs are expected to find enough cash to allow their whole team to go full-time, even in the second division, despite incomes falling across the board. I'm not arguing that the riders don't deserve it - if it were up to me we'd all be swimming in cash, and none more so than those who do a risky job - but that we need a sea change in how we view the sport in this country.

For some people even National League speedway is a joke. For wobblers, has-beens, and never-weres. Quite what those people would make of the MDL or NJL (if they bothered to stay after meetings and watch them, that is) is another thing altogether, and that's before we even get to amateur events. There is a lack of respect shown to the lower ends of speedway that just doesn't exist in other sports, and that filters upwards into the higher leagues when graduates from the grass-roots levels progress. In the last week we've seen Lewis Kerr score points in the Elite League play-offs, yet as recent as a few weeks ago he was derided by some as "just" a National League rider, ignorant of the progress he has made in the last twelve months.

I write a lot about the future of speedway in this blog because I care a great deal about it, beyond what happens to my favourite riders or how well my own club are performing. That's because my favourite riders cannot race against themselves, and my club cannot win a league of one. Every level of the sport in this country has to be cherished and encouraged and supported, because without the grass-roots we have no foundations, and a house with no foundations is likely to collapse.

So, if you're one those people with no time for lower level speedway, think about that next time you sneer at the wobblers or hobbyists, and try and imagine what kind of speedway you'll be watching in twenty years. I wouldn't mind betting it's nearer my vision of the sport than yours.