And If You Believe That... (and other things)

ITEM: There’s a myth being pedalled around the various social media sites that host speedway discussion, one that hides a more unpleasant truth and allows a few unscrupulous teams to feign innocence in their dereliction of duty to the sport in this country. That fallacy – that the Fast Track Draft is costing a few already-established British riders jobs in the Elite League – is damaging and insidious, and cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.

First, let’s look at why the draft was introduced. Several reasons, of course, but chief amongst them was a desire to cut costs. There’s no getting away from that – at its 2013 level the Elite League doesn’t support itself. There are - of course - many, many reasons for this, but that’s a subject for another day. Let’s all agree that costs outweigh income and build from there.

Having accepted that, the obvious – and previously accepted – way of cutting costs is to cut team strengths, usually by the imposition of a lower points limit. This never works in isolation because the top riders are retained and ill-balanced by lesser and lesser makeweights, increasing the gap between the best and the worst, with no other result than an artificial inflation of average riders’ averages.

A far more sensible way, if you’re going to achieve a cut in team strength that actually saves money, is to replace the middle order riders that are flown in from God knows where with locally-based lads (on cheaper pay rates, to boot). Yes, the top riders will still be heads and shoulders above the rest, but there’s a shuffling up in the middle which should negate the effects of that on the overall entertainment value of a meeting.

Unfortunately, certain clubs love their useless, middle order riders, and short of prying them from their cold, dead hands, the only way to ensure that the likes of the Drymls, the Nieminens, and the Miskowiaks are removed from our league like the malign moles they are is to legislate them out – difficult when you can’t explicitly ban individual riders or even their nationalities (as desirable as that may seem).

So the decision was made to balance out the surgery with some holistic therapy, and impose (mostly) young British riders on teams who would usually faint at the sight of them, in the form of the Fast Track Draft. The unfortunate aspect of this is that they have been sold as reserves. This is an understandable error – they are, after all, (in most cases) the least of their sides, and occupy the traditional reserve positions…

As evidence to the contrary, I hold up the points limit set for the five open slots – 32 points, ten and a half points lower than the 2013 limit for the full seven riders. If you want to accept that the reserves are valued at 3 points apiece (although a couple of them actually have GSA’s above that figure), then the total limit of 38 points is roughly a 10% reduction in team strength. However, if you accept that the "reserves" are there to replace the crappy, middle-order riders, the ten, ten and half point value is about right, and so the top five – so to speak – isn’t reduced in strength at all. And given that there's been no corresponding 10% reduction in admission prices...

Now, I don’t blame you if you think I’m trying to sell you something that’s not all it seems. I am. But that’s because it’s been sold badly in the first place, and the intentions behind the decision-making not made clear, but believe me when I say that the big intention was to remove those riders – foreign-based, averaging 4-6 points a meeting – from the league.

Unfortunately, as I’ve said, some clubs have a raging hard-on for those riders, and would rather pick them over anyone with a British passport. They mask this behind a stated intention to pick the best team possible, as though the two were incompatible, and latterly brush aside any criticism of such a policy by pointing out that they’re doing their bit with the young Brits at reserve this year. It’s enough to make you bang your head on the desk.

The riders most commonly named as victims of the Fast Track Draft are Josh Auty, Adam Roynon, and Ashley Birks. They are three very different riders, with very different sets of circumstances, and their absence (so far, and it may change, with some slots still open) is not as clear cut as blaming the Fast Track Draft would make it handy to do.

Birks, of course, had a team place – at Swindon – but was unceremoniously dumped when the Robins decided to go in another direction – a foreign one, naturally. It would have been no surprise to see Birks sit out the start of the season in both senior leagues, due to the serious nature of the injury he received at the tail end of last season, and to hear that he’d been considered for a place for the Robins was both encouraging and heartbreaking. If Alun Rossiter was certain enough of his fitness to include him – up until a few days ago – in his planned 2014 team, then he must be ready to resume racing in March. That he’d been sure of a place at Blunsdon probably meant him not touting his availability, to top flight - and second-tier Thursday – tracks, and to be dumped at such a late stage leaves him out in the cold. Luckily, there are still a couple of PL tracks still to declare their full seven riders, and so he should be fixed up in that division, at least.

Birks had a place, despite the draft, and then lost it. Being available from the outset, rather than being shelved by Swindon, may have seen him – on a very attractive starting average – picked up by one of their rivals, allowing more points for the rest of their team-building. As it is, we’ll never know if anyone might have gone down this route.

Roynon, similarly, is recovering from (yet another) injury, and few even considered the prospect of him starting the season in the Elite League. A far better plan – which will happen by happenstance more than design – would be to recover race fitness in the second division before slotting into a team mid-season. And that will still most likely happen. Yes, there is the outside chance that Adam, on a handy 4-something average, would have slotted into the last place at any number of clubs, but that’s still the case regardless of the draft occupying the reserve slots. I’d argue that Roynon, as with Birks, is a victim of his uncertain fitness – more comebacks than Sinatra – more than anything else.

Auty has had a solid couple of seasons at Birmingham and probably would have stayed their this season had the Brummies’ two double-up spots not been taken by two of their heat leaders. This is its own issue – that the Brummies’ numbers two and three are number ones in the second division – and one that needs to be addressed by the BSPA as a whole. Doubling up wasn’t supposed to work this way, and this is partly a consequence of that. Having said that, there are riders occupying double-up spots – and few could argue that Auty is exactly the sort of rider who should be doubling-up – that are taking his place. Riders like Josh Grajczonek and Ricky Wells, and it is these names – alongside Jakob Thorsell, Simon Gustafsson, Kim Nilsson, and others – that are occupying slots that Auty could – and should be filling. No rider has a divine right to a team spot, but this is the brutal truth.

There is a further argument to be considered – should these lads have been put into the Fast Track Draft themselves? Again, there’s not one answer for all three, and there are differing levels of merit for that suggestion based on the rider in question. I’d argue that, of the three, Birks had the greatest shout – only averaging 3.00 in the top flight and coming back from a career-threatening injury – but you also have to consider that he finished 2013 as his PL team’s number one rider. Roynon, too, with that injury, could possibly have been thrown in, but this would had both gifted Coventry a massive head start on their rivals (assuming asset-protection still applied) and ignore that Roynon has been an EL rider for several seasons, with only injury preventing him becoming more established.

And Auty? I can’t think of any definition which would see him included, without also throwing in the likes of Richard Lawson and Richie Worrall. This highlights the weakness of the draft – that it should have been done at something approaching its present level in the Premier League, and a super draft, including Auty, Lawson, Worrall, Roynon, and others of or around their level, done for the top flight.

Ignoring that, we have the draft that we have, and as a result twenty team slots will be filled by developing British riders. Playing devil’s advocate, you might argue that the numbers means this is worth the risk of three others being left out in the cold, in the top flight at least, but that’s to play their game. There’s no one way to build a team, the numbers game can be played in many different ways. King’s Lynn and Belle Vue have shown that you can build a 1-5 in the same way as a 1-7, with a three-pointer at the bottom balancing out a high-averaging rider at number one, and this is proof enough for me that the draft has had nothing to do with Auty, Birks, Roynon, and others not gaining EL spots in 2014.

No, the truth is that their kind was never going to find favour at certain tracks, and that it’s the same old faces ignoring British talent in the same old way. This is the real story – don’t blame the draft, blame Poole, blame Eastbourne, and their chums, for ignoring the bigger picture. In a year when supporting British riders took a massive leap forward, some people are still trying to hold it back.

ITEM: It's not all bad news, which is especially welcome at this time of year. Peterborough have been saved! Okay, so they'll be running in a lower division, and they won't have the sugar daddy that's been propping them up for the last few years, but speedway will continue at the East of England Showground in 2014, and hopefully beyond that.

The saviour, although I doubt many will ever regard him as such, is Coventry promoter Mick Horton, who has organised a consortium including former Panthers' rider Adrian Smith, Julie Mahoney, and Trevor Swales. The Panthers will race on a fixed racenight - Tuesday - and have already made a good start to their teambuilding by signing Ryan Fisher, Lasse Bjerre, and Ulrich Ostergaard.

They've added Lewis Blackbird to that, which is exactly the kind of signing a second-tier Panthers need to make: locally-based, hungry for success, and a rider they'll for whom have first call on his services. If they can continue their team building with another couple of young, British riders, the future for the new Peterborough looks very encouraging.

As a Coventry fan, however, I do have some slight worries. Although a successful businessman, Mick Horton is not exactly swimming in cash - certainly not to the level of Rick Frost - and I am slightly concerned that the Panthers may be a drain on his speedway resources. Horton will effectively be running three speedway teams - one in each division - and the last time this was tried, by Gary Patchett in 2010 (Swindon, Birmingham, Dudley), was a self-admitted failure. Still, in the spirit of the season, I'm going to concentrate on the positives and leave the things I have no power over to someone else to worry about!

Having a "nursery" side will benefit Coventry in the long run. There have been some worries expressed by Peterborough fans that their club may become a "feeder" club to the Bees, and there are two ways of looking at this. Firstly, it's a natural consequence of the current speedway set-up in this country. There have been de facto arrangements of this kind before - Poole and the Isle of Wight, for instance - and it would be foolish to ignore a close link between the clubs as a pathway to top flight speedway for riders developing in the second division at Peterborough. The other side of it is that it would be a beneficial relationship to both teams, with Peterborough able to call on the services - as they have with Fisher - of Coventry assets, and young British talent starting out at Coventry's National League side. For Coventry's investment in the Panthers they get first call on any Panthers' assets ready for the top flight, and get to place their developing riders at a club they know will bring them on.

I'd worry more if I were a Panthers' fan and there was any danger of the club's identity being absorbed into the Bees' brand, but - as far as I know - there are no plans for them to ride in yellow and black, or to adopt a new logo or nickname. Business as usual, just with a link-up with a top flight club while top-flight speedway isn't feasible at Alwalton.

Time will tell how successful it will be. Some have written it off already. Most of them don't have clue one about running one, let alone two, speedway clubs, but there have been warning tones from those who do, as well. All I know is that Mick Horton's heart was in Peterborough speedway. He was never going to let them go to the wall. It's now in Coventry speedway. He won't (if he can help it) jeopardise what should be a comfy promoter's job at Brandon. We're awful at judging things and people before we give them a chance. Let's try and change that, eh?

ITEM: So the World Champion is all signed up and he'll be taking to the track in the 2014 British leagues. It was never really in doubt, especially after the structure of the top flight was left to allow his inclusion with no drawbacks, but it's good to see it confirmed, nonetheless. It also shuts up the naysayers who claim that the Elite League is broken, and that we should fix it to allow the top boys to ride here once more. If the world champion - and world number three (and four other GP riders) - can race here, it's not too broken, after all.

Ivan Mauger was very vocal in the past that Britain did not make enough of its world champions. I can't speak for that - Michael Lee was almost forgotten by the time I started watching speedway, and I was on a long break when Mark Loram won the title - but it's probably not far off the truth, and definitely something that needs to be put right. The fact that the reigning world champion will visit nine tracks twice this season - as well as at least 18 appearances at Monmore Green - and that he's charismatic, with an interesting look, and British, is something that the BSPA can ill-afford to pass up on this time around.

No doubt each club will have its own strategy for marketing the appearance of the world champion at their track but here's something where I think they really need to work together, perhaps with a centrally-administered fund for advertising, and with a clear strategy of ensuring that Wolverhampton visit these tracks when Woffinden is available to ride. If we're going to prove Mauger wrong, at long last, we need everyone pulling together for once.

Yes, this will benefit some tracks more than others. Yes, it protects Wolverhampton from those occasions when fixtures have to be run at the same time as Grand Prix practices. But there is a bigger picture here, one of opportunity and investment, and we can hardly look a gift horse in the mouth - even if that mouth is covered in tattoos that would make your granny tut.

ITEM: Finally, I want to finish by wishing all my readers a very Merry Christmas! There are times when writing this blog is more of a chore than a pleasure, but knowing that a handful of you appreciate what I do is reward enough for those endeavours. If I had one Christmas wish it would be for more bloggers to take up the challenge - if only because I'm short on things to read about our sport once I've devoured the Speedway Star and Backtrack. I'm not quite ready for Classic Speedway just yet, so come on, join me!