Dude's Blog

2010-05-10T09:16:00.001+01:00

Top Ten

2010-01-19T13:34:00.007Z

I've been asked by Jeff Scott (Showered in Shale, Concrete for Breakfast, etc.) to write my Sheffield top ten, not as easy as it sounds, after all how do you choose between Neil Collins and Louis Carr, Arnie Haley and Ricky Ashworth? Anyhow I made my choices and this is what I wrote;

Sheffield all time top ten.

Well first of all it’s not really “all time”, I’ve been watching Sheffield since 1972 so even though that gives me 35 years to choose from (we were closed for two seasons) I never did see Jim Airey, Guy Allott, Clem Beckett, Clive Featherby, Jack Kitchen, or Tommy Roper.

There’s also a handful of riders who have ridden for Sheffield who have got to be considered greats but who’s best years were spent elsewhere or their Sheffield career was exceptionally short, to name but a few, Sam Ermolenko, Chris Morton, Lars Gunnestad, Jan O. Pedersen and Bernie Persson.

So I’ve gone all from personal experience, no anecdotal evidence and from my own preferences.

The list would be (in no particular order).

1. Reg Wilson

2. Doug Wyer

3. Shawn Moran

4. Kelly Moran

5. Sean Wilson

6. Arnie Haley

7. Roman Matousek

8. Carl Stonehewer

9. Neil Collins

10. Peter Carr

Here’s why:

1. Reg Wilson

Along with Doug Wyer Reg was just starting out in speedway when I went to my first meeting, for the next 12 years or so he was a regular in the team, always solid at home and a class performer on the road without ever really threatening the big boys of the era. Once he retired he spent many seasons as team manager with more success than any Sheffield manager before or since.

2. Doug Wyer

Always the more rough and tumble of the Wilson/Wyer partnership, he had the edge over Reg due to that bit more aggression in his riding – and his lightning starts, he wasn’t called Flyer Wyer for nothing. High point was his 1976 World Final appearance, Peter Collins’ win overshadowed his achievements that day and he never managed to get back onto the biggest stage.

3. Shawn Moran

The first truly world class rider during my time at Sheffield, every team prior to the Moran era was either plain mediocre or strength in depth, with Shooey the team finally had a true figurehead. It’s often asked what he could have achieved had he partied less, but that was part of his appeal at Owlerton, a slice of Californian razamatazz in S6.

4. Kelly Moran

If Shawn liked to party then it can only be said that he learned everything he knew from his elder brother who must be considered as one of the sports biggest under-achievers when you consider his obvious natural ability on a motorbike. Having Kelly alongside Shawn as a Tiger for 3 years was simply amazing – and a real gift to other Division 1 tracks as they were a real drawcard at any track.

5. Sean Wilson

Captain Marvel as he was called during his second, and most successful spell at the club. The successful Premier League teams were built around him and you could always see the raw enthusiasm for the sport and the encouragement he gave his teammates. From his first meeting in 1986 as a 16 year old it was never in doubt that he would become a star, injury pegged him back a lot though and he never truly fulfilled his potential. Always willing to have a chat with the fans, I’ll never forget the look of surprise and delight on hi face when he spotted me and Julie proudly wearing our Sean Wilson Racing shirts at the Grand Prix Challenge in Krsko in 2001.

6. Arnie Haley

My dad’s favourite rider, probably of all time, he really didn’t know when to give up. I remember a time in the early 70’s when the Tigers were truly strength in depth to the degree that Arnie was a heat leader on week then the new green sheets came out and he was at reserve despite his average hardly moving. I don’t think he dropped a point while he was down there in the team!

7. Roman Matousek

You literally didn’t know what was going to happen from one lap to the next with Roman never mind one week to the next. Pure entertainment, built like a nightclub bouncer he must have struck fear into the hearts of opposition riders when they saw him for the first time.

8. Carl Stonehewer

Carl was only at Sheffield for one season, the promotion had tried everything they could to sign Sean Wilson but had been thwarted at every turn, suddenly Stoney became available and he was snapped up, soon becoming a crowd favourite. Any appearance at Owlerton nowadays and he is greeted with the Motorhead anthem “The Ace of Spades” due to a slight altercation with Newport rider Anders Hendriksen who had just dumped Stoney onto the track. Stoney reacted by picking up a shovel from the centre green and chasing after Hendriksen. And they say there are no characters in sport nowadays!

9. Neil Collins

A truly undervalued rider for Sheffield in so many ways, never the prime Collins brother, never a number one rider but always rock solid and dependable. A very stylish rider without being flamboyant or flashy, his one concession being the red neckscarf flying out behind him.

10. Peter Carr

A solid second string throughout the 80’s always snapping at the heels of the heatleaders Peter came into his own when speedway returned to Owlerton in 1991 after a forced two-year closure. By now it was second tier speedway and PC was a truly class act. He was nicknamed the B52 Bomber because of his dives under opposition rider on the entry to the third bend.

Honourable mentions to those who were knocking on the door but didn’t quite edge their way in to the top ten, in particular;

Andre Compton

Bob Valentine

Neil Evitts

Ricky Ashworth

Greg Bartlett

Simon Stead.

Buy Jeff's books at Amazon

Happy New Decade

2010-01-05T10:56:00.001Z

A very quiet time on the forums at the moment, Sheffield's forum is as dead as ever and this is not just due to the team being completed, it has as much to do with all the controversial posters leaving due to the ridiculous happening chronicled elsewhere on this blog.

The problem generally with early January is that everything is in the post holidays lull, there isn't even any new music to download. To counter this I downloaded five Kristin Hersh "official bootlegs" which I am now ploughing through. Just Kris with an acoustic guitar, excellent songs, excellent quality.

Why not try some?

Snow is falling outside, by all accounts we are having it easy in Norfolk, just a light dusting whereas the rest of the country is suffering heavy falls - I suppose that makes up for the weather just before Christmas when we had it much worse than the rest of England.

Belated Seasons Greetings

2009-12-27T08:52:00.000Z

And a happy new year to anyone who actually drops by to read this shit.

We'll be going into the new year with a decent looking speedway team following the signings of Pepe Franc and Arlo Bugeja, an upsurge in form from Barnsley FC following the inspired appointment of Mark Robins but sadly the demise of my adopted "home town" team King's Lynn who folded in early December due to mismanagement at the highest level.

With luck a phoenix will rise from the ashes of the Linnets and this time next year it will be well on it's way back up the leagues to it's true position.

It's also the end of a decade so I'm going to have a think about that and in the next few days reflect on the past 10 years which, in more ways than you could imagine, have been quite eventful on a personal level as well as a global one.

Til then, pip pip....

Pleasantly surprised!

2009-12-04T17:17:00.000Z

So it's Josef Franc, colour me impressed, we now need to get the right number 7, we have about three and a half points to play with, hopefully we can find a gem.

A Lot Has Happened!

2009-12-03T19:43:00.002Z

Ages since the last time I added to this blog, shortly after the last entry there was one of those periods that whilst exhausting made the hard work of the past few years worthwhile, after all had we not put everything into establishing the company there would have been no way we could have either had the time off work to gad about going to gigs or being able to afford it.

Too much really to go into the minutiae but the highlights were two Wilco gigs on consecutive nights in Leeds then London and a weekend in New York where we took in the quite marvellous Glenn Tilbrook in a small bar in Brooklyn.

We now have a situation where my number 2 football team King's Lynn is in the middle of a winding up fight over £67,000 owed to the taxman and a further £80,000 or so of debt. it has made me realise that although I love going along to the Walks and watching them I am still at heart a Barnsley fan who goes to watch Lynn, I don't want to see them fold but it hasn't devastated me like the close shaves with Barnsley or like any of the other fans on the Linnets Forum.

My speedway team has almost been completed for 2010 and surprise surprise there are no surprises so far! Of the 5 riders so far named all five were part of the terrible 2009 team, with just 2 spots to fill the promotion will really have to pull something out of the bag to secure my place there most Thursdays next year. For me the biggest mistake is the retention of Paul Cooper, how many times does he have to flatter to deceive? How many more seasons of under achievement are going to be accepted from him - at least another one I assume. I have always been one of Neil Machin's staunchest supporters railing out many a time about accusations that he will not pay the money required to build a successful team. I have used both Sean Wilson and Andre Compton as examples, neither of which could have been cheap options in the past but this time it seems that after long talks with Andre he has decided he will be better off travelling a 400 mile round trip every week to Workington rather than make the 20 minute trip to Owlerton. Either Worky offered him silly money we couldn't match or we offered silly money that Worky easily beat - either way it looks as though we will have another team based on mediocrity in depth. As the Speedway Star reports of talks with a prospective heat leader (rumoured to be Christian Hefenbrock) failing, the smart money now seems to be on an Owlerton return for Robbie Kessler leaving about 5 points to play with for the final place when in reality what was needed was an out-and-out number one with an 8 point average (i.e. someone like Hefenbrock) and an up and coming junior. As always I beg to be proved wrong, despite my feelings that Ricky Ashworth needs a season away from Sheffield I hope he establishes himself as a true top rider, I hope Richard Hall gets the consistency he needs, that Josh Auty managed to gate within 2 seconds of the tapes going up, and most of all that Paul Cooper managed a season of reasonable form - not a season of spectacular scores, just one of steady scoring and a run of completed races!

More once the team is completed - hopefully on a more positive note!

Bye bye Vista - and good riddance!

2009-10-15T10:10:00.003+01:00

Well I’ve finally done it, I have had an epiphany, cast off the Microsoft shackles and thrown my lot in with Apple MacIntosh. I’ve been running a Macbook for a while, a few months ago I needed to replace my laptop, not having been that impressed with Windows Vista I decided to try the Mac experience and I have to admit to quickly becoming a convert, everything about it seemed to ooze a quality lacking on the Windows PC’s, from operating system to build quality.

I’m not an early adopter, I didn’t own a mobile phone until 2000 when my a change in my work routine meant I was spending a lot of time on the road, and the nature of my work also changed meaning I was on call a lot of the time. Not being a fan of video games (as they used to be called) I saw little point in owning a personal computer of any kind, the prospect of Pong, Pacman and the like could never tear me away from my stereo or the prospect of a good book, however in 1995 I was offered an Amstrad PCW dirt cheap which I bought and quickly discovered that I’d acquired an obsolete piece of plastic glass and wires that was unloved by most, the betamax of the computer world, the Setanta Sports of technology. Software was virtually non-existant for the PCW but it did come with a powerful if basic word processing package called Locoscript 2 (I never did know what happened to Locoscript 1). Soon I became an addicted diarist, there was no way to connect the thing up to the internet and blogs were unheard of at the time so my writings were strictly personal and private, but very prolific. Soon I managed to get hold of a couple of other basic programs and I gradually started to use the PCW for spreadsheets and a bit of design work making quite crude posters for friends who had a band.

This carried on until 1999 when it went pop, my sister had an old laptop with docking station that was surplus to her requirements, I joined the PC revolution - about 10 years late! One of the things I had realized was that anything I had done on the PCW was lost, only printed sheets remained because the floppy discs that I had stored data on were not only unreadable on a PC, they didn’t even fit into it, the PCW having a unique three inch disc rather than the more common three and a half inch disc. So I had to adapt, I also lost Locoscript and had to start working in Word, on the old Windows 3.1 operating system.

My first taste of Microsoft lasted about 4 months before the laptop packed in, my partner however had a desktop PC with the revolutionary Windows 95! I also started using a PC on a regular basis for work so I soon became computer savvy, and before long I could do most things I needed to. Digital photography gave me further need to use the magic box, and the extra bits such as external hard drives to store the vast amount of images I was building up with my new found interest in wildlife photography. Windows Millennium came and went, Windows 2000 seemed to work well but didn’t last long before being replaced by Windows XP that seemed to be a dumbing down of the process which Microsoft marketed as making it more “user friendly”, hmm.... This of course gave way to the abomination that is Windows Vista, a product I could swear about for 20 minutes without once repeating myself, a clunky, counter intuitive affair that made it virtually impossible to use a PC for anything other than sending an email, surfing the net or playing games. It seemed that the needs of anyone who did not want to join in Facebook, MySpace or Twitter was ignored as the “features” of Vista appeared to be targeted at 15 year olds who spent every bit of spare time they had in their bedroom - not wanking or writing excruciatingly self indulgent poetry as any self respecting adolescent of my era would, but in front of a computer screen multi-tasking to the nth degree, playing 3 games, having conversations with 4 people and checking out the latest Death Metal tracks. All ths whl txtn thr m8s on thr mbls.

My final straw came when attempting to connect 2 photographs to an email, I wrote the mail, clicked on “attach”, found the files I wanted to send, highlighted and pressed return only to get the message “You do not have sufficient privileges to do this action”. I calmly turned the PC off, got in my car, drove to the Apple Store Norwich and returned with a brand spanking new iMac.

Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t just a shallow knee-jerk over-reaction to just one incident, it was the final happening in a catalogue of events that saw me lose two batches of very important photographs which, despite the Microsoft assurances that it couldn’t happen, were wiped from one of my hard drives as I attempted to back them up. New software and the attentions of our IT expert at the office failed to find them. It almost happened with my digitised music too, fortunately this was securely copied in several places so despite Bill Gates best efforts I can still listen to Death Metal should the desire take me. Constant security alerts, constant permission and privileges issues that meant that actually turning the thing on became an ordeal.

The Mac however seems like a calm oasis, a pleasure to work with, ok some things are different but are soon learnt, it doesn’t treat me as if I’m an idiot, and it lets me do what I want to do without asking me 5 times if I’m sure I want to continue before not letting me do it, and, so far, has not managed to lose any important files or changed the location of other at its own whim. It doesn’t take it 10 minutes to switch on or off, I don’t have to spend 30 minutes a week downloading the latest virus definitions (which won’t work) and its clean aluminum design looks stylish and elegant compared to the cheap looking black plastic box it has replaced. It connects better to my phone and mp3 player (I suppose it really ought to - they are both from the Apple family) and also to the various hard drives and router I use that took me days to sort out with the PC. I suppose these are all reasons why you often hear of people who switch from PC to Mac but never vice-versa, I wish I’d done it years ago.

Oh how we laughed!

2009-10-01T19:21:00.002+01:00

After being welcomed to the British Speedway Forum, "the forum that doesn't get censored", one of my first posts is removed for "personal abuse"!

It was in response to a post that claimed King's Lynn speedway gave you, "Big crowds, fast race track, best teams in the 2nd tier of British Speedway, battling it out. Lush surroundings. Great, Mike Bennett presentation. All for a bargain price of £12... Mouth watering, isnt it?"

I quoted the bit about the fool Bennett and commented that it was an oxymoron about a moron, I looked back a little later to see that "personal abuse" had been removed.

I now think Mike Bennett is just a little bit less of a moron than the humourless moderator who believes that is "personal abuse".

He's still a dick however, and always will be...

Dull, dull, dull....

2009-09-15T15:44:00.002+01:00

Good title for a blog about the Sheffield Speedway forum over the past few weeks, other than a bit of a spat between myself and Sparky over the merits of finishing 5th in the league debate and conversation on the board seems to have died almost completely. The subject was taken up on the British Speedway Forum by Spin King and Third Man where it was given a much more thorough airing. I did get a "welcome to the forum" pm after a very brief contribution to this board, but I'm not that comfortable with posting too much on it, it's a bit like doing your dirty washing in public, at least on the Sheffield forum you used to be able to argue with contributors of a like mind. A bit like a family argument against a pub brawl I suppose.

That in mind my recent suggestion that it would be for the good of the team if Ricky Ashworth and Paul Cooper move on in 2010 did at least draw some response - some of it even positive! I'll admit that the Ricky Ashworth suggestion is a little tongue in cheek - I really do think he'd benefit but I'm not sure Sheffield Speedway would. He really does appear to be in a comfort zone at the moment, big scores at home, good scores away from home but certainly not the scores of a star rider even by Premier League standards. I doubt that any person goes to their local track to see him ride when Sheffield visit in the way that they did for the likes of Shawn & Kelly Moran, or Sean Wilson, in my mind he punches the same weight as such as James Grieves, Jason Bunyan or Josef Franc - good riders all, but not box office. Sadly his average this year doesn't match up to any of those three, but he's not far off, it is always his away form that seems to let him down, as I said good at home not as good away. Despite this I got taken to task by Leapy Lee on the Sheffield forum when it was pointed out to me that he scored 9 from 4 whilst guesting for the Workington Comets last saturday. My reaction was "Whoop-di-doo, 5th highest scorer in a PL match!", Leapy went to some length to justify the fact that if we used the mathematical formula that works out the calculated match average (CMA) of a rider he was actually 3rd highest scorer! Again, "Whoop-i-doo, 3rd highest average scorer in a PL match", I stopped arguing when Leapy did the forum equivalent of sticking out his bottom lip, folding his arms and looking away. That's the level of debate on the board now.

Paul Cooper is a different kettle of fish altogether, the sooner Sheffield off-load this liability the better as far as I'm concerned. This is a deeply unpopular opinion, probably one I've forged because I'm not a pre-pubescent teenager who thinks he's lovely and goes all gooey at the mention of his name and I'm not one of those fans who wants to be best mates with the riders and count them as buddies. I want my speedway riders to score points for my team, to do the job they have been employed to do, if having done that they turn out to be very sociable likeable guys then that's great, but it shouldn't be a rider's main feature. This season he has carried on where the last couple of seasons left off, meeting after meeting of frustration, low points returns, engine failures and calls from all and sundry to get him sponsorship. If anything he has gone backwards, but then he will hit a purple patch where he rides like a world champion (well almost - he always manages to let us down in a at least one race in every meeting). This can go on for 2 or 3 weeks then pop! The wonder engine explodes and we're back to square one. Discussions over the formulation of next years team all tend to mention what a steal he'd be on such a low average - all I can say is we said that last year and it didn't work out, there is no sign whatsoever that any consistency has been achieved and the instant a decent return started coming in he managed to get injured!

Anyway, not long left in the season now, yet again it looks like we aren't having a rider of the season vote on the forum seeing as how I can't be arsed to organise one - at least that'll save me the cost of a trophy!

The season fading means (unfortunately) that football begins to take over, I say unfortunately because my two teams are fighting with each other to see who can be the worst this season, at least Barnsley have had the good sense to get rid of Simon Davey, hopefully Mark Robins can salvage something from this season - it is only September after all. The other bunch are perhaps worse, King's Lynn FC is a club in turmoil at the moment, relegated last season due to ground requirements, loss of a major backer, manager and the entire team means that Carl Heggs has taken over, signed a shitload of journeymen and mates and now looks intent on kicking every team in the NPL to bits. The second half of last Saturday's match against Bury Town in the FA Cup 1st Qualifying Round will go down as one of the most dire 45 minutes football I have ever witnessed, contrast this with the England match at Wembley last Wednesday when Fabio's men took Croatia apart 5-1 and it's hard to believe both events had any common link at all (other than my presence).

That's it for now, Edinburgh at home on Thursday will be my first Sheffield meeting for 4 weeks, the really sad thing is I haven't missed it, next week is a busy one, down to the flat in London to see Elvis Perkins on Tuesday, Ed Byrne Wednesday, then back oop north for a board meeting before dashing home for Marcus Brigstocke in Norwich on Thursday. Up early on Friday and off to Terenzano for the Italian Grand Prix - my first, and last, Grand Prix of this season!

Here's Elvis Perkins at Bonnaroo earlier this year, filmed by my good self!

Mayday

David Ford

2009-09-06T10:09:00.000+01:00

Went to see David at the Bloomsbury Theatre last night where he enthralled and delighted a very near capacity audience with his performance, culminating in him sat on the edge of the stage singing and playing an acoustic guitar while the stage was packed up behind him.

Surely this man is the best kept secret in music?

If you don't know him have a look here

Then buy one of his albums from Amazon - it won't be the only one you buy!

Busy week

2009-08-31T18:14:00.003+01:00

That was a busy week that was:
Tuesday - Wilco at the Troxy in London,
Thursday - Wilco at Vicar Street, Dublin,
Friday - Barnsley to pick up my Dad,
Saturday - Wembley, Rugby League Challenge Cup final,
Sunday - Lincolnshire, International Poacher grasstrack meeting.

Glad of the rest now even though it's Norwich on Thursday to see Arthur Smith, Wembley again on Saturday for the Slovenia match followed by David Ford at the Bloomsbury Theatre. Sunday down to Farnham for Weyfest and John Otway & Wild Willy Barratt and the Beat finally back to Wembley on Wednesday for the World Cup qualifier against Croatia.

So no speedway for two weeks (part-timer) and there's no sign of much of a let-up.

Not that I'd have it any other way!

So in the absence of any interesting stuff here's Nel Cline's guitar solo at the end of impossible Germany last Tuesday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl9QoL4rylY

Can a white man sing reggae?

2009-08-25T12:00:00.007+01:00

Just back from the Rhythm festival in deepest Bedfordshire, it's one of those smaller music festivals that actually seems to care about the music and the punters rather than being solely for the purpose of advertising. The first band that our little party elected to see were a ska/reggae/rocksteady band called Rebelation. They were a little late starting due to the lack of microphone stands so we watched them flitting about the stage setting gear up. One guy looked familiar, a slim white fella with dreadlocks down to his waist and a very smart blue tonic suit, I was pretty sure I'd never seen the band before so I started racking my brains to see where I remembered him from, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't place him into any band or from any gig I'd ever been to.

He turns out to be the singer of the band, their first number is a pleasant up-tempo ska song that presses the right buttons with the crowd, it comes to me just as the song is coming to an end, I don't know him via music, he goes to watch King's Lynn FC, I've seen him at the Walks!

I've never spoken to him but let's face it King's Lynn is hardly Camden and people of such individuality are pretty thin on the ground, in a place where flares are still in fashion from the first time around anyone who looks slightly different stands out - the only reason I didn't realise immediately was that this situation is so far out of context with a Unibond League fixture against Worksop Town.

One thing I do find a little unnerving however is when the music style becomes a little more reggae orientated and this white guy from Norfolk suddenly starts referencing "Jah", "Babylon" and "Zion". I get suspicious at the best of times even with black singers who sing in patois then talk to the crowd in-between songs in a Birmingham accent (as Ranking Roger did later the same night during the Beat set), but a white guy from Norfolk? Then I started thinking about some of my musical heroes - take Elvis Costello for example, over a career now well into it's 30's I've seen him many times and I own every album he has officially released in the UK along with quite a few which are, as they put it, of indeterminate origin. Now Elvis sings with a definite American accent, there is no getting away from it, as with 99% of all British rock singers (think Jagger, Bowie, Rod Stewart, etc.) virtually all of his hundreds of songs have the lazy American drawl. It's not surprising when you trace the source of all rock music back through rock 'n' roll, jazz and the blues it all starts with black American gospel singing so with all the influences being American it's hardly surprising that an American affectation is evident. Indeed it is much easier to name the artists who don't sing with an American accent than those who do, that'll be Billy Bragg, The Proclaimers, Lily Allen and er.... oh yes, Chas and bloody Dave!

So why shouldn't a white man sing reggae? It's no different from Brits singing in American and let's face it, it's hardly new, think UB40, Mishka, Sting. A lot of it is whether it is done well and I have to admit that on this occasion the quality of the performance, the level of energy and the sheer catchiness of their tunes far overshadowed any thoughts of incongruity.

At the end of the day I have seen Elvis Costello (born and raised in London) sing in American then announce the next song in a scouce accent when he is anywhere near Liverpool yet anyone who has seen his TV show ("Spectacle") would be hard placed to judge the mid Atlantic drawl he speaks in on that. So the next time I see Tony Devenish (for that appears to be his name according to their website) at the Walks I'll say hello and tell him how much I enjoyed the Rebelation set at Rhythm Festival, it'll be interesting to hear his accent when he replies.

Pot Kettle Black

2009-08-20T18:05:00.001+01:00

Quote from Eric Boocock: Speedway Star Aug 22, 2009
"I know Neil Machin has been upset over what some people have been writing on the internet, but I'm not worried by that. I can understand Neil's anger, but I've been in this sport for over 50 years and I don't care what those people have to say. Why should I? They have no idea, absolutely no idea, what goes on behind the scenes so they're not even in a position to comment!"

Estimated readership 62,000 people - I presume for and on behalf of the Sheffield Promotion.

Once again I applaud the fantastic customer care and the respect for the people who provide your revenue, is there any wonder you are alienating some of the most commited and loyal fans you have? If you don't care why the threats to pull the forum?

When was the last time you paid to see a speedway meeting Eric? You have no idea what it's like to witness debacles like Stoke (or in my case the 2007 King's Lynn whitewash) and realise you have invested time, money and emotion into a team that just doesn't seem to care, so you are in no position to comment.

Sheffield Speedway Forum and the "Unofficial" site

2009-08-19T07:55:00.002+01:00

I went away on holiday recently for two weeks (I had a lovely time, thanks for asking, birding in California) and on my return was shocked to see the Sheffield Speedway forum in turmoil. Usually after such a break it is a real pain in the behind to read up over two weeks posts to find out what has been going off but a quick look at the recent results showed a 45-44 defeat at Stoke, a little more digging and I realised that the last 3 heats of the meeting scored 14-4 in favour of the Stoke Potters - a sure case of the Tigers snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The extraordinary thing however was not that some people were angry about the result but that it had got to the point where insults were flying on the forum, a Johnny come lately whose name was not familiar was lambasting some of the board regulars who seem to have been around since the creation of the site. This culminated in declarations from 3 of the most regular, and vociferous past contributors that they were no longer posting on the board. The ding dong can be viewed here www.sheffieldspeedway.com/extras/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?1318.40 with the subsequent "resignations here www.sheffieldspeedway.com/extras/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?1480.0

Congratulations therefore to "Sprocket" who appeared from nowhere, caused the resignation from the site of 3 of the most entertaining long-term posters, then disappeared just as quickly. Now Sprocket's member profile states that his real name is Michael Jackson, somehow I'd question this but if it his his real name well done. It seems that at a time when almost everybody who cares about Sheffield Speedway felt humiliation and hurt, he believed that the fault lay with the fans who felt that the management should take some of the blame for the quite extraordinary decisions on the night, rather than with the management themselves. Shortly afterwards there were comments in the local press from Neil Machin where he expressed frustration about "opinionated riders" and how no-one was more frustrated than he, David Hoggart and Eric Boocock, he did however fail to take any responsibility for the decisions made on the night - a significant point. Indeed in the article he berates the keyboards warriors who know nothing about team management and threatens to close the forum down if it doesn't become more positive.

This is followed up a week later by a broadside in the Sheffield racecard along much the same lines. Or was it? I didn't notice it immediately but it was pointed out to me by Sparky (board moderator on the Sheffield official forum) that the programme diatribe focused on the fact that the management team had been accused of being "inept". A quick search through the official forum shows that the word has only actually appeared twice there, once in the aforementioned post where Sparky points this out, and once way back in May, well before this current bout of handbags started. One place where the word inept was levelled at the Sheffield management was on the unofficial site, a site that has been in existence for much longer than the official site and is run by a very dedicated long-time fan who occasionally posts on the forum but interestingly not on the topic in question.

So let's step back and look at this, a fan on a totally independent site says "Our team management appeared inept" (note the word "appeared"), Neil Machin makes a threat in the local newspaper to close down the official forum because of the negativity and because the management had been called inept. The official forum loses 3 key players because of the sudden appearance and disappearance of the Peter Pan of pop (perhaps it was his second coming) and we are now left with a sterile, humourless and unimaginative board where the number of posts and posters has fallen over the past week.

Somewhere along the line there has been a massive over-reaction, several in fact, time to own up to it from all the players in this mini-drama and get on with the job in hand. Neil, if your spat is with Geoff sort it out the adult way even if it means agreeing to differ, tell him why your collective decisions at Stoke which appeared inept were not so, Santa, Third Man and Neil Down get posting again on the forum otherwise I'll be the lone voice of criticism, foolishness and pedantry. Above all let's learn some lessons from this, opinions are like ass****s, everyone has one but also opinions are based on information and observations. With the information they had at the time and with their own observations certain fans formed an opinion and expressed it in probably the only public outlet they had - an obscure website forum visited by like-minded people who will understand their frustrations. In retaliation one of those being criticised publishes his views in the main local newspaper (circulation as at 01/01/08 = 47,216) and then in the official racecard of Sheffield Speedway (estimated circulation 1,000),and threatens to close the fans' only official outlet, a reaction totally out of proportion with the circumstances. An attempt at understanding why the negatives comments were placed in the first instance may have been more appropriate, and the realisation that most of these comments were knee-jerk reactions, not something that has been brooded on and published to near on 50,000 people in a potentially damaging manner.

Yes some fans could do with thinking before they type sometimes, there have been occasions where opinions have gone over the top, but equally there are more professional ways of dealing with this than the ones currently employed. Sheffield Speedway is rightly known throughout British Speedway as one of, if not the most professional outfits around, let's not spoil that over hurt feelings.