Monday, 10 May 2010
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Top Ten
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.
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Happy New Decade
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.
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.
Sunday, 27 December 2009
Belated Seasons Greetings
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....
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....
Friday, 4 December 2009
Pleasantly surprised!
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.
Thursday, 3 December 2009
A Lot Has Happened!
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!
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!
Thursday, 15 October 2009
Bye bye Vista - and good riddance!
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.
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.
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