Battered, Bruised and Burgled

Where on earth do I start?

So much to unpack from a fairly hectic and hard hitting weekend of racing which saw us crash out of the Knockout Cup at the hands of Glasgow before a patched up Bandits side fought bravely at Newcastle only to leave empty handed.

To rub salt into the wounds we lost Jye and Dany after that alarming heat one spill and thank goodness that there were no broken bones and hopefully we see both guys back in action sooner rather than later, that goes without saying.

There will be some who simply won’t see the positives in seeing us lose two riders and two meetings in two days but when you actually start to dissect it all, there were a few positives to take from it. Let’s be honest, nobody saw us beating Glasgow over two legs and even with a five man team we had the league leaders on the ropes.

We battled on, we battled hard and we may have gone down but we were swinging haymakers left, right and centre as we fell to defeat. Perhaps most importantly I don’t think a single Bandits fan left the stadium without that bursting feeling of pride in their team after putting up the valiant fight that we did.

Irrespective of the result, fighting the good fight and restoring that pride was the most important thing besides the well wishes towards Dany and Jye, which rightly and obviously were the main concern.

With pride restored we headed to Newcastle on Sunday with a patched up side in the hope that we maybe could spring out some sort of result and for a while things were looking good. Up until about heat 10, when what can only be described as one of the worst refereeing decisions I’ve ever seen took place in front of our very eyes.

In the first running of the heat, Theo Pijper, guesting in place of Dany, came to grief on turns three and four and was rightly excluded from the rerun. No problems there, no argument, a straightforward decision.

In the rerun, Kye Thomson, guesting in place of Jye didn’t make the best of starts but got the better of Newcastle rider Adam Roynon heading into the first turn and yes, he gave Roynon a nudge and down he went, arguably a little easier than he should have. A simple first turn incident, classic first bend bunching and the sort of thing you see all the time in speedway. All three back would have been the simple answer.

So what happened? Kye Thomson excluded leaving Ben Barker and Adam Roynon, Newcastle’s well christened Ann Robinson pairing, who had done little to nothing up to that point, to go round themselves and collect a simple 5-0 to swing the meeting and the momentum well and truly in favour of the Diamonds.

Shocking decision? Yes. A terrible decision? You better believe it.

It ruined the race, it robs the paying customer and it leaves a sour taste.

There was a rumour floating around that Thomson had been excluded for moving at the start, having previously been warned but had that been the case, why were the red lights not brought on straight away before the point of contact? Also, why was that not announced to the crowd?

Answers on a postcard please!

Not only that but everyone around me at the time thought it was a terrible decision and that included another referee who agreed that the man in charge of the meeting had been hitting the crack pipe based on that decision.

In my opinion, at the end of any speedway meeting the fans should be waxing lyrical about the meeting they’ve watched, the races they’ve seen and where the match was won or lost.

What they shouldn’t be talking about is a frankly terrible decision made by a referee who not only should know better but also making a decision that simply didn’t need to be made. If the referee is doing his job you should barely know he or she had even been in the box and on the buttons.

Yes there’s always going to be those decisions that could go either way and those will always be a talking point irrespective of the outcome due to the subjective nature of it, and that’s fine because that’s part of the sport. But when a decision is made for the sake of being controversial, it ruins the meeting and ruins the sport.

Let me make myself perfectly clear here, this is not a rant based on being a little bitter because the Bandits lost, that simply isn’t my style. Take nothing away from Newcastle, they were deserving of their win, but we deserved at least a point from the meeting and I can’t help but feel we were robbed of that.

What I should be talking about here is glittering performance of Kasper Andersen, who was absolutely superb for us, or the fact the meeting was vastly entertaining on the whole. But instead I’m 900 plus words deep and been set off on a tangent because someone else wants to be the talking point over the sport itself.

Mic drop…over and out!

Of course if you wish to agree, or disagree with the Mythman, have an idea for a feature, or you simply want to chew the fat over all things speedway, you can email me jbspeedwaymedia@hotmail.com or get in touch via the JB Speedway Media Facebook page. If your compliments, or indeed gripes can be contained to limited characters, you can send me a tweet @Mythman666.

Until next time…and there will be a next time.
Right I’ll hae’tae gan
Mythman