SCRAMBLED EGGS FOR BREAKFAST

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If you enjoy scrambled eggs for breakfast, it’s never a good idea to eat the chicken.

In sport, you really can’t take action, however sensible a business plan may be on paper, which puts your business principles in front of your supposed sporting ethic.

This week’s hot sporting story is – or rather was – the announcement of soccer’s European Super League.

I sat down on Tuesday morning to pen this weblog and discuss the ESL implications to be drawn from it for other pastimes – but by the time I was halfway down the page the same evening the “rebel” clubs had blinked first, and withdrawn from the project.

End of story. For now.

I was quietly amused however, to learn that there had been opinion spouted on social media that “if this is allowed in soccer, we’ll have Polish speedway doing the same thing, and running a closed shop”.

Well, actually….. Polish speedway isn’t a closed shop, as it operates promotion and relegation each year.

If you want an example of restrictive trading by speedway clubs, who can remain in the same league ad infinitum, regardless of how bad their results, you have to look at, er, Britain……….

We’re not the only sport to deploy fixed-franchise competition, of course – all the big North American sports (baseball, gridiron, basketball and ice hockey) run on, year after year, without any threat of teams losing their place on the multi-million dollar gravy-train created by their television contracts.

But things do have to change in any industry, even speedway. There are those who want everything to remain the same, year after year, but it can’t really work like that, can it? The stick-in-the-muds say it is tradition, but……

If ‘tradition’ was the way to go, we’d still be drowning old women in duckponds

Hence, at Berwick we are proud of our heritage but prouder still that we are always on the move…..

In ten days we blast-off our Bullets behind closed doors, but available to everyone with access to a lap-top, tablet or smartphone to watch, live and kicking, online and on stream.

Details of how to hook up to watch Leon and the lads in action against the Dale Devils on May 1st will be forthcoming shortly – as indeed will the word on how to watch their return match at Armadale six days later. Watch this space!

I consider the launching of the Bullets to be a truly progressive move by the promotion, and admit to having a wee tingle, a feeling in my old bones, that this is going to be a really good year for Saturday-night speedway at Shielfield.

So there!
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Disagree with Dick – as so many do? He is always be happy to hear from interesting people at dick@crystalfm.co.uk