The rumpus over Saturday's Brandon fiasco continued today as the Coventry Evening Telegraph led with a BLUNDERING BEES headline on the back page, quite apart from the normal match report on page 33. It included a picture of Shane Parker laying ankle-deep in shale after his Heat 10 crash. In the article, however, Martin Ochiltee commented:
"I would like to apologise to the fans, and if I had paid my 9UKP on Saturday, I wouldn't have been happy. But sometimes I wish they could see the bigger picture.
"We could have abandoned the meeting, but we did the work on the track for the sake of the supporters...but the amount of wet shale that had to be moved made it a very difficult job.
"When other clubs have had similar problems in the past, they have got praise for their 'incredible' efforts. Yet we have one of those rare unfortunate nights and get lambasted for it...nobody wanted things to turn out like they did on Saturday, but we have no control over the weather."
What no-one seems to have confirmed, as yet, is how heavy the pre-meeting shower was. Although the car park was flooded from Friday's rain, this is not an unusual occurrence in the early/late season, and the terraces were not wet enough to indicate heavy rain immediately prior to the meeting. Neither was any work being done to the track in the 20 minutes that I was at the stadium before "racing" commenced. But my biggest gripe is of the standard of work that was carried out once the decision had been taken to try to improve things. Nobody seemed to know who was in charge, and there was no urgency to get the blade on, even though it was patently clear that the tractors were making things, if anything worse. If the number of fallers is an indication of how bad the conditions are, then it could fairly be said that the track work failed completely, because there were more accidents after heat 6 than before it!
It is to be hoped that the Bees management can sort out the track problems by Easter weekend, because after the stock cars have been on it on Saturday, they have only two days to get things right before the visit of Kings Lynn, and people will not regularly put up with happenings such as occurred on Saturday, if they haven't been put off already. Yet, despite all the track problems, Mike Berry asked the valid question at the end of his report:
"...The fact that a rider like Hare went through the meeting unbeaten, and only two visiting riders suffered harmless falls, begged a salient question. If Oxford could cope with the adverse conditions, why couldn't the Exide Bees?"
Angry fans have been sending e-mails voicing their dismay at Saturday's events. Some of the comments I have received include:
"My view of the meeting...a joke! If it had been ridden on a ploughed field, no-one would have known the difference. I shall not be going to Brandon for some while, how anyone didn't get hurt I don't know."
"Thank you for so eloquently expressing the views of everybody at Saturday's disgraceful farce...I cannot believe that the promoters do not appear to be offering their customers any sort of compensation, even if it is only a reduction to admission prices for the next meeting."
"What a complete joke! I fear for riders lives next week, just 2 days after Stox. It usually took Colin Meredith a fortnight after the cars to get the track back smooth. "
I want to support Coventry Speedway. In fact, watching the Bees has been a massive part of my life for the last 18 years. But there can be no doubt that everyone was badly let down on Saturday night, and I repeat an earlier comment: what we saw on that dreadful evening Was Not Coventry.
Finally, good luck to the team at Oxford on Friday. Come on, show us all what you can do! And congratulations to Greg on winning Simon Wigg's meeting yesterday.