Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Tigers 57 Mildenhall 35

Coming out of the 2nd turn, a Tigers 5-1 in the making

Ask any football fan what they despise most in a player and they will on the whole tell you one thing. Laziness. You can be distinctly ordinary as a player, but if you give everything in a match, people will tend to overlook the deficiencies, and even go as far as to overstate your meagre talent. There are of course levels of shite-ness that can never be forgiven, but that's another issue. The 'talented but lazy' player is often the biggest target of abuse. Good control, ability to beat players, the odd spectacular goal..........Not enough. In Scotland, any player(usually a winger or forward) who doesn't chase every single lost cause, fly into needless tackles in the oppositions half and run himself to a standstill is regarded as a lightweight or a 'sand-dancer'. In short, a poofy wee show off. If he wears white boots and has long hair then he's really fucked......The only way to avoid this is by scoring tonnes of goals to make up for your shiftlessness.

How does this relate to speedway? The meeting at the weekend saw the strange case Czech rider Mario Jirout of Mildenhall. A former Ice Racer and regarded as a bit of a star draw, he looked like he wanted to be anywhere else on the planet on Sunday afternoon than Ashfield. His first heat was no indication of his mindset, taking an unassuming third place. His next heat saw him lying last at the end of the 2nd lap, at which point he decided to, er, "conserve fuel" and trundle round at the back. Once you could forgive, maybe put it down to a machine failure. Twice was pushing it somewhat. He didn't even make it to the end of the 1st lap before he'd decided he'd had enough. If he wasn't going to score any points, then why bother? Needless to say he was given short shrift by the locals who know a malingering 'superstar' when they see one and the Mildenhall team manager seemed to be in agreement and he was replaced in his last heat.
George Stancl practices his start prior to the final heat
The guy from work I'd bumped into at the meeting has been going to speedway for many a year and the odd behaviour of Mr Jirout was no surprise to him.

"Ye get that with some of those foreign lads, if they aren't in the points after the first lap, they just chuck it."

Maybe a tad unfair on the foreign contingent I've seen so far who include Poles, Czechs, Danes, Swedes, Finns, Italians, Canadians and Australians (and a few others I've no doubt missed), all of whom have riden their nuts off in my prescence. He's seen more than I have though and I said no more............

In some ways though, theres a cold logic to it. Why scrap and scrape to get a single point, put yourself in danger and waste energy, when you can trundle round at 30mph and maybe get that point if someone else falls off............? He seems to be a decent rider, so I'llchalk it up to a really bad day at the office. Just don't do it in speedway, where fans, regardless of their persuasion will call you all the c**ts under the sun for not providing at least a nominal degree of effort or entertainment. To most sportsmen, easy wins are a blessing. In speedway, whilst it's good to get the points on the board, theres often a slight feeling of resentment if the opposition didn't put up much of a fight. It happened a few weeks back when Berwick Bandits were brushed aside with alarming ease by Glasgow. Cheers for the points lads? Ha! More like "Why not try turning up next time?"

Heat 15 winner Shane Parker performs a victory 'Donut'

As a wise man once said, "It's a funny old game"

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

ill man most of us don't have a great deal of sporting talent to compensate they put in more effort. That is why I have always loved 100%ers more than flair players. Be they centre-halves who head the ball and boot the pacy strikers into the stands or the midfield general snarling at the winger cowering on the touchline in fear.

iLL Man said...

I think a football team has scope for different types of players, though if you're a forward and yr not scoring goals, fans will inevitably brand you a lazy sod. I just feel that in Scotland, 'effort' seems to be guaged by how much running about like a headless chicken you do and a desire to make rash tackles on the halfway line.

Anonymous said...

Was Mr Lennon riding then?

iLL Man said...

Lennon? Legault maybe?

No lennon in either line up, unless I'm missing something......

Cheers!

Ladybristol said...

All of the players in the FA cup final seemed pretty lazy to me. the most boring match I've ever seen.

Do women take part in the speedway racing?

fofufou said...

I used to go to Wimbledon speedway. Good times.
Sadly, I began to take a deeper interest in the various parlour games I began to learn and when I returned its glory days were gone.

iLL Man said...

LB - I'm not sure if they have a ladies league or is it's like other forms of motorsport, where women take part alongside men. I shall find out.

Lord Milky - I've been going to speedway for about two months now. I'm a bit 'green' as it were, but I've been surveying what I've missed via YouTube. It's funny really, I grew with motorcycles and got taken to places like Knockhill when I was but a nipper, but the old shale game never seemed to appeal until recently.

I see Wimbeldon are looking to get back into things, though in a nomadic and distinctly threadbare fashion. Good luck to them....

http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t31165.html