The existence and application of the points limit has always proved one of the most contentious issues in speedway. Clearly without any control, there will be little competition as the bigger and richer clubs will sign up all the best riders and then proceed to beat the opposition out of sight.

Many take the view that, at Elite League level at least, there should be no points limit and teams should be free to recruit who they can. Most accept the need for control but complain about it when it adversely affects their own team!

For example, in 1998, Ipswich used the existing points limit very skillfully along with contacts in Poland to put together one of the strongest teams seen in British Speedway for some years. After winning everything in sight in the Elite League, it was inevitable that the team would be broken up at the end of the season. Ipswich retained Tomasz Gollub, Chris Louis, Toni Svab, and Sal Clouting but had to release world champion Tony Rickardsson and British Under-21 Champion Scott Nicholls. The complaints and moral outrage emanating from Suffolk can still be heard some seven months after the decision on the 40 point limit for the Elite League was made.

Clearly, not only Ipswich, were affected by the reduction in the the points limit from a 'natural' 46-47 points to 40. Indeed in the Premier League where a slightly less draconian 41 point limit was in force, only Stoke and Arena Essex could have retained their 1998 line-ups for 1999 in the unlikely event either of them wanting to! Monarchs have had to lose a heat leader in each of the last two years. Robert Eriksson could not be fitted in for 1998 and Kenny McKinna retired at the end of 1998. They also had to allow Barry Campbell and Paul Gould to go out on loan after last season. Even had the the promotion wanted to retain them, this could not have been done within the 41 point limit without using a much weaker heat leader than James Grieves.

It can be argued that manipulation of the points limit is the way that titles and won. The trick is to select riders on averages that are falsly low or have the potential to improve. In 1998, Peterborough had the Premier League title won before the season started. They had a number of junior riders available to bring into the team all on 3.00 averages. At least two, Simon Stead and David Howe were capable of performing up to second string if not heat leader standard. They had others including Paul Clews, Olly Allen, and Ross Brady also capable of doing a good job at reserve. Thus Peterborough were able to track three 3.00 riders in their starting seven and they had sufficient points left from the 43.00 limit to recruit four riders of heat leader standard: Glenn Cunningham, Jan Andersen, Brett Woodifield and Nigel Sadler. Other teams generally went with three heat leaders and were forced to use a weak number 4 in order to track a stronger bottom end.

In 1998, the starting 43.00 points limit was retained throughout the year taking no account of the upward trend in actual points up to around 46 to 47. This mean that only teams at or near the bottom of the table were able to strengthen. Berwick took advantage of a poor run to bring in three former Elite League riders: James Grieves, David Walsh, and Scott Robson. Monarchs were never in a position to do more than shuffle the pack with Marcus Andersson and Steven Jones coming in for Paul Gould and Barry Campbell and later Gould and Campbell replacing Jones and Robert Larsen. Finally Marcus Andersson was replaced by Stefano Alfonso. All this shuffling about involving riders on similar averages predictably produced no measureable improvement in performance.

This year, things are operating differently in that teams are able to strengthen up to a raised 45 point limit. The other difference is that unlike last year when only League fixtures counted to establish averages, this year the pre-season Premier National Trophy (Premier League) and the Craven Shield (Elite League) Qualifiers are included.

This, particularly in the Elite League, is a recipe for manipulation. Teams are able to start with an unbalanced team and use the relatively meaningless pre-season tournament as a means of 'reducing' the average of members of their team. As soon as the first six meeting are completed and Green Sheet Averages are issued, the increased points limit can be used to bring in riders who couldn't be fitted in. All this could be done before the league campaign had started!

For example, Coventry had to leave ut Billy Hamill at the start of the season. They were able to use the Craven Shield matches to lower their averages and Billy Hamill was brought back. Coventry were able to track the same six riders that pushed Ipswich close in 1998 with the addition of Scott Robson in their seven man team. Needless to say, this provoked a fresh wave of synthetic outrage from Suffolk. But they certainly have a point! Belle Vue were even more blatent in that they started with three 3.00 riders, Jon Armstrong, Barry Campbell, and Jarno Kosonen and used average reduction to replace them with Andy Smith, Kaj Laukkanen, and Jason Hawkes.

The whole average reduction exercise in the Elite League was probably misguided and almost certainly doomed to failure. The Elite League promotors can be a particularly manipulative bunch. Many Monarchs supporters will remember how the attitude of some of the former first division promoters wrecked the unified Premier League in 1995 and 1996. No matter what is decided and agreed, a way around things will be found. Then there were supposed to have been assurances given to share out the heat leaders. Despite this few former second division teams ended up with more than one true heat leaders while most ex-first division teams had three or four. Many teams retained two or three world class riders: Cradley kept Hancock and Hamill, Wolves kept Peter Karlsson and Sam Ermolenko. Hence the unified league was split into the Ellite League and the Premier League in 1997.

The idea behind the points reduction exercise in 1999 was presumably to reduce costs yet almost certainly ended up costing more as riders such as Leigh Adams, Billy Hamill, and Mark Lemon suddenly became 'in demand' as teams bid for their services.

The problem is that no matter what the faults of the points limit system are, there is no practical alternative. The worst abuses could be eliminated firstly by making only league matches count for the purpose of calculating averages. Any team trying to manipulate averages would probably have to initially lose ground in the league. This would obviously be self-defeating. Secondly, the points limit should not be subject to violent changes from one year to another. A reduction to 42 or 43 points would provoke less desire and less scope to manipulate than a reduction to 40 or 41 points. Finally the points limit could be modified to impose some structure on teams and outlaw grotesquely top heavy teams being declared. This could be used to prevent teams subsequently replacing a three-point reserve with a nine-point heat leader.

Alternatives to tthe points limit have been used before. Many years ago, rider control was used to transfer riders from strong teams to weaker teams. Such an approach would not work with current employment law. A variant of this that might be tried is that have riders contracted to the BSPA and then loaned out to clubs. This approach is used in the North American Major League Soccer. The previous attempt to stage a professional soccer league in the USA failed because one team, New York became too strong and too rich for the other franchaises to compete with. Competitions became too boring and too predictable and the league collapsed. The current major league soccer venture started as a highly centralized operation with players contracted to the associated and then allocated to competing clubs to ensure that the previous problem was not repeated. This might work with a league established from scratch but is unlikely every to be imposed on an existing league structure with clubs trying to protect their assets. However a small move in this direction occured when the Poles Tomasz Gollub and Piotr Protasiewicz entered British Speedway in 1998. They were contracted to the BSPA and loaned out to Ipswich and Kings Lynn respectively.

The points limit is likely to be with us for the forseeable future, at least in the Premier League. Efforts are best directed towards refining it and attempting to eliminate the worst abuses as seen in the 1999 Elite League.

It was no secret that teams such as Edinburgh would have preferred a higher points limit than 41. Other promotions were looking as low as 36 points! The 41 point limit came about as a sort of average of the aspirations of the Premier League promotions.

Hopefully the mistakes of this year will be taken account of, and not be repeated again next year!