The official Green Sheet Averages for 1999 have finally been released by the BSPA and appear on their website:
http://www.british-speedway.co.uk/
They are based on Premier League matches and Premier National Trophy qualifiers only. Cup matches, National Trophy knockout stage matches and Young Shield matches do not count. They would normally have been issued months ago but have been withheld for a variety of reasons.
The Green Sheets issued for October should have been the final one since all Premier League matches were supposed to be completed before the cut-off date for the October averages. Howver because of fixture congestion and poor weather two or three matches strayed into the second half of September.
One or two corrections were required to the Green Sheets to eliminate 'golden double' rides which are disregarded. It was staged that the revised averages would await approval at the BSPA conference.
A further delay occured due to a decision taken at the BSPA confernce to encourage the use of British riders by reducing their average by two and a half per cent. The legality of this has been questioned since European Union riders and Britsh qualified Australian riders will be discriminated against.
After further delays while the averages were scrutinized by a BSPA committee it was hinted that they would not be published at all but released only to clubs for team building purposes. This echos the situation in 1997 when the BSPA refused to publish the points limit. It didn't take very long to work out what it was!
Speedway Star has always published stacks of statistical data but unfortunately use a different system that the BSPA to compute averages. For a start Cup matches tend to be included as well as qualifying fixtures. Secondly, and more critically, the Speedway Star averages include for 'golden double' rides using the normal scoring system wheras the BSPA exclude all such rides.
On this occasion, Speedway Star published the end of season averages including 2.5% reductions for British riders last week. The BSPA has responded by finally publishing the averages themselves.
The averages for the Monarchs' 1997 riders are as follows:
| 1. | James Grieves | 8.88 (9.11) |
| 2. | Justin Elkins | 5.30 (5.44) |
| 3. | Kevin Little | 7.70 (7.90) |
| 4. | Ross Brady | 6.73 (6.90) |
| 5. | Peter Carr | 9.32 (9.56) |
| 6. | Brian Turner | 3.69 (3.78) |
| 7. | Blair Scott | 5.36 (5.50) |
| - | David McAllan | 3.83 (3.93) |
| - | Stewart McDonald | 5.33 (5.47) |
| - | James Birkinshaw | 3.00 (3.00) |
| - | Jon Swales | 3.56 (3.65) |
Averages for the end of season declared 1 to 7 for all clubs are included on a month by month basis. This facilitates comparison of performance over the full season. They are presented in the three Premier National Trophy qualification groups:
Northern Group Central Group Southern Group Any amendments to these averages will be published as available.