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"