I think it was around this time last year that the announcement to allow 650 twins was made. It'll be interesting to see if the club goes down the road of introducing a different race/class to boost entries or a rearranging the programme we have. I don't see a problem with Irishagos suggestion of allowing 250 proddy bikes into the U/L but I can't see that bringing in more than one or two, theres hardly any on short circuits in England now.
You either take the view that;
1.not as many people want to ride here anymore,
2.we don't offer a race for the bike people already have,
3.each race has a knock on effect for the other race on the same day
4.its too expensive
I don't agree that the Manx is in danger of becoming "another TT". The classics see to that and should be encouraged as much as possible. Nor do I agree with Cargos comment that this is a club race with no room for big sponsors. No normal club could ever afford to hire the TT course (its over £120 for one day at Oulton) and if a title sponsor was found that offered free entries and travel subsidies we would all be over the moon.
I was looking through the programme the other day. The Junior is the only race with something like a full grid but I doubt many entries are turned away. The Senior is lacking, probably at the expense of the U/L and L/W on the same day. The U/L and L/W have over 80 entries but again suffers to the Senior on the same day. The JC and LC have almost the same amount of entries as the U/L and L/W and the SC is slightly down on that with over 70. We already know the problem with the NC with around 40 entries.
My thoughts on this is that we can't only look at the NC as the weak one. All are suffering in some way or another and if this continues to slide then soon you have no event at all.