OLD GIT ALERT – if you don’t want to read the nostalgic ramblings of a decrepit old journo – move along, there is nothing to see here!

This month I celebrate 30 years at Greyhound Star and decided to use the occasion for a trip down memory lane. The Star was my first full time job in journalism, though I was already writing for The Sporting Life, the glossy Greyhound magazine and the American mag Turnout when I started.

The world was a different place back then. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, there were only four channel buttons on your TV and Gary Glitter and Jimmy Saville would have been guests of honour at any kid’s disco.

Greyhound racing was in a very different place in 1987. We had probably 90 independent from Newton Abbott in the far south to Aldershot, Chesterfield, Swansea, Bolton, Ashfield and Wishaw in the north.

My Sporting Life and newly created Racing Post colleagues would deride my interest in the ‘two bob permits’ where Mark Wallis was still waiting to train his first runner. The London hacks despised the ‘dirty cheating flaps’ where good people like Liz McNair, Jimmy Wright and Pat Rosney sent out a winner or two.

That wasn’t ‘respectable’ dog racing when viewed from the safe watering holes at Catford, Wembley and Walthamstow. You’d never get the shanties on BAGS or SKY.

That trio were just the tip of our sinking iceberg: Bristol, Canterbury, Coventry (perennially), Cradley Heath, Dundee, Hackney, Hull, Ipswich, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, Norton Canes, Oxford, Portsmouth, Ramsgate, Reading, Rye House, Slough, Swaffham and others I have surely forgotten.

We had an NGRC and BGRB, pre-race chromatography with Sumner and McKee-Scott hares. The RGT’s annual budget was around £50K per year.

For me though, working for the Star was the job of my dreams. Far from simply watching my childhood heroes from afar, I got to interview and know them on first name terms. Some of those legends are no longer around. . .Ger McKenna, Freddie Warrell, Tony Morris, Matt O’Donnell, Geoff De Mulder, Seamus Graham, Dutch Koerner, Stuart Locke-Hart, Trevor Cobbold, Terry Corden to name but a few. . .

But beyond it all, it has been an amazing learning experience.

 

TEN THINGS I HAVE LEARNED, OR HAD CONFIRMED, IN 30 YEARS AT THE STAR (1-5)

1) The greyhound racing industry is both sport and business

This might seem obvious though all sides get themselves into difficulty when they forget the balance. ‘You wouldn’t have a business if it wasn’t for my hobby’. ‘You would have nowhere to enjoy your hobby if it wasn’t for my business’. Like it or not, both sides are entirely dependent on each other.

It wasn’t always that way. Greyhound racing started out as an astonishing money making venture with tracks buying, breeding or retaining their own dogs, building their own kennels and employing the trainers to keep them racing. The benefits of owners subsidising greyhound racing was soon recognised and in the last six decades, this industry would not have survived without that partnership.

Hence we arrived at the now familiar equation. A professional trainer needs a level of income to keep trading, and an owner needs a level of prize money to keep his hobby affordable.

But money is not the only factor, and barely a factor at all for the hobby trainer – hence the benefits of ‘permit racing’. Fundamentally, most owners and trainers will put up with a lot if they feel appreciated. If they aren’t, the owners and hobbyists, at least, can always walk away. And many do.

For the track owners it has to remain strictly business and despite the cynicism of many owners, there is no lengthy queue of investors waiting to open greyhound tracks.

 

2) Supply and demand will always prevail

If greyhound racing suddenly became extremely lucrative, would the track owners automatically pass on the benefits to their owners and trainers?

I don’t think so. I am sure that terms and conditions would improve, but only to a point. Would you want to be the general manager who had to face his investors or board of directors and explain ‘we could have got away with paying £1m last year but I thought, sod it, we’ll give them the extra million?’

The business of greyhound racing is fundamentally one of supply and demand. Sadly, that balance has never, in my lifetime, been in the owners and trainers’ favour. A greyhound trainer would not pay extra for meat to support his local butcher if there was plenty of cheaper meat around. So why would a track want to pay a trainer extra when there is a surplus of available dogs?

As we now know through – at last that balance is tilting in the trainer’s favour. I can only see that escalating for the foreseeable future. The best scenario for trainers is that greyhound racing grows, there is even more demand for product leading to increases in prize money and retainers. There are already plenty of signs of it.

That same general manager can then tell his board ‘We had a good year but I had to increase the prize money to £2m. There is a premium on racing greyhounds.’

(Never forget though, if prize money were ever to reach dizzier heights – £2,000 for a graded winner for example – the tracks would simply return to owning the dogs themselves)

 

3) There are good people throughout this industry

The greyhound industry is a mix of promoters, racing managers, general managers, bookmakers, breeders, trainers, kennel staff, track staff, owners, journalists and administrators.

Sadly they aren’t all perceived in the same way. Those ‘closest to the dogs’, are generally perceived to be the most ‘worthy’; the true altruists. 30 years has taught me otherwise. There are good and bad owners, trainers, and kennel hands, though there are considerably more white hats than black hats (a cowboy analogy for those of a certain vintage).

Yet some of the most decent people I have grown to know are promoters, general managers and racing managers.

I can probably think of only a couple of promoters with no interest in greyhound racing beyond a balance sheet, but some are as enthusiastic as any greyhound owner. In fact some are owners.

I have known general managers develop absolute depression over a series of injuries at their tracks. I can think of several senior managers and directors who go the extra mile for their tracks, staff and retired greyhounds. They give us their free time to make this a better industry, often serving on committees and advisory panels. Others convince their bosses or boards, of the needs for benefits for owners and trainers that aren’t absolutely necessary.

The level of enthusiasm for greyhound racing varies between racing offices though the BAGS/SIS Track Championship has highlighted how much passion for racing there is within most. I can think of several racing managers who are devoted owners of retired greyhounds.

Their reward? Abuse from internet morons who usually don’t even know the people they are abusing. The individuals have usually achieved nothing nor bring anything significant to this industry. I wish they would either learn the reality or bugger off and vent their collective vile spleens in a different hobby.

I am proud to say that 95% of my personal friends come from the greyhound industry – and spread across every sector of it.

 

4) Greyhound folk are often badly informed

It is a great sadness and frustration that after 30 years of doing what I do, so many people still do not really understand the greyhound industry. I hear examples of it every day. How many people reading this could name the directors of the GBGB? Could explain how it compares to the BGRB? Could name the Head of Regulation?

There have been night/day changes in the greyhound industry in the last 30 years yet so many owners and trainers in particular seem to have been in a coma throughout. That really doesn’t matter if they accept the gaps in their knowledge, but it can be so damaging when they continue to repeat half-arsed theories based on extinct information.

First example – ‘the greyhound industry is screwed by the bookies’ Well that might have been true in 1987, but £32m via BAGS this year alone?, plus the BGRF? RPGTV. . . ? Streaming. . .? Yes we all know that Betfair are almost completely parasitic (excluding their RPGTV involvement) and we know that all bookmakers could pay more – but let’s get this into context!

Second example – whenever the subject of the BGRF is raised, some bright spark will pipe up that ‘the tracks are milking it’ and refer to the notorious grant for Walthamstow toilets – which must be what. . . . 20 years ago? The total capital grant fund is £100,000 per year to be shared by all the tracks – and it probably won’t be claimed. If that offers opportunities for fraud, it’s a bit small-time don’t you think? Besides, it will be a fraction of the cash handed over to trainers this year for kennel improvements. For some reason, that never gets a mention.

Third example – ‘GRA are bringing the game down’. Firstly, GRA hasn’t technically existed since being bought out by Wembley plc, and then went to Galliard Homes. A section of the former company, run by Clive Feltham continues to trade as ‘GRA’. It does not own a track. It currently leases four, and without Feltham’s rent, three would probably have shut down awaiting planning years ago. Whoever is to blame for GRA’s lack of vision leading to their cashing in their chips –the guilty have long since left the building.

 

5) The industry has been badly led for decades

I knew a bit about industry politics before I joined the Star. My dad had been joint promoter at Cambridge (the first permit track with a BAGS contract!!) and the breeder’s representative on the BGRF (when ‘F’ stood for Federation).

Fred Underhill had recently retired as the industry tyrant, leaving Archie Newhouse, former greyhound editor of The Sporting Life, in charge. In my opinion a poor choice, a man seeing out his working days with no long term vision or time to deliver it.

His job was then split between Geoffrey Thomas, leading the BGRF, and former trainer Frank Melville – who I knew from my days as a kennel-lad at White City – in charge of the NGRC. Decent enough men, but Thomas was at the mercy of the track promoters – and one particular bully – while Melville, came from an era of trainer subservience. I hold him responsible for perpetuating the ‘jobsworth’ and ‘they are all at it’ mentalities that still exist within certain sectors of the Regulatory Board.

In the interim there have been a series of unsuitable people running the industry. Most didn’t understand it. I don’t know if any actually believed in it. There were some able types, one in particular, but he seemed more obsessed with building himself a kingdom.

The formation of GBGB was an opportunist event that I cannot go into here for fear of having my arse sued off. Unfortunately, the thinking behind it appeared to be ‘stop the promoters running the industry by taking away their power’

That is all very well, and maybe they had it coming, provided you are handing over the reins to top operators with the drive and nous to make it thrive.

And so we wait for Donoughue’s vision of commercial progress to play out. In fact, we have regressed as an industry at an accelerated rate. This industry has no money or plan – not a Scooby. And worse than the BGRB era, owners and trainers have been utterly sidelined.

Furthermore, at a time when Peterborough are scrambling around to produce a raceable track surface, for the first time in 15 years, we don’t have an expert to call on. His contract was terminated with no replacement in sight or trained up!

To make matters worse, the Donoghue report gave virtually bulletproof protection to the chairman, chief executive and independent directors.

The alternative? Many won’t agree, particularly among my press colleagues, but I would rather take my chances on the track owners finding the right person. Individually, they have more to gain or lose than anyone.

We need an outstanding leader because ultimately, every business, from restaurant to hotel, from shop to factory, is only as good as the person at the top. And this industry requires a very specific set of skills with a fundamental understanding of what it has to offer plus the drive and vision to make it happen.

If the new supremo could make the industry more profitable, the supply and demand equation would kick-in. We might even get some more dog tracks.

Who knows with the right people at the top, and independent directors acting as honest brokers, maybe ‘Donoughue’ could be made to work after all!