“Oh he has been on has he? I thought he might” he chuckled.

Tom Heilbron was probably the sort of kid who scraped a stick against next door’s fence just to wind up their dog.

(Little shit. No surprise he had to take up boxing)

So when he let it be known that he quite fancied taking on Derby favourite Fromposttopillar in a match race with his unbeaten Northern Puppy Derby winner, Links Maverick, Tom was poking a stick through the fence and waiting for a reaction.

The neighbour’s Scottish Jack Russell duly bit.

“Well! I can see we will have to put some manners on Big Tom” responded Rab McNair.

And so it started.

“Challenge accepted” piped up the Scotsman – chewing on some chainlink – “We had our hearts set on the Kent Plate but if they want to put up £50K, we’ll match them. Their dog is best over 450 metres, ours wants 515 metres, don’t you agree? Shall we say 483m at Doncaster if they will put it on”

Don’t think they would go for that Rab!

“Okay, how about 480 at Monmore? That would be fair.”

As you might gather, the Heilbron challenge was thrown out as a bit of fun and accepted in the same spirit by McNair – normally the one doing the winding-up.

Discussions continued between the two parties on the phone. All that missing was Eddie Hearn, though there was a serious angle to the idea.

Tom said:”I love the sort of thing that they organise in Australia to create interest. Rather than a straight shoot-out, we would love to generate a large amount of sponsorship. Hopefully plenty of tracks will have an interest in hosting along with potential TV channels. We could maybe get three or four real good top draw dogs to take each of the run over and agreed distance – something like Monmore – Droopys Fidget could be thrown into the mix the way she’s running.

“It’s a massive opportunity to get some of the country’s talking dogs to all take each other on and get people talking about the sport again. Nothing ventured nothing gained and I’ll openly admit I think Rab’s dog is the best dog in the country.

“But where is the fun if nobody takes each other on and generates a potentially massive event? 450 at Oxford suits us though ?.”