“Today, We are not alleging any sinister misuse of funds”
Last week’s statement by the acting head of the GTA Linda Jones outside the GBGB offices was the most cynical u-turn since Sunderland’s Adam Johnson told a besotted fifteen year old that he no longer loved her.
Now well into the fourth year of their tenure, the current GTA have a hefty back-catalogue of allegations and exposures, entered and then withdrawn. You put your allegation in, take your allegation out, in, out, in, out, shake it all about . .
Of course they did expose Greyhound Star for secretly taking adverting money from the GBGB and the BGRB before that. Brilliant detective work boys. In hindsight I do feel we could have hidden it better though.
(Level two detective work is finding your collective arses with both hands.)
If I was a thinking trainer, I would have already asked myself some serious questions.
In the last four years, what has the GTA done for me? Could they have done any more? Or is the system too corrupt? Or not corrupt – whoh hoh the hokey cokey. .
If ‘they’ are corrupt, is it all of them? Every director or the GBGB and BGRF? Are all their staff corrupt too? No whistle blowers to be found?
And is that just the current chairman and independent directors, or the previous ones too?
Maybe its just the tracks! Is that all tracks? Well the big ones – OBVIOUSLY – but how about Mildenhall, Doncaster and Pelaw?
Would they not feel an urge to support the GTA’s claims if they thought they were being shafted?
The plain fact is, being chairman of the GTA should not be a difficult job.
Everybody in the industry acknowledges that trainers are in desperate need of help. They have natural allies on every board, especially the British Greyhound Racing Fund. But their trade body has managed to alienate just about everyone who could and would help.
It isn’t as though GBGB and BGRF haven’t tried to engage. The GTA have been invited in and out of GBGB Board meetings. The GBGB changed their constitution to allow them a seat – even though Lord Donoughue’s £1m inquiry didn’t think they merited one of their own.
GBGB chairman Tom Kelly knocked heads together among directors whose private lives and reputations had been maliciously damaged to get the GTA chairman into the boardroom only to be let down with more broken promises. His words, not mine.
If I hear once more ‘Ricky Holloway does upset a few people but he is passionate’ I think I will puke.
The fact remains – most trainers can’t be arsed to think or act. They want someone else to act on their behalf. Someone, anyone. The trainers voted him in, and it is up to them to remove him. Or not.
(I wonder how those trainers would feel if £400,000 was taken from the prize money fund to pay for this desperately needed forensic audit. The GTA still want one even though they don’t think anyone did wrong. They just want to be sure!)
BUT – any trainer who thinks the GBGB cannot function without the GTA is seriously misguided.
At a raising of hands, they can disenfranchise the GTA, who are already long overdue an election – forgetting the bogus second ‘GTA’ that they set up at companies house.
If the Greyhound Board decide not to recognise the GTA they can change their Articles of Association and confer with any trainer or group of trainers they choose. I can’t imagine the BGRF objecting.
In the meantime, we await the next change of mind from the GTA and their paramilitary wing, otherwise known as the toxic forum.
The GBGB are on their last legs apparently. Crumbling they are, just awaiting this latest secret allegation that will be revealed very very soon . . . Knees bent, arms stretch rah rah rah,
The BAGS board are due to meet this week to discuss the allocation of the income from live streaming.
One very good source inside the betting industry has suggested that the returns will be made in proportion to the turnover on their streamed meetings.
If so, the biggest beneficiaries could be Nottingham whose Monday night card is almost a monopoly.
Ching ching.
Looking through the times at the Scottish Derby, I can’t help wonder, not for the first time, whether the official distance at Shawfield is accurate.
Take last year’s winner Swift Hoffman. His fastest clockings over 480m were: 27.70-Monmore, 27.81-Perry Barr, 28.07-Nottingham, 28.24 Newcastle 28.26-Wimbledon.
Admittedly his best trial at Sheffield was 28.61 but he was running poorly at the time.
Hoffman’s best run at Shawfield is 28.78 in a trial when he was at the peak of his powers.
Ballymac Eske went even quicker, 28.75, but his best time at Sheffield was 27.85, plus a 28.21-Wimbledon and 27.48 at Monmore.
What is the difference between all the 480 metre tracks? Half a second? But Shawfield is almost the same amount again slower than the rest.
Of all the tracks that race over 480m, Shawfield’s track record of 28.66 is the slowest. The only one that comes close is Sittingbourne’s 28.50, though I have never been convinced that is accurate anyway.
I asked GBGB for the last occasion when the Shawfield distance was verified and was told they would have to check back to NGRC archives. A long long way back.
Does it matter? In terms of good racing, absolutely not. Shawfield remains one of the best and fairest circuits in the British Isles.
But – what happens when the Scottish Derby is decided by a fast finishing outsider short-heading the odds-on favourite on the line?
The race is advertised as being over 480 metres. . .
