The latest expose released on Youtube is an audio recording of a telephone conversion between Clive an apparent former GBGB employee in discussion with an unidentified former greyhound owner.

It is very poor quality but there appears to be a reference to ‘Tom Kelly’, ‘Barry’, ‘Mark Bird’ and ‘Floyd’. The clip only lasts around 30 seconds and I am told there is a lot more to come.

Assuming the recording is not some intricate fraud involving the use of actors and prepared scripts, it does present some intriguing claims.

First and foremost, I have no issue with the recording as such. I believe it was originated by someone with a heart-held belief that there is corruption within the greyhound industry’s corridors of power. They may be right, or wrong, I will move on to that shortly. The fact that GBGB remains so uncommunicative leaves them completely exposed to claims of lack of transparency and suspicion.

It is undeniable that the organisation has major shortcomings. The fact that it has made some astonishingly bad appointments and decisions, right from its inception, possibly necessitates a degree of secrecy. If you can’t justify your actions, best keep your mouth shut.

I consider myself to be industry’s biggest critic of the toxic forum, but among all those contributors whose mothers didn’t hug them enough, or the fact that they aren’t Mark Wallis, are some posters with perceived or genuine grievances.

If you had been treated like Seamus Cahill (Pat Rosney column) you too might feel the only way to vent your spleen was on a forum.

I don’t want to go off on too much of a tangent here but the basic disciplinary process is flawed. In the ‘real world’, the police collate evidence, hand it over to the CPS who decide whether or not there are grounds for prosecution. The prosecution and defense have equal access to evidence and can call their own witnesses.

Even the poorest citizen is entitled to support to help finance the defense. It doesn’t work like that in greyhound racing. The Greyhound Regulatory Board are the police, the CPS and the prosecution. Some of the evidence contrary to the prosecution’s case doesn’t get heard. The trainer is usually left to conduct his own defence, with no financial support and often reliant on the voluntary services of a retired trainer for advice. I can think of dozens of cases whereby a decent solicitor would drive a coach and horses through the prosecution’s case. Sadly, swallowing the inevitable fine is usually cheaper than employing a brief.

Moving on. The recording claims that there ‘is really bad stuff’ to come out and that ‘Floyd is in denial’

Now this is the bit that most intrigues me; assuming ‘Floyd’ to be yours truly.

First of all the insult is water off a hack’s back. The current GTA chairman claims I am corrupt because the Star was paid for advertising space by the BGRB and the GBGB over many years. It would have folded without it. Maybe a Racing Post/Greyhoundscene world is the future?

Tom Kelly thinks I am a shit journalist. He has said so directly, and to others. It might have been the reason I had to read about the BGRF board meetings in the next day’s Racing Post rather than be invited to a briefing like Jim Cremin. It might also have contributed to the decision last December to suspend the Star’s advertising grant. Not everyone agrees with Tom Kelly; my mum thinks I’m wonderful.

Anyway, the insult is wasted on me. I dish it out and I am well able to take it. This is no career for a sensitive flower.

But ‘in denial?’ Now that’s intriguing!

Let’s have a punt. I think this relates to the on-going allegations of corruption surrounding John Haynes.

Now I might be consigning myself to the seventh level of hell for saying this – as if I give a damn – but I consider John Haynes a friend and the best GTA chairman there has ever been.

There is insufficient space in this article to talk about John’s contribution to the industry, suffice to say, he was there battling against impossible odds on behalf of trainers for many years. No it was not a paid appointment. Only the independent directors get paid. John, aided and abetted by the late Stuart Locke-Hart and Bob Gilling, worked freely and tirelessly for years on a disgracefully biased BGRB board knowing that he could never win a vote.

Forever attacking the tracks for their lack of investment in welfare, he was eventually was given a ‘put up or shut up’ option to improve running surfaces with a full time job by Lord Lipsey.

The allegations against John have pretty much accompanied him ever since. I don’t know why. Maybe trainers felt he was a poacher turned gamekeeper who had ‘sold out’? Or maybe John’s style? For all his positive attributes, he was not at the front of the queue when they were dishing out diplomacy. He would be the first person I would want alongside me in the trenches, and the last to accompany me to the peace talks.

He also knows, categorically, that if any of the allegations of corruption were ever proven, I would cast the first stone. Deceit will always trump loyalty. Haynes himself has always been the first to say ‘if anyone has any evidence of wrong-doing, they should go to the police’.

But imagine just for a second – that he has done no wrong. I am not talking filling in the wrong forms, or incorrect protocol, I am talking corruption, theft, fraud and even blackmail. How shit has he, and his family been treated by this industry?

I ask the reader to consider this. Could you have got away with taking bribes or being corrupt over 20 years and not leave evidence? I am certainly not that clever.

It isn’t as though John hasn’t been investigated. There were allegations over work at Shawfield. There was an investigation into events at Kinsley. There have been interviews with a former GM at Oxford. Trips to a flapping track. Interviews with former stewards. An attempt to interview the son of a former contractor and so much more . .

These guys have been thorough! The toxic forum and Racing Post must have been so excited that they could finally bring him down. The Post seemed gutted when they had nothing to report following the last board meeting.

But at what point does an investigation become a witch-hunt?

That is the question that was being asked by angry racecourse promoters at a meeting of the RCPA two weeks ago.

They feel that the decision to not renew John’s contract as the track consultant but without clearing his name, was, as one promoter put it “giving Greyhoundscene a Christmas present”.

Surely, at least one of these guys would have enough to bury Haynes?

(There was also a big promoter debate that a clash of personalities will see no deal done with the off-course betting industry any time soon – but more of that another day.).

Moving on, there is still no word on the result of months of investigation into the 1962 Trainer of the Year. But surely, if there was evidence of corruption, he would have been suspended?

If the Board is aware that one of its directors has been engaged in criminal activity it has to call in the police. That is the law.

Is Floyd in denial? What is the bad stuff? What would lead an alleged former GBGB employee to go public, as he surely knew he was doing?

It is time this dirty washing was out in the open.