John Curran
Usually we for someone to die before we acknowledge their achievements and qualities. Thankfully, a retirement provides a similar opportunity and John Curran’s stepping-down as a director of the BGRF gives me the excuse to acknowledge his selfless contribution to greyhound racing writes Star editor Floyd Amphlett.
My history with John goes back nearly 30 years and in 1990 I was given the honour of making the presentation for the most lucrative event in independent racing, the £20,000 Kinsley Derby.
Even then, John was an influential figure in racing. He was chairman of the Independent Track Promoters Association and frustrated with what he saw as the hypocrisy, corruption and incompetence of NGRC racing. He tried very hard to galvanise his colleagues into challenging the NGRC tracks’ railroading of the newly created British Greyhound Racing Fund but failed to make progress.
I made no apologies for attempting to persuade John and partner Keith Murrell to take Kinsley into my beloved NGRC permit scheme and they eventually switched codes.
It seems a lifetime ago. In those days, the flaps and permit tracks were widely derided by most of my press colleagues (including some who are still around) as ‘dirty flappers’ and famously as ‘the shanty tracks’ by GRA director Jarvis Astaire.
But things were going to change thanks to one man more than any other.
John Curran was born into a big mining family and was a dog man to his hobnail boots. He was blessed with a razor sharp intellect which he honed in local politics and as a senior negotiator in the mining industry where he had responsibility for over 11,000 men.
The Yorkshire terrier by nature and nurture was soon asked by the ‘shanty’s’ to represent their interests and was appointed onto the board of the Race Course Promoters Association and then duly as a BGRB director.
Quite honestly, the big track promoters didn’t know what hit them – but they soon found out.
On the day he made his BGRB director debut, Curran was famously ‘instructed’ to meet his fellow promoters at a special gathering to take place an hour before the main board meeting. Much to his surprise, BGRB Chief Exec Geoffrey Thomas was in attendance.
Curran was informed that he would be expected to operate ‘cabinet responsibility’ – in other words, vote along with his colleagues, irrespective of his own views. It would have been a bit like telling Freddie Truman to stop bowling bouncers, or Boycott to start slogging – Curran told them where to shove it.
He left the meeting and went to a café to bide his time when he bumped into the grass roots representatives John Haynes (trainers), Stuart Locke-Hart (owners) and Bob Gilling (breeders).
Curran didn’t know any of them, but had been warned by his colleagues about their leader, the troublemaker Haynes. They became instant friends. The trio told Curran that they had never won a single vote at the BGRB. He promised them that although he was there to represent tracks, he thought there would be occasions when he could support them. And he did.
Curran’s first, of many significant achievements in the sport, was to force a change in the system of prize money grants. The big tracks had forced through a system whereby grants were determined by tote turnover. Walthamstow might get twenty times as much as Rye House. Curran soon put a stop to that and equal distribution followed.
Curran’s fingerprints are over many significant events of the past three decades, from rules changes to removal of CEOs and chairmen. He has worked tirelessly on welfare reform and donated thousands of hours of his own time, including literally hundreds of 4.30am train journey from Yorkshire to London, in free service and expertise to the industry.
There is so much more to tell of what ‘King Curran’ (as he is not always kindly referred to) has brought about, but that will have to wait until he gives up his role as a GBGB director.
Ill health, and pleas from the family means that day is not too far away.
In the meantime, on behalf of the industry, we thank him.
