Michael Watts MRCVS
Between The Divil and the Deep Blue Sea
“Well, now Dublin has as many tracks as London” was the barbed comment from one veteran track vet of my acquaintance when I broke the news that Harold’s Cross Stadium has closed its doors, probably for the last time, on 13th February.
Strange to say the company that originally owned and operated the track there was set up on 13th February 1928, making it the third greyhound racing venue in Ireland after the neighbouring Shelbourne Park and Belfast’s late lamented Celtic Park. The first night’s racing was staged on 10th April 1928 with the traps rising for the first race at 8 p.m. According to “The Irish Times” the stadium at that time could accommodate 40,000 spectators and has parking space for 1,000 cars. The National Derby, which in time would become the Irish Greyhound Derby was first run at The Cross that year and remained an annual event at the track until controversially transferred to Shelbourne Park in 1932. No lesser dog than Mick the Miller won the Spring Cup over 525 yards at Harold’s Cross in 1929 before going on to run up in the Stayer’s Cup over 600 yards later that year. The inaugural Puppy Derby was run here in 1943 and the following year The Cross became the first track in Ireland to install automatic starting traps.
The legendary Spanish Battleship won the first of his three Derbys at Harold’s Cross in 1953 and the last leg of his hat track at the same venue in 1955. The Corn Cuchulainn, – for those not familiar with The First National Language “Corn” means a cup or trophy, while Cuchulainn was a heroic figure from ancient Irish myths – a 750 yard staying contest, was inaugurated in 1961 and remained one of the high points of racing at the track ever after. Serious talk of closing the track and selling the site for development was nipped in the bud by Bord na gCon – which just means Greyhound Board in Irish – which stepped in and bought the stadium in 1970. An extensive programme of renovation and rebuilding followed, beginning in 1977, at which time The Cross raced on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. There was more talk of closure in the early nineties when the cash-strapped IGB was looking at ways to alleviate its debt burden. The fortunes of the track took a turn for the better around this time however, forestalling any decision on closure one more time.
In 2013 Harold’s Cross generated more revenue for the IGB than any other track in Ireland except Shelbourne Park and had more punters through its turnstiles than any track apart from Shelbourne and Curraheen Park in Cork. If everything was coming up roses, why, I hear you ask, is The Cross shut and the site on the market?
The short answer is that the IGB is up to its eyeballs in debt and beyond. Group debt at the moment is something in the region of €20.3 million, a seriously scary sum of money. Much of this debt is due to expenditure on the new track at Limerick, which had totalled €21million by the time the track opened in 2011. Much too is a consequence of the recession and the general drop in leisure spending. Gate receipts and programme sales at tracks, together with entry fees and income from catering across the whole group fell by €5.049 million between 2007 and 2013. Tote betting at greyhound tracks was particularly badly hit. In 2006 Tote receipts had come to a grand total of just over €50 million for all the tracks, but with the country’s descent into recession in the succeeding years they had fallen to €20.9 million by 2013. Race sponsorship has also taken a significant backward step, having fallen by €1.2 million between 2007 and 2013.
Another problem is the underfunding of the pension plan for the IGB’s staff, an all too familiar problem that faces many direct benefit pension schemes in companies that have not performed well in recent times. At the end of 2014 the shortfall in the Board’s pension fund was of the order of €6.8 million. Now to give credit where it is due, the IGB has not exactly been fiddling while Rome burned. They launched a major cost-cutting programme in 2006 and had managed to reduce their running costs by 48.5% by 2013. This looks good on paper, but in part it reflects a continued downturn in footfall, which by 2013 had stabilised at around half of what it had been six years earlier, and also cuts in prize money and tote payouts which were just about tolerable in the short term but could not be continued for long. The Board’s strategic plan had estimated that a total group surplus of €238,000 should be achievable in 2013, but it practice they barely kept their heads above water, ending the year with a surplus of just €40,000. Costs had been pretty much cut to the bone to achieve that figure and there was little scope for further reductions in expenses. Like it or not, the IGB was going to have to cash in some of its chips and dispose of some substantial capital assets to get itself out of a financial hole.
Why sell Harold’s Cross, given that it was one of the better attended and more profitable tracks? Recent annual attendances at Enniscorthy, Kilkenny, Lifford, Longford, Newbridge, Thurles and Youghal have all been less than 25,000. Why not flog one of the smaller underperforming tracks? Lifford and Newbridge for example had both already closed briefly in recent years. The answer to that is a simple one. Firstly the real estate at some of the tracks does not actually belong to the IGB so they are not in a position to benefit financially from the closure and sale of some stadia. Secondly the value of some of the rural tracks as brownfield sites for development would be rather small as the value of land in towns like Enniscorthy or Longford might be quite modest in comparison to a Dublin city site and there might not be great interest in developing such sites.
In short, selling off one of the rural tracks would not free up enough cash to solve the Board’s problems. The Board was so deep in debt that only cashing in one of the Dublin tracks would suffice. Harold’s Cross was always the poor relation in comparison with Shelbourne which has twice the capacity of its neighbour so that was always where the axe was most likely to fall. As of Friday 17th February Shelbourne has taken on the old Harolds’s Cross schedule as well as its own and has staged four night’s racing a week. Those who are familiar with the geography of Dublin will appreciate that the two greyhound tracks in the city are only a short drive apart, so that the Board’s belief that most of the Harold’s Cross regulars would simply transfer their loyalty to Shelbourne Park is less of a gamble than it might at first seem. Time will tell. The twelve people employed at The Cross have all been offered jobs elsewhere within the IGB. As the Board themselves have stated “the Harold’s Cross closure will avoid the dilution of scarce resources across two locations and makes long term sense from a logistical, financial, and organisational perspective. Stadia are capital intensive and require ongoing investment. Put simply IGB has not been in a position recently to invest in Shelbourne Park, the industry’s flagship venue.”
When put like that it all seems to make perfect sense. The Board has however failed to sell the idea to elements within the greyhound community with the Fair City. The Dublin Greyhound Owners and Breeders Association are up in arms, and have been picketing Shelbourne Park on race nights with such success that there has been no racing at the Ringsend venue in recent weeks. Shelbourne, they say, is the flagship venue and caters for the better class of greyhound. Many of the runners there are the open class dogs drawn from kennels the length and breadth of the country, attracted by the prizemoney on offer. The Cross allowed Dublin based owners and trainers an opportunity to race their own dogs of more modest ability close to home. To an extent Harold’s Cross has become the Dublin man’s track, while much of the racing strength at Shelbourne came from down the country. To a large extent Shelbourne is creaming off the better runners from the rural tracks rather than nurturing its own up-and-coming youngsters. While your heart goes out to the DGOBA people and you would be less than human if you did not sympathise with their viewpoint to some extent, it is honestly difficult to see what else the Board can do, so parlous is their current financial situation.
With that 20/20 hindsight which we all possess, many is the one that would question the wisdom of spending €21 million on a new stadium in Limerick, a city of around 100,000 souls. Wiser men than me tell me that the circuit is poorly designed and that injury rates are high. I must confess that I have never been there so cannot myself pass judgement on the matter. The word on the street is that the track continues to lose money week on week but that might just be sour grapes, idle gossip and pub talk. Be that as it may, it was a very great deal of money to spend on a dog track outside the Dublin metropolitan area. It would be interesting to know more of the thinking behind that level of investment but as so often in this life I suspect those involved are keeping their heads down and their mouths shut.
The Dublin of my miss-spent youth had three horse racecourses, but Baldoyle, which used to stage the opening meeting of the Flat Season on St.Patrick’s Day succumbed to the concrete jungle in 1972 and the Phoenix Park flat racing venue closed its doors for the last time in 1990. Horse racing continues in the city at Leopardstown and its quality is probably better than ever, but something of the character and fun of the sport has been lost with the closure of the two northside courses. The same will probably prove true for the greyhound game, which I hope will proper once again in time, but may in the process has lost something of its soul.
