The recent death of stipendiary steward Eric Vose was the main factor behind the recent announcement of the retirement of his friend and colleague Jack Robinson.
Jack, who is 68, has been attending the Midlands track since he was a boy.
He said: “I went to them all, Coalville, Hinckley, Chesterfield, I even remember Terry Corden putting a couple of winners in for me when he was racing manager at Long Eaton – which was very nice of him.
“I also loved Nottingham White City and would go to Derby every Wednesday night.”
As a young man, Jack trained as a compositor and joined the Nottingham Evening Post.
The old Nottingham track closed down and when Jon Carter built the new stadium at Colwick Park, he asked Robinson to take a photo of the first brick being laid.
That led to the offer of a switch to journalism on the sports desk and Jack also wrote pieces for the Sporting Life and Racing Post.
It was during that time when he met a young student who was working on the Nottingham tote, future BGRB chief executive, Geoffrey Thomas.
In 1993, Jack was offered redundancy from the newspaper and applied to the NGRC for a job on the newly formed Drugs Flying Squad.
Instead, he was offered a job as a stipendiary steward covering central England.
Jack recalls: “I never expected to be offered the job. In those days the stewards were all ex-military and in fact, I took over from Major Roche. I was actually appointed the same day as another long standing colleague, Adrian Smith.”
The Robinson ‘beat’ includes Nottingham, Sheffield, Hall Green, Perry Barr and Birmingham, though he has also been acting as cover at Doncaster and Kinsley following Vose’s death.
Jack doubts he will continue any involvement when he hands over his paperwork within the next month.
He said: “That’s a tough one! The game has changed such a lot, and so has the job. When I first started as a steward, I used to file a lot of letters.
“Senior steward Frank Melville hated writing and told me, ‘don’t write, phone and tell me what you have been up to’.
“That was a great step forward. In recent years though, the paperwork has mounted and mounted, especially since UKAS accreditation.
“I spend many hours a week now on the computer and I really don’t like it.
“I would speak to Eric quite regularly and his death brought retirement to the front of my thinking.
“No one wants to be carried out on his shield. I had a health scare last year, and decided it was time to come to a decision.”
So how does he see the future for the industry.
He said: “It is very difficult for trainers. You tell them that they need to make improvements, but they haven’t got the money.
“Even though there was £1.5m put aside over three years for kennel improvements, in many cases the trainers are unwilling or, more often, unable to make a contribution. Until prize money improves that isn’t going to change.”
Robinson’s departure will be a cause of genuine sadness in Midlands racing circles as he is hugely popularn with track managements and trainers.
He has a million funny stories to tell and it might appropriate to end on one of them.
He recalls: “I remember visiting Geoffrey De Mulder for a kennel check, in his final days.
“I arrived at the kennel and there was no sign of Geoffrey or any dogs. In fact, I soon discovered that he had done a house swap with a relative.
“He had two runners that night and quickly phoned him to see what was happening. He told me that he was still living nearby in Meriden.
“I went around to visit him and he was there, with the dogs in immaculate condition. I knew that I should have withdrawn his runners, but I looked at him and his dogs and thought, ‘I think we can let this one slide.’”
