Brodie

Have we had any new trainers set up in the last few years anywhere? Can not think of anyone to any scale! The thing even the children of the older established trainers are not actively persuing a career in harness racing! Yes the odd one is but very few and far between and we are lucky at the moment to have so many females working in the industry. Will this continue in the future when the stake money reduces significantly?

Reality is that js not going to happen. Even when the ATC sells everything there is not enough money to buy land or build anything unless Entain are going to shell out, as no one else is going to put up money! Unfortunately there is just not enough interest in racing in Auckland now and they can not afford to keep running races for the current stake money and with the limited wagering on the boring racing! Entain are in it to make money and Auckland racing is not in their plans to bail it out! Something has to give and it is long overdue that they need to realise this.

Tantra Yoga?

Correct Mikey on all points, and difficult to see how the TAB can not see this? Surely if 98% of punters are losing punters then through open the gates and let the punters offload! The more the turnover the more the TAB is likely to win and will be far better for the harness industry! To restrict some punters and be so risk averse is just not the way they should be acting, A restricted punter gets on what I believe is not a large amount and the Bookies slash the fixed odds win and place! This then will often stop other punters from bothering to wager on that horse as the odds do not reflect true value and therefore a large amount of turnover is gone!!!!!

Na, I am not on their Xmas card list nowadays! Hardly think they are going to be taking any advice from Brodie or playing fair after all of this time?

Well I am waiting Ranga? They are getting tighter and pathetically low!

So if only 2% of their customers generate a profit, the TaB thinks that is too high? So we will only allow those that lose to wager with us? So we get rid of the successful punters and that is ethically ok? No one that bets with us is to win, we make it difficult for winning punters and encourage the 98% losing ones!

Would be good for spokesperson for the NZ TAB to actually front and justify what they are doing to harness racing! It is just so hard to justify their policies if they are wanting to keep harness racing going as they are driving punters away rather than encouraging! It all good though apparently cos the HRNZ CEO says so! Delusional thinking.

Yeah, they look after who they want to and others get victimised! At the end of the day the TAB is doing major damage to the future of racing in NZ and they know it, but the ones making the calls wont be around.

$20 is a pathetically small amount surely not worth the effort? $20 may have been ok 20 years ago but what does it buy nowadays? Certainly very little so does the Tab really believe they are doing fantastic things? Have a look a the tote pools for the whole of NZ, shockingly small now!

To be fair, when they are restricting punters to amounts that are getting lower than what they were, then what do you expect punters to do?? Thought Entain initially had improved things for the TAB but they have actually got sirse in recent months despite what they will tell you! Seriously they have no appetite for risk and are riding out their time till they can stop chucking the money into racing! These odds surges etc. are a joke really when the maximum bet is $20!!!!!! why would you bother! Still they promote $1k @ $1.65 to win as being a big bet alert and worthy of mentioning lol. Let the punters on TAB and increase your turnover!

McMullen’s when they trained used to have very weak finishing horses a decade or two ago. They used to pull hard and then stop but then again they were poorly bred even though they would win races at Parklands! MELTON was the prefix and they were trained I believe by John McMullen and Peter was driving them often, so he must've improved a lot from driving better stockz,

Nowornever, I can assure you that it tskes very very little money going on to make the so called Bookies to slash fixed odds drastically. They are now not letting you on for anything like they were and even the small amount they let you on for they slash the odds several times. The thing is if one punter gets a small amount in and then slash the odds that is the end of money going on that horse from others, as any value is gone. They are just so risk averse except from taking bets from one or two ounters who have more money than sense! Last night on Trackside they announced a big bet alert! $1k @ $1.65 LOL. Gee they must be very scared with that?

We have a lot of female Juniors going around at the moment, often more female than males in Junior races! Reality is that most of them will be lost to the industry when they are out of their Junior driver days! They will not pick up enough drives and there is no money in training unless you have a significant number of horses being paid for!

Gamma, problem is that it HRNZ have been given more money than they can handle and I personally believe from what is going on, that there is no one making decisions that have financial intelligence! They are blowing the future of harness racing when they were thrown a life buoy but are treating it like they were thrown an anchor! It is not going to end well for our once great harness industry!

Problem at the moment for wagering on the Friday meetings is that the fields and odds just are not attractive enough to bother! absolute nothing worth backing on the fixed place odds for Addington, Cambridge or Auckland! Pointless and not worth the effort with these fields but then that affects the TAB more than it effects Brodie! Be interesting what the turnover is for these three meetings as I have never seen it so unattractive to wager for field sizes and odds!!!

Absolutely brilliant! Who wrote it and singing?

Gamma, there is not one person in NZ that would be doing shat Seymour is dong in Ozzie! There is no one that is enthusiastic enough to be putting in tens of millions to keep harness going in NZ, Instead of blowing the Entain money on bonuses and increased stakes straight off anyone with any business acumen wouldve invested the capital and received tens of millions per year for ever plus had the massive capital contribution as well if and when required!! They really are devoid of financial competence.

They are too obsessed with the damn yield! Do the successful big retail business worry about yield as much as turnover? They want turnover snd that is what drives successful business, you get people coming to your business and you make profit! Without enough people coming to your business then you wont make profit! Many of the successful businesses have loss leaders but that is why they get people to their business as they make money on all the other bits! Just as the TAB should be acting! Continue to drive punters away and u have no business, end of story

Gamma, HRNZ are just not bring financially prudent with the cash splash from Entain! not trying to be personal but the ones that are offloading the extra money just would not be acting this way with their own personal budget! Making hay while the sun shines is not the way to go! Farmers that have a good season do not go out and blow the cash on things that do not produce in the future! They put it away for the bad seasons! Anyway if they want to carry on the way they are currently and the harness participants are happy for this then I suggest that many will be looking for another job or career in the future! Most meetings are losing money and yet they think that they can pay out the big stskes and bonuses? Delusional!

TAB, my comments are posted due to continued concern for the harness racing industry! Big time they are going to be in trouble financially unless they can appoint people that have concern for the industry, as currently it appears they just are not there! Being Santa Claus and shelling out the funds from the White Knight with gay abandon is not going to improve things, quite the opposite! The cash from Entain should have been fiscally savvy and yet there is absolutely no sign of this, and no media beef up is going to solve this unfortunately! If the Committee is bot going to overturn so e of these poor business decisions the what is the point of the committee??????? I highly doubt the business acumen of those currently making these decisions and kt clearly shows. Who there has got a history of running a successful business and I do not class Banking as a successful business!

TAB, it is good that you are prepared to defend the HRNZ decision msking! However you are defending them with blind faith, as anyone with any semblance of business sense knows that the way things are going, harness racing is a dead duck in the next 10 years! The wasteful spending without any thought to the medium future is just crazy, however we all know that those currently making these decisions will be gone well before that! Seriously why is the Winston committee taking so long to meet, as surely they will be overturning many of the announcements that HRNZ have made or harness is DOOMED!

Yes the Trackside presenters can not be seen to speak their minds over TV, but you would hope that they would be expressing their opinions to their boss? Just does not seem to be an accountability for the decisions being made and this is auite common nowadays. The Covid BS is a typical example of this, with massive amounts of people suffering health wise and financially from the poor decisions made and followed by so many unfortunately. Far too many people nowadays just accept what they are told and accept poor decisions being made without speaking up snd expressing their concerns.

Alexandra Park racing generally is boring and has been for a long time. Same horses racing each and every week due to lack of numbers of horses and different trainers, so domination. The fixed odds with the smaller fields doesnt make it worth while to collect milk money for each $! Galah is right, they just seem to sit at the back mostly and run home giving those out the back no chance. With having the biggest population in NZ, you would think that they would get a good crowd on course, however next to no one goes!

Mark Jones is certainly on the money in most of what he states! It is just staggering to believe that harness media is excited about what is happening with harness racing at the moment. Yes they have this large pool of money that they have been receiving from Entain, but they are absolutely wasting it on dumb decisions without doubt. Yes I appreciate that those expressing all this great news about 60k finals and bonuses are being paid , but seriously need to have a word higher up! Unfortunately things are not going to end well for our once great harness racing industry unless these wasteful decisions are reversed. Read the HRNZ list of the stallions that qualify for their progeny to race for the $60k, and there are so many questions that should've been asked? They also stated that horses that have been exported can come back and race for the $60k if they have 5 starts back here in NZ???? Are they serious? Just shows the lack of stuff up top from HRNZ at the moment!