Reefton

Sums it up pretty well. Rugby for instance - even ten years ago an All Black test, at whatever hour of the day, was compulsory viewing. Now if it is an early morning job we wake up and check it on Stuff to see if it is worth watching. Whatever time of the day though I will be up to watch them boot Eddie Jones' a*"e in November like I will be watching the Melbourne Cup.

remember the straw they used to cover the birdcage at Riccarton in in the depths of winter?

Much as this time of year is uninspiring from a racing perspective I reckon if we stopped racing for a few months it really would struggle to ever start again. So many people, especially the stakeholders, have had a gutsful I suspect the majority would take the opportunity to drop out. I really think we are on a precipice here.

must have been their own staff? Nine horses on one float - there cannot have been too much room for anyone else's

Not my call Chief. I only lease a share in her and others wield more influence in what she does and where she goes. But Stephen McKee did mention a huge price ($1.3m?) they got for the first of O'Marilyn's foals over there. Realistically if Consensus was going to stud it would be madness to send her anywhere here except possibly Savabeel. Aussie is the only option. Despite the hype of the NZ sales the NZ breeding game is falling well behind Aussie as well. Having said that she is only by Postponed and despite descending from Surround(so far back she probably would not get on the sales page) her pedigree may not be as appealing as some others to Aussie buyers

For all that (and I am not arguing with either of you) doesn't it get harder and harder each year to get enthusiastic about winter racing? There is a malaise in the industry and we seem to be more downbeat every season when the tracks turn to shiite.

And I might say further that Gary Foskett has always been very good for us to deal with. If he could help he would and didn't lay the law down too often. He gets shiite bagged out of him on racing chat sites but I would hate the bloody job. As for Andrew Mehrtens talking about improvements in turf in the last 25 years let a team of 600kg nags rip around a couple of times and see how Eden Park or AMI handles it

Reefton get a lot of use out of a spiker machine we have to aerate the track. I have an idea Moncur's mob might even have assisted with funding. Does a good job anyhow but the trotting boys really do the track work - I live 50 miles away and am more into making smart arse comments and stirring up the authorities than getting my hands too dirty too often.

From memory probably every five years(I am talking the track here not their farm paddocks. Peter is a dairy farmer now - well his boy has taken over and has gone dairying - and I think they resow a lot more frequently) But it all depended how much of a hammering the track got(given the trotters run around twice a year and us once). If it has a golden run like it has the last couple of years it might last ten years - if there is a run of wet days(I know it will surprise contributors but it has been known to rain here on the Coast) it might be one year. How long is a piece of string essentially.

Reefton has a couple of farmers (and bloody good ones too at that) Peter and Ken O'Malley who know what they are doing. But really I don't mean ploughing a track and resowing - I mean rebanking and drainage and generally playing hell - never works(at least initially) I remember when our track was hammered by the Trotters (with only a week between meetings) - the O'Malleys decided on a twelve ton vibrating road roller next morning. The track was bare by the time of the meeting but a least it was flat. It was sitting there a few days later when Mr Foskett happened by - he knew what it would have been used for and shook his head. Having said that it is easy when you race once a year and in the middle of summer. It must be bloody hard to even get motivated when the temperature is 6 degrees and you have a midweek industry meeting to look forward to(the tenth this season)

ANY track they touch here they cock up Chief. I challenge anyone to name an NZ track that has been 'renovated' and not needed years to settle down(in some cases they never have).

I said I am sick of this but I will respond to that. You bleated on and on about racing taking place where the horses are hence my comment about running the Melbourne Cup somewhere in Europe. If you want to make statements do not be suprised when people take them literally. You are clearly a little confused about what it is you are promoting. Secondly re Moncur well if you worship the ground he works on I think it might say something about you. You will remember he once left NZTR to run the TRAC group - turned into a disaster and he skulked back to NZTR. I do not like to really crucify the guy but when he makes a galah of himself time and time and time again one begins to wonder about his competence. AND after all he did comment about the 'wankers on race cafe' so sauce for the goose. Incidentally I had no part in the application for the RSDF money and no interaction with him in regards it so my attitude to him played no part in that outcome.

Bearing in mind who my family are NM whatever insult(which I missed to be fair) Curious offered would rate about .00001 on a scale of one to ten. I don't need Curious(or his friend Moncur) to tell me anything about how to run a club or obtain funding. Anyway this argument is going nowhere - good luck to Curious, Foxton and anyone else who can get their snout in the trough of industry funds. Far better a set of new gates and plastic running rail on a trials course than a range of new pie warmers and first class flights to Hong Kong for a nice junket.

I am sick of the fight Ashoka(like I am sick of the fight against idiot councils and their imbecile schemes, the idiot IRD with their unworkable new rules and every other idiot - invariably government or public funded - authority that seeks to poke their nose into everyone's business and make everything hard) Without wanting to sound nasty the sooner the industry in NZ collapses and I can just(no longer having to be loyal) take a share in a Darby or Dynamic syndications nag in Aussie the better. No more caring about the future of the course, the club or the people involved. Better courses better jockeys better TV coverage(even if its career highlight will probably be plodding into a distant third in a three horse maiden at Mt Gambier!) And thats why in my view the NZ industry(read Clubs) should set up their own gaming agency in the Cook Islands. Run it on a shoestring, slash takeouts and remove the fat cats. Sure you may have an NZ tax issue with what is called the controlled foreign companies regime but that would not be insurmountable.

Breaking news people - these two are going to shift the Melbourne Cup to Ballydoyle Because that is where the horses are!

Well can you tell me why the Aussie's run their Group Ones at Flemington and Randwick not Birdsville and Benalla? After all if the proximity to people is not important in racing the first Tuesday might as well be run in Alice Springs might it not? We might run the NZ Derby as the second leg at Reefton next year?

As I said I never suggested it was unfair Foxton getting money and us not - I do not believe we deserved it nor ever had a hope of getting it but it was the BS spun to deny us that annoyed me. What I have made clear over and over is that using industry money to fund non venues is stupidity. But then it is the hierarchy of NZ racing we are talking about here so stupidity is par for the course.

Why would we reapply? So Moncur could tell some more lies to stymie what we wanted to do? In any case the gates were virtually on the boat by the stage we got turned down and we could not wait (bearing in mind these were the four Coast Clubs not just us) And we did not use Industry funds we used our own funds plus pokie money that we were able to access. Foxton are the ones who have blown industry funds, fully supported by NZTR. Anyway the point is I am not and never have suggested that we should have got the money. I don't care about not getting the money but I do care about Moncur saying ' we (NZTR) arranged for the old Canterbury gates to be available to the West Coast clubs' . What utter crap - we (ie the Greymouth President Jill Bennington) did that deal with Riccarton ourselves. And then we had the scenario(after two or three years of using them) of three weeks out from our racemeeting being told they were not available and having to hire at extremely short notice the Ashburton/Timaru ones at a huge cost. Hence our immediate decision that never again would we rely on outsiders for vital raceday equipment and arranged to buy our own. If he had simply said 'we do not believe that using the RSDF to buy gates for the West Coast is wise use of industry resources' one would have accepted it but he chose to imply that NZTR had arranged an alternative which they clearly had not (despite an assurance from a Board Member of NZTR at the time that they would make sure we had gates when they stopped us using our old manual gates). What I am saying that using RSDF money to fund a non racing venue is a blatant waste of industry money. You might be sentimental in thinking Foxton will be used again for racing but I cannot recall too many courses being resurrected in my time and see no reason why this one will be.

On the face of it fair comment but from a Club's perspective it costs, even on our low budget/cost model, $25000 minimum to run a meeting. So if say you cut the eight races to six you increase the cost from $3k approx per race to $4k approx. So run fewer racedays? Well which courses lose a day or days?

I'm not advocating closing down lots of racecourses(despite everyone here appearing to believe I am). I agree they should stay open BUT ........ I am surmising that is what Messara will recommend. Virtually every high profile NZ racing person is calling for it(Tony Pike being the latest example, Gary Chittick tried it years ago) and if Messara recommends all weather tracks and Winston tells his officials to do it how are they going to fund it? It would be suicide for the government to fund these things while Health Education and law and order are under funded so where will Allen or his successor look for funds? Well ask Winston to reinforce the law so the assets of current participants(read small Clubs) can be accessed. The government clearly doesn't give a s**t about rural NZ so who is going to stand up to these guys? If Messara doesn't suggest something radical I will be astounded. It might be in the form of reducing funding to small clubs drastically for instance - who knows but at the moment there is not enough money to go around so who is the easy target? There is not going to be funds coming from Government nor a decrease in the duty the TAB pays so where oh where is the money coming from? I do not want it to happen but I can see it happening whatever he(JM) did in NSW. If however it rescues the industry the NZ industry I can live with it. Pretty soon we will have a heap of racecourses with nothing to race on them the way it is going so what benefit will that be?

Foxton is not the answer to the serious issues in NZ racing any more than Reefton is. Getting racing closer to the population is the only way the global NZ industry is going to advance

That's fair comment - how long since those fires and what progress getting the race dates back?

what are you talking about? I am not suggesting Foxton roll over and die I am saying that the spending of industry money on non racing venues is wasteful. Despite a heap of talk about how good a course it is and how important ti is to the industry insofar as I know there is no sign of racing recommencing. As far as Reefton rolling over and dying well your see we are made of sterner stuff. We (and that includes all the Coast) shrugged our shoulders and got on with it, brought the gates ourselves and even assembled them - the Simtrack bloke reckoned he had never had an assembly go so smoothly as it did with the Reefton committee. And what did little Campbell say when he found out we had paid the deposit 'oh you will be able to get your deposit back'. We're buying them we said whatever you lot think(because relying on anyone else to provide us with starting gates was bloody hopeless). Everyone does things out of self interest - it is human nature so I am not sure what you mean by that silly little comment And at the end of the day we didn't tell lies.

First the Club didn't decide - I did and second telling him to get stuffed(clearly not in so many words) came long after he told whoppers to the RSDF about the need for new starting gates on the West Coast. And even if it had come before it is no excuse for telling untruths. Of course it may not have been intentional it may have been incompetent(and boy that adds up!) Moncur instituted a succession of bumbling efforts to do with NZ Racing and cost us on more than one occasion(most of which I have mentioned over and over on RC). Typical bloke in a situation where someone else is paying the bill. When we got refused we simply reverted to what I usually find is the best option - if you want the job done do the bloody thing yourself. Little Campbell was most surprised when he was told the gates were on the way. No bludging on the Coast!

thanks