OPERATONAL issues and funding are central to the concerns of participants and clubs alike nationwide and the next seven or so days will be a battleground in NSW and Victoria.
We'll start in Victoria. A strongly supported petition (with 674 signatories) initiated by the Greyhound Owners, Trainers and Breeders' Association and Cranbourne Club members called on Greyhound Racing Victoria to return Cranbourne to the racing calendar.
Minister for Racing Anthony Carbines indicated he would support the return of greyhound racing to Cranbourne providing it was done safely yet he was waiting on advice from GRV and the Cranbourne Club.
Cranbourne has not raced since January 2022 following welfare issues and GRV acted decisively yet, in a densely populated greyhound precinct, the GOTBA seek to get clarity on the way forward for participants in the south east.
Exacerbating the loss of Cranbourne are persistent issues at Traralgon.
At Traralgon, the meeting on May 24 was cancelled after the surface was deemed unsuitable for racing (after a harrow) and the meeting slated for May 27 meeting was transferred to Sale.
On June 14, the lure mechanism failed in Race 9 and the remainder of the meeting was abandoned and then on Friday, the lure again failed (Race 7) and the remainder of the meeting was lost.
Monday's meeting (June 24) has been drawn but will not proceed yet participants will receive an even share of allocated prize money.
Traralgon is a real headache.
The "J Curve" track only allows pups to be trialled (with finish on lure availability) from the 500m boxes and let them catch the lure on the turn after running straight for 250m … nobody is doing that!
The catching pen run-in is about 120m so you could easily run arm trials as slips or from the 350m boxes but that is not allowed.
Are the lure issues operational (driver error) or is the system not suited to the radical track design?
GRV have been working on a fix if the latter is the case and that is likely to be a lure system which is not a continuous cable system (a la Healesville which has reverse capacity) could be installed.
Paying for the upgrade is the challenge yet the Victorian Government might understand this is a welfare issue (and it really is) and assist with a solid financial contribution.
Next up is the circ*mstance surrounding Cranbourne. Is the return of Cranbourne a good financial outcome?
GRNSW has sought to lessen operational costs by closing non-TAB venues and introducing lower tier racing on traditional TAB sites.
GRV must look at the financials around the potential return of Cranbourne, continuing Warragul's operation (which operates on a lease at a Showground site), fixing Traralgon's lure problems, attending to a rebuild at Sandown while having Sale be the best it can be.
Ironically, Cranbourne closed due to one incident with the lure (due to maintenance issues with an old rail that could have been replaced at minimal cost) and now Traralgon is problematic from week to week.
The decline of wagering (income) and a decrease in the greyhound population is the trigger for a total rethink for the Gippsland region if not the entire state of Victoria.
Maybe the closure of Traralgon is an option with the old adage of "money spent is money lost" writ large.
GRV as an entity may not be of the people yet, as a public authority, must be for the people and, in the Cranbourne episode, rank-and-file participants seemingly have influence, power and rights.
That's not necessarily the case north of the Murray River?
STILL WAITING
In NSW, the reopening of Taree is nigh yet movement has been glacial considering the track was supposed to be operational on January 26.
This week, posts for the rail were completed and the running rail can now be fully fabricated and installation of a new lure system (understood to be SafeChase) will follow.
Thereafter, something like 60-plus truckloads of local sand will need to be delivered and it will take a week or so for compaction and watering to get a racing surface ready (for GWIC to assess and agree the venue is fit) for trialling to commence.
The GRNSW calendar has a night meeting programmed on July 24 at Taree yet, to this writer's eye, that's going to be a stretch.
Let's not forget this project is essentially six months overdue and problems with weather, a ridiculous proposal to use an untested rail and lure system and final decision on the composition of sand be laid have certainly impacted on all participants in the Mid North Coast.
GRNSW's decision making and governance has led to a massive blow out in spending at Taree which is north of $6m – something like double the original number.
So, back to July 24. If the rail is fully fabricated by June 30, that leaves 24 days to procure the SafeChase lure, deliver approximately 1200 tons of sand (which will take a full working week), grade, water and embedding of the racing surface before trials can even be contemplated.
Four weeks of trials were proposed in Taree's initial return to racing and that certainly is not doable on what must yet happen.
Will trainers be prepared to put dogs around a track which has been freshly laid and untested? Will GWIC agree to fast track the return to racing on, let's say, two weeks of trials? And is the Taree club ready to step up and manage day-to-day operational hurdles?
In the background, there are operational funding issues for all tracks in NSW and it is unclear how GRNSW and Clubs NSW can find common ground. These are troubling times.
TENDER TOUCH
Received an interesting call from a businessman this week in respect to an Expression of Interest process placed on Tender Link this week by GRNSW.
Opportunity is offered for an entity to take managerial control of operations at two GRNSW-owned tracks – Muswellbrook and The Gardens.
What is bizarre to this writer is that GRNSW only purchased the Muswellbrook site (from the GBOTA for ~$750,000) about three years back before spending a budget busting number (said to be well above $3m) in the site yet now have tossed up the idea to not manage the operation.
Why spend so much hard-earned industry funds on a project that, in a heartbeat, the Board seems to have lost interest in?
Muswellbrook and The Gardens are profit centres for GRNSW and, given the economic issues at play, just why would a commercial entity dilute (call it donate) a profitable business to a third party?
And this is even more bizarre considering the GBOTA are likely suitors for each! Actually, it's a $1.01.
It was the GBOTA's decision to sell the Muswellbrook facility to GRNSW and ‘five minutes later' they get the chance to be back in the game with a shiny new toy to play with.
The Gardens will be an even more bizarre marriage for the GBOTA. They fought tooth-and-nail for the National Coursing Association to not be given funding for The Gardens project and when the NCA ceased operation, the Newcastle Greyhound Club came into existence rather than the GBOTA being given a free hit.
A change at Board level (at The Gardens) resulted in managerial issues at the NGC and GRNSW, properly, stepped in to provide better governance.
History is now repeating itself and this seems a strange time GRNSW wants to walk away from a profitable ‘business'.
And how times have changed! Two decades back, the GBOTA was uninterested in managing Singleton and Wyong while fighting vehemently for The Gardens to be greenlit by GRNSW.
If GRNSW does not want to conduct racing (even though it's the industry's commercial entity) maybe it's time for a new version of the NGC – a fresh player with innovation, strong local community engagement and a vision for the future to step up.
So, no Muswellbrook and The Gardens for GRNSW's management, but what about Dapto?
