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We’re going to be a long time waiting if we think anything meaningful will actually change in racing until the BHA grow some bollocks and get out of bed with the bookmakers and take control of the sport properly. Many people on this forum have suggested some fantastic ideas about how the sport could change for the better so if you dig back far enough you might find some useful information. Unfortunately I doubt any of those ideas will be seriously taken into consideration the BHA are useless quite frankly.
Max Apologies for my rant , I was half hoping I could get involved today but its like another all weather dross day …but its on turf on a bank Holiday …God help us …its the levy roulette mechanism …get the punters to lose and lose it quickly
TB great stuff and totally agree , you are right nobody is listening and frankly nobody gives a stuff in the BHA , if they did RFC would not exist in its current format , espousing gallons and gallons of tripe on as regular basis
We are heading for an abyss , 10 yrs from now who will be supporting racing ?? most of the fogies who attend and bet regularily will be heading for the sin bin in the sky , where AW dross is banned for sure ……….if you get relagated to hell , you get to be reincarnated as a piece of sand in Southwell ……
Happy Easter bookies , you wont be getting a penny of my cash
Ricky
Ten years from now It will be stuck in the dark ages like it is now.Its like golf was 20 years ago and always will be in this country while the same people run it.
Golf has changed in the last 20yrs "placemat2"! Dramatically!
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Always look on the bright side of life… There are a lot of possitives to the sport
Before 20/20, Trent Bridge resembled Tombstone Gulch, with the wind coming in from the Urals, cactus brush blowing across the wicket and the odd obsessive with a Wisden scattered around the cavernous stands.
That was me Max, though I prefer Scarborough as the wind off the North Sea is a touch more bracing than that soft Siberian zephyr off the Urals
I too have no interest whatsoever in 20/20 though wholeheartedly agree with the reasons you give to justify its existence
County First-Class cricket hasn’t been well attended in the getting-on-for 50 years I’ve been following it and doubt its made any money for the Counties and the ECB since Compton and Edrich walloped 3800 and 3500 runs respectively in that post-war-euphoric season of 1947
But why should ‘the bottom line’ be the sole arbiter of what should be and what should not?
That the visceral one-day knock about subsidises four and five days of cerebral contemplative engrossing intrigue is to be applauded and encouraged I say
And I like to believe the authorities both realise this and think likewise
Having a coffer-haemorrhaging County Championship is a price well worth paying if it’s the nursery required to breed players capable of treating us to the magnificent spectacles that were the last two home-soil Ashes series
The metamorphosis of golf from being the last refuge of the ‘old fart’ into a trendy popular pastime – both to play and watch – is interesting
How and why did it happen?
I really don’t know
Ten years from now It will be stuck in the dark ages like it is now.Its like golf was 20 years ago and always will be in this country while the same people run it.
Golf has changed in the last 20yrs "placemat2"! Dramatically!
That’s my point. Golf did .racing can.
This is why racing won’t change much in the next ten years. There’s too many factions that couldn’t decide what kind of biscuits are good for dunking let alone figure out how to develop racing over the next ten years.
The reason county cricket doesn’t attract bums on seats is that it takes too long. Three days is way too long for a sport. Spectators want quick action, and a result not more than a couple of hours after it starts. That’s why our national sport is footy, love it or hate it, not cricket. And dog racing….what exactly is dog racing, other than an excuse for betting. Horses are magnificent animals, races are exciting to watch. Everyone knows Red Rum, Shergar, Desert Orchid. How many greyhounds are famous. Ask Joe Bloggs in the street to name a famous greyhound and you might just as well ask him to name a famous Belgian.
My favourite horses - Red Rum, Spanish Steps, Proud Tarquin, Esban, Go-Pontinental, Barona, Charles Dickens, The Dikler, Astbury, Black Secret, Vulgan Town, Huperade, Well To Do, Crisp, Quintus, Argent, Colebridge, Pearl Of Montreal, Nereo, Sonny Somers, Tubs VI, Tartan Ace, Red Candle, L'Escargot, Bula, Beau Bob, Rouge Autumn, Rough Silk, Frodo, Deblin's Green, Prince Tino, Eyecatcher, The Pilgarlic, Captain Christy, Mr Midland, Interview II, Credit Call, My Virginian, Flush Of Diamonds, Scout, Money Ma
The reason county cricket doesn’t attract bums on seats is that it takes too long. Three days is way too long for a sport. Spectators want quick action, and a result not more than a couple of hours after it starts.
The Golf Majors – and many another tournament I expect – are over four days and the action on each day lasts even longer than a day’s cricket, yet it seems millions can’t get enough of it and remain riveted from dawn to dusk, so I think it is wrong to assume that sporting spectators want only 2 hours of wham bam thankyou mam. I do agree though that the received wisdom spouted from the mouths of self-interested sports’ publicists and marketeers is that immediacy is – to quote a ghastly phrase – ‘what the public wants’
None of them asked me
To labour a point: why has Golf undergone such a remarkable renaissance amongst the young given that its format is pretty much the same as it ever was? Saturation TV coverage?
Ask Joe Bloggs in the street to name a famous greyhound and you might just as well ask him to name a famous Belgian.
Mick The Miller
Hercule PoirotThough I do like to maintain the pretence I’m not Joe Bloggs
As part of a university assignment I have to write a piece on what British Racing will be like over the next ten years.
Returning to the OP’s question
As others have mentioned Dan191 there’s been a welter of opinion expressed on TRF regarding the future of racing so I suggest part of your ‘assignment’ should include a leaf back through the posts on here.
And please do send your thesis to the BHA and RFC. Though I expect it will end up as litterbin liner, unopened
My personal opinion – actually more a wish – is that racing in ten years’ time will comprise about half the number of meetings it has now and be self-funding with a substantial amount of that funding coming from a re-vitalised Tote via its own Betting Exchange
Manumition from the whip-handed uncaring bookmakers who have the game by the danglers thanks to the Levy is a must
In essence: the game as it is now is unsustainable in anything but the short term
Forget for the meantime this obsession with ‘widening appeal’ and concentrate on keeping the disillusioned die-hard such as myself – and if TRF is anything to go by, many another life-long turfiste – from waving goodbye with a two-fingered salute
IMVVHO
Drone wrote.. the visceral one-day knock about subsidises four and five days of cerebral contemplative engrossing intrigue…
Drone, a true classics graduate, it’s writing like that which makes me yearn for the return of the old-style grammar schools. A credit to your generation.
And dog racing….what exactly is dog racing, other than an excuse for betting. Horses are magnificent animals, races are exciting to watch.
Mick The Miller
Ballyregan Bob
Scurlogue Champ
Westmead Hawk…and that was in five seconds. I had more fun at the Wimbledon Derby in 2006 than I did at Epsom on the same day and I walked out of that meeting with a pocket as thick as a brick.
Come to think of it, I’ve had more fun at Nottingham greyhounds than I have at Nottingham races. Its less po-faced and the animals are as honest as the day is long – unlike many horses who could send the most stoic of monks barking mad – no pun intended.
Greyhounds were once considered a royal breed by the ancient Egyptians and I would love to see one race a cheetah, though, like women, you can’t tame cats.
Long live greyhound racing. Drone – see your point about golf: A complete mystery.
Thank you all for some intriguing posts. Drone especially – your argument for a Tote exchange is compelling.
The thing is – and this is why its such a hard question – its hard to predict what anything will be like in ten or twenty years. You’ve made reference to cricket and T20, not many would have predicted that particular revolution ten years ago. Not many would have predicted the Bolshevik revolution ten years before it happened either.
Saying that racing ‘probably won’t change much’ isn’t a great basis upon which to write an essay, although for what its worth I don’t think it will change all that much. So i’m really left to speculate on what will happen as a result of these RFC initiatives, and what will happen if they are ‘successful’.
I don’t think anyone wants to see the midweek festivals shifted, or a Saturday Gold Cup. Even as a relatively novice racing enthusiast, I can still see the problems with that. And I can’t see how decimalising odds is going to get more to the track either. I know its not the Cheltenhams and Aintrees of the calendar that need to be addressed, its the low quality AW garbage. Drone – can you really see the racing calendar being halved? I know Monmouth in the states is trying that – will be interesting to see the results – but surely the bookies would never let that happen?
Thanks again for all contributions to this very helpful thread!
can you really see the racing calendar being halved? I know Monmouth in the states is trying that – will be interesting to see the results – but surely the bookies would never let that happen?
Reduction by half was, as intimated, a vague wish plucked from thin air.
The bookies would indeed hate it, hence my other wish to be rid of their unhealthy and destructive grip
Give me back my two-meeting-tuesdays of summers long gone: home and away. Concentrates the mind and tickles the fancy doncha know
That at least some reduction in the number of meetings will be necessary strikes me as a given: if not enforced, then forced. This much was near as damnit admitted during the announcement of the latest fixture list which was presented with eyes very much focussed on shoe laces, hands tied behind back and the bookmakers’ cold gun pressed firmly into the nape of the neck
Moreover, not only will a reduction be economically necessary it will surely be welcomed by the majority who follow the sport, be that bettors or spectators.
I’m loath to use the too-popular too-pejorative words ‘dross’ and ‘garbage’ as those nebulous terms are very much in the opinion of the beholder, but can there anyone content with racing’s
surfeit
of the mundane around at present?
The mundane is of course necessary to prop up and feed the special but the distribution should mimic the shape of a tall thin isoceles triangle not a flat squat one
The outcome of the Monmouth Park experiment will indeed be interesting. BHARFC are you watching?
The idea of a Tote Exchange is not mine alone; it’s been suggested by many, here and elsewhere
Do you like cricket? From 1998-2006, the game really was on its back. Who played it? Who thought about it? Who anticipated the matches? Who cared? Nathan, they had no choice whatsoever. They were facing meltdown at every level of participation, bar Test Matches. It was a survival decision. It cost my interest and some traditionalists, but it is hard to argue that they didn’t have to do it.
Somerset despite never winning the County Championship have been going strong since 1882
Look at Football, so much money to be made from the Premiership yet alot of the teams are in financial meltdown, cricket’s three men and a dog were just fine
.The problem which might occur with twenty/20 at the moment is that it doesn’t stop at the end of the domestic season, you now have the top 2 sides going into a champions league with even more riches to be won, teams are now desperate to go far in the comp which could put county’s in a position where they are spending more money on wages to sign or keep the best players in an attempt to win the big prizes. Worcestershire released several top players due to high wage demands and bigger teams paying more money then themselves, some might over spend, if it goes wrong it could be like some of the football teams that are getting into high debts, just a thought.
Gaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026
teams are now desperate to go far in the comp which could put county’s in a position where they are spending more money on wages to sign or keep the best players in an attempt to win the big prizes. Worcestershire released several top players due to high wage demands and bigger teams paying more money then themselves, some might over spend, if it goes wrong it could be like some of the football teams that are getting into high debts, just a thought.
Alec Bedser (died yesterday) was paid £2 a week by Surrey with a £1 winter retainer and after twenty years sterling service was presented with 15 £1 premium bonds
Perhaps it’s such reticence with the folding that enabled the Counties to survive for so many decades with a paying audience comprising those three dozing men and a bored dog
"That’s what he’s supposed to do isn’t it?" was mother Bedser’s reply to enquiring journalists wishing to interview Alec following a multi-wicket haul for England
It’ll all end in tears Nathan, like all other bubbles before
Nothing, it seems, succeeds like excess
Absolute quality Drone , and I am suitably chastened by my over usage of the Dross factor , sadly however its that quality of monotony that keeps the roulette wheel spinning , and drives afficionado’s of the game to deep despair
As pink Floyd used to sing , is there anybody in there !!!
sadly I think not , mediocrity will sustain
enjoyed your last couple of posts immensely
Ricky
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