The Corner with Garry Chittick

It is rightfully said there is nothing less endearing than those that dwell on the past, but it is Christmas, a little reminiscing is the norm. Anyway, I would not be dragging up the past if it wasn’t for the prompting I had today.

Occasionally I come across a racing enthusiast who reminds me of my time as Chairman of the NZ Racing Board. I can tell you it was a privilege to accept the responsibility, I was very surprised when the then Racing Minister the late John Falloon asked to meet at Ellerslie, “Do you think you are up to accepting the Board Chairmanship?” he asked. “More importantly I asked, ‘do you?’” and so I was anointed.

The administrative staff shared the austere concrete building in Petone with the TAB. Their role was to generate the income from wagering, ours was to allocate it. Right from the get-go there was not a conflict of interest, but the TAB operated in the belief that we were privileged to have access to their largesse, not many of you will recall the distribution was six monthly meaning clubs had to carry the load if their racing dates were not aligned.

You can imagine this was very difficult, but not as difficult as determining exactly how much we were to be allocated. Now, ‘allocated’ should not have been our position; they had an obligation to make every dollar possible available to support our owners and clubs. It was a comical time – we would be offered an amount, ‘no’, was our response and so the negotiations would start.

Now think about it, their margin had nowhere else to go. You may well ask, wasn’t it obvious? Surely their bottom line was transparent. Well, by the time they threw in the maximum depreciation they could allocate to various accounts determining the end result was a battle that should never have happened.

The two Chief Executives were incompatible, in the same building, so my first challenge was to overcome this stupidity. I insisted that the TAB Chief Executive attended our Board meeting for at least one hour, as you would realise this was a very positive change. There was in place a cross-code occasional meeting, this group of the Chairperson and Chief Executives of the three Codes, Racing and TAB Boards was reactivated to the point of possibly annoying their respective Boards with a large number of the issues sorted before their chance to deliberate.

So, what does this matter? It probably doesn’t, but even now at the end of the day running our business is about providing enough resources to retain ownership. How much in, how much out.

Has this changed? Well yes and no. Then it was all ours, Winston eliminated betting duties and is now about Geo-Blocking, what’s different is we are now committed to sharing. We are all excited currently with the injection beyond the bottom line of stake funding. We should be grateful that Entain are apparently providing more than they are receiving. My guess is this will rightly need to change or why would they stay. Eventually, we will look on and say good on them they are entitled to share the margin or, bugger it they are no better than we were.

If they do turn it around, we should take a good look at our past, including me, and ask why couldn’t we have created similar results.

Regretfully my tenure was focused on rationalisation, my Board supported by the Codes held the view we were supporting too many venues, our method of attempted change was to make clubs survive on income they generated. I take my hat off to the clubs of NZ, none succumbed, or none saw the sense we thought we saw.

Clubs are again facing the squeeze, I can’t disagree, however, the need to retain regional involvement must be acknowledged.

No breeders, no horses, no owners, no need.