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We’ve witnessed premature claims of the fall of greyhound racing in NSW, but now are we to see the rise?
The events of the last six months are impossible to condense into a single article, but there will be a time to reflect on it I’m sure. As much as anything else, the record of events of such magnitude need time and distance to be properly understood.
But from an impossible position when NSW Premier Mike Baird announced the ban with many expecting other states to follow suit, within four months popular opinion had dramatically shifted culminating in the overturning of the ban, an almighty voter revolt in the seat of Orange and the resignation of the Deputy Premier.
This leaves the more important question as where to from here? So far as NSW is concerned, there are plenty of reasons for optimism.
The slow but steady movement of punters from the TAB to the corporates has turned into a flood, and the greyhounds are benefiting. In five years the amount of money being invested on greyhound racing through the corporates increased by nearly $300 million, the amount on the TAB just $10 million.
The outdated inter-code agreement that saw greyhound racing subsidise other codes is rapidly becoming irrelevant, and income has shot up by 15 per cent or $7 million.
This makes the first and most pressing issue to ensure that a fair whack of that money gets put into a welfare fund for the benefit of greyhounds themselves. The perennial issue will be to ensure that money is actually spent on the greyhounds rather than siphoned off by those that profess to care but don’t.
But then it has to be acknowledged that power, something few people in greyhound racing would recognise as theirs, has shifted. The voters of Orange have ensured that the current Racing Minister has been stripped of this and the governing body, GRNSW, will surely be overhauled such they begin to serve someone else but themselves.
Geographically the previous hierarchical structures of country, TAB and metropolitan tracks are like a set of inner-city pubs waiting to be renovated. The rural and regional heartlands of greyhound racing stood up when it mattered and for greyhound racing to flourish, the opportunities these areas must be realised.
How this is to happen is not for me, a city-dweller, to dictate, but people in rural and regional areas shouldn’t settle for any less than they deserve.
The era of greyhound racing being subservient to wall-to-wall racing will, by necessity, end next year. There simply aren’t enough greyhounds and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. More income and less expenditure is the plight of greyhound participants and we could all end up wondering why these changes took so long to happen.
The place of greyhound racing in the social fabric of NSW has become apparent to all. The Baird Government was clueless of the breadth of people that were either directly involved in the sport or knew someone closely that was, and in truth it was a secret to some involved in greyhound racing themselves.
The networks that developed in opposition to the ban will now hopefully be directed into the betterment of the sport. Where people set up stalls this year to protest to rally support against the ban, they should return next year to proudly show off their best friends, their current and former racing greyhounds.
And in many ways it is the intangibles of the opposition to the ban that are most important to greyhound racing. It has, by necessity become an open and organised community, people united by a common interest and engaged with the broader community in a way they haven’t been for decades.
The people of greyhound racing have an opportunity to make the sport theirs again, and what better time to do it when there is no Racing Minister or Government-appointed board to screw it up for all concerned.
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