MY CALL - WAGERING AGREEMENT SIGNALS A SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN MENTALITY

By David Fowler | Tuesday, July 1, 2014

David Fowler is the principal thoroughbred caller for Radio TAB. David, who is a keen form student and punter, has enjoyed a lifetime involvement in the racing media. His personal blog, ‘My Call’, appears exclusively on HRO.

There is no devil in the detail of the new wagering agreement between Tatts Group and Racing Queensland.

But the masterstroke is achieving a collaboration between the parties, previously unheard of in Queensland racing.

We are witnessing a significant culture change from the “us and them” mentality of yesteryear.

Strong personalities often drive a culture change and there is little doubt Tatts Group CEO Robbie Cooke has played the whip hand here.

Cooke mightn’t be a racing enthusiast or a knowledge box but he is nifty enough in business to know that working with racing administration rather than alongside of them as a stern banker is the way to go.

RQ chairman Kevin Dixon was quick to notice the seismic shift, admitting to me in a Radio TAB interview on Monday that starting discussions were “adversarial”.

He was quick to pounce on the criticism of why Racing Queensland hadn’t pursued the legal case with Tatts Group, instead both parties calling a truce.

“It’s usually not the best idea to take your partners to court,” he said.

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The LNP State Government deserve kudos in the agreement wash-up.

Their sanctioning of the lowering of the tax rates on pari-mutuel and fixed odds betting puts Tatts Group in a far more envious position against the corporates.

Not that the LNP hasn’t been a strong supporters since the get-go. That’s in strong contrast to Labor Governments who either didn’t like or didn’t understand racing and watched from afar.

And we know what happened then.

After all the back slapping, now the real equation is ready to unfold for the three codes of racing in terms of who gets what from the product fee.

It’s becoming fairly clear that a code won’t be locked in for any period of time, rather their performance will be under constant monitoring.

Expect a result in about two months.

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Racing can be a funny game.

For too long to remember we’ve been touting the Brisbane metropolitan trainers’ premiership as a titanic three way struggle between Rob Heathcote, Tony Gollan and Matt Dunn.

But even the tea leaves are reading “T for Tony” as he stretches clear into the last month. It’s all over red rover.

Yet it’s the jockey side of things that might get interesting with Michael Cahill stalling in the lead as Tim Bell and now even Jim Byrne start to close the gap.

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I close off by hoping Aidan Holt hasn’t permanently closed the door on a career in race riding.

I fully appreciate physical and mental anguish prompted what we hope we can look back and call a rash decision.

This is when the “brotherhood” need to come to the party and lend help in whatever way they can.

And Aidan needs to man up and give it another go.

A waste of talent like this just doesn’t seem fair.

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