Sporitng Review. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1891.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume I, Issue 31, 28 February 1891, Page 3

Sporitng Review. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1891.

We have received a circular headed “Auckland Butchers’ Annual Racing Club,” and signed “F. R. Bust, Secretary.” The gist of the circular is complaining that the A.R.C. Committee had declined to pass their programme to enable them'to hold a race meeting in connection wi}h their annual picnic on Takapuna racecourse, and by so doing enable them to have the use of the totalisator, and asking racing clubs to cooperate with them. We, personally, are very glad that the A.R.C. Committee refused to allow them to hold a race meeting. Had they done so, the bakers, grocers, tinsmiths, and perhaps the printers, would like to hold their meetings, with the sporting writers as clerks of the scales, course, and starter, with the editor of the New Zealand Herald, the oldest paper, as judge. All would have been as equally entitled to permission as the butchers. Joking apart, there are too many of these “leather flapping” meetings in Auckland. The totalisator, as now used, is the curse of racing. Not only do genuine racehorse owners feel it, but breeders also. It is driving all the best horses out of the country, and encouraging a lot of low gambling. Its greatest admirers can only admit that it enables clubs to give more added money, but owners would not mind so much about large stakes if they could back their horses to win a fair amount. They are even now, as things go, very heavily handicapped, and few can make racing pay. The butchers certainly score two points in their circular. They say that they offered to give in added money the sum of which is within £5 of the money given at Whitford Park. Still their programme was refused and the other granted. In the case of the Whitford Park Meeting the Committee perhaps could not help themselves. We ourselves fail to see why a meeting is required there. It is an out of the way place, hard to get at, and racing is not carried out strictly to rule. That the A.R.C. Committee do not show enough discrimination there is no gainsaying. They pass many programmes that might be dispensed with, and allow clubs that should be considered defunct to hold their meetings miles away from their district. There are too many little meetings got up by an interested few, which might easily be dispensed with. The second point is contained in Clause No. 7. “The A.R.C. Committee have set their faces against trotting and pony racing, and are endeavouring by all the means in their power to put a stop to it.” . This they never will be able to do. Therefore, the best thing that could be done would be to take these kind of meetings into their own hands, and only allow them to be held on certain courses and under proper supervision, at the same time do away with those meetings that are got up for the benefit of the machine. The Government would do good service if they increased the amount of money to be added to the different races before permission is given for the use of the machine. This, in a great measure, would cure the evil that now exists. «

Lord Dudley has purchased the hunter Mongrel from G. Clements, the trainer, for This is about the highest price ever given for a hunter.