THE RACING CALENDAR QUESTION.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume VI, Issue 280, 5 December 1895, Page 10

THE RACING CALENDAR QUESTION.

FROM A COUNTRY STANDPOINT. To the Editor. Sir, —1 quite agree with the remarks made in your leading articles, and also with those of your correspondent, “ Country Sport,” with regard to the Official Calendar job. I look on this as simply an iniquitous tax on our country clubs if it is enforced. I would like, however, to point out to secretaries of country clubs that until the A.R.C. give formal notice that the Sporting Review is no longer the Official Calendar that paper must be considered as the Official Calendar for the province. Rule 11 has not yet been rescinded or altered, which leaves it in the power of the Jockey Club to appoint the Calendar. And this is another instance of the slip-slop way in which the Conference does its business. There is no shadow of doubt that the motion appointing the Referee the Official Calendar has not been carried according to Bule 193 (ii.). The majority should have been 21, as the A. R. C. were represented with three votes, but did not vote, making 28 votes present, and the rule says three-fourths of the altot voting power present. At the same time, the want of one complete Official Calendar for the publication of disqualifications, unpaid forfeit list, etc., is apparent. At present a racing man has to purccase some five or six calendars to know who is in these lists. How much better to have one paper that publishes the complete lists for the whole colony. This might be remedied by making each official calendar publish at the commencement and end of each racing season a complete list of disqualifications, unpaid forfeit lists, trainers’ and jockeys’ licenses, etc., for the whole colony, copied from the official calendars of each metropolitan club. Another way would be to make one paper the Official Calendar for the colony, and the local calendar should be used for the advertisements of meetings. There would then be t-wo official calendars, one appointed as now by each metropolitan club for advertisements and local information, the other a colonial calendar for the insertion of matters affecting racing men throughout the colony. Such an arrangement as this would prevent the anomaly of seeing, as we now see, two names published in the unpaid forfeit list in the Weekly Press by the A.R.C., while in their own official calendar no forfeit list appears. —I am, yours faithfully, Shaftesbury, Dec. 2. W. H. Herbies.

To the Editor.

Sir, —I was very pleased to read the tone of your leader in last week’s Review re the Official Calendar of the colony, find I must say I agree with it in tofo. The matter stands simply thus. As a member of a country club, which owing to the vagaries of the Conference last year, has had to spend all its accumulated funds and borrow in addition nearly £2QO to erect a new erandstand and obtain a new racecourse, 1 decidedly object to see the said club compelled to advertise in a paper and charged almost a prohibitive price, viz., 4s per' inch, the said paper being further published at the hit'll price of 6d. In the district I reside in the Sporting Review has ten times the circulation of the Referee, and furthermore, no local news of any kind appears in the latter’s columns, nor has done since Mr George Slater severed his. connection with the Referee. The. only account of* anjS. local meeting is culled f»*om

the local papers in the district between New Plymouth and Wellington, and generally appearsa fortnight or three weeks after such races have eventuated. Surely, Sir, you can suggest someway out of this serious difficulty; and trust you will persevere in the matter till we are absolved from the annoyance of having to subscribe to an expensive paper wdiich devotes no space to our local races, and in addition to pay 4s an inch for our advertisements. I think a separate controlling body for the North and South Island would solve the difficulty at once, and enable us to have an official organ of our own choice, and not, as at present, compelled to wait three weeks before we can peruse an account of what interests us locally. The voluminous account of the Canterbury races may be interesting to Southern people, but to me it appears nauseating.—Yours, etc., Freedom. Lepperton, Nov. 20th.

A CHRISTCHURCH OPINION.

The Spectator, a weekly journal published in, Christchurch, has the following in its last issue respecting the attempt to give the Weekly Press a monopoly of the various racing calendars in New Zealand : —“ The Racing Conference decided that the Official Calendar should be published in the Weekly Press and Referee, the proprietors of that paper undertaking to devote the first two pages of the Referee to publishing the New Zealand Racing Calendar ‘ free of cost.’ This seems at first sight very magnanimous ; but it is also provided that all clubs using the totalisator must advertise their meetings in full at least once in the Referee at the rate of ‘ four shillings per inch.’ This is very nice indeeed for the proprietors of the Racing Calendar; but why on earth the delegates passed such a thing is beyond our comprehension. To say nothing about the injustice to other sporting journals, which are’quite as good advertising mediums as the Referee what earthly benefit can be gained by clubs in far North and South advertising in the official organ. The Conference has forced . clubs to advertise in the Referee, and they must also advertise in journals circulating locally if ow-ners are to be notified, otherwise the latter will feel compelled to purchase the Referee, whether they like it or not. Suppose, for instance, an Auckland paper had been appointed the official organ.. Fancy the Amuri, Kaikoura, and Southland clubs being obliged to advertise in it. It would be simply throwing money away, and would do no more good than it will under the present rule for the Thames and Southland clubs to advertise in the Referee. Why not allow each metropolitan club to appoint its own official organ as in the past ? Then there would be some degree of justice to owners and also to the sporting journals published in the various centres. Wewonder what paper would not devote two pages free of cost if it could obtain all the racing advertisements in the colonv at 4s an inch.”