MEN WE MEET

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 936, 13 February 1908, Page 7

MEN WE MEET

NO. 2 MR. FRED YONGE.

As the Otahuhu Trotting Club is holding the summer meeting this week at Alexandra Park, a figure we are sure to meet out Epsom way is Mr. Fred. Yonge, the energetic and courteous secretary. This is not flattery, not by a long chalk, for the genial Freddy is a slap-up secretary, a diamond of the first water, as it were, in this department. And don’t sportsmen just know’ it, too. Thus we find Fred —everybody calls him Fred, as the Mister seems too formal to suit the • case —is in demand as secretary to all and sundry. First and foremost he rules the roost at the Otahuhu Trotting Club’s office, and the club has fairly cake-walked ahead since he commenced business. Then he looks after the Papakura Racing Club —result: record nominations and good meetings. Again, there is the Otahuhu Racing Club, which has never done so well since he took up the reins of office. The Boxing Association and a few other institutions of the kind have also put Fred in the secretary’s chair, and no doubt more could be accommodated. Indeed, the subject of our notice might be labelled general secretary for everything. There must be some reason for this run on his services. Probably, apart from good business ability, it is the fact that he is a master ,>of the suaviter in modo fashion of getting along. With a cheerful smile for everyone, Freddy has droves of friends and never an enemy. A real good sort himself, he has made himself popular with everyone, and on every racecourse round Auckland his is a most familiar figure. Particu-

larly is he in evidence at Ellerslie, Takapuna and elsewhere, when it is time for the horses to go to the post, and when the witching hour arrives for the inner man to be refreshed, for as a dispenser of luncheon tickets he is much in demand. What the Otahuhu Club’s secretary’s age is it is difficult to say, because when he puts his hat on he is immediately ten years younger, and as the man'Yonge prefers the younger man, he generally keeps it on. Weight of office work does not seem to do much harm, for Fred is beginning to show traces of superfluous avoirdupois.. No one to look at him now would think that F.Y, was one of our crack amateur horsemen in days gone by, yet so it was. It is just, twenty years ago since he piloted Mr. T. Stephen’s Hawthorn to victory with list 91b in the saddle in the Pakuranga Hunt Club Cup. Twenty years! How time flies, to be sure. He was in the saddle when Larry won the Polo Cup, and he also annexed the Hunters’ Flat Race at the A.R.C. spring meeting on Raglan. Being quite a ladies’ man, it was only fitting that he should win the Ladies’ Bracelet at the A.R.C. Winter Meeting on Leorina. At the agricultural shows he was also a conspicuous figure in the ring, winning several prizes for efficiency over fences.' ‘ Once a horseman always a horseman,’ and Mr. Yonge still can show some of the newer riders how to- sit a horse, but tide trim figure in the natty colours is gone for ever. Well, well, we still have our Freddy with us. in the enclosure, and there we all know him as one of the very best of the jostling throng with whom we rub shoulders at all the meetings.