"I just bought 3 hours of fun"

"I just bought 3 hours of fun". This is one of the most relevant, profound things I have heard on a racetrack this year. More on this later.

I lived in Liverpool for the first 33 years of my life. From the age of 5 (in 1973) until we had our first child I spent most of my waking life and money watching Liverpool play football, including commuting 5 hours each way from Scotland every other week. When our first born arrived I stopped instantly. This was 2007. I said I wouldn't go back until I could take him, even though I still had a season ticket. I eventually got 2 tickets together in January 2020, just before Covid. Why am I telling you this?

Football in the 70s and 80s was pretty much exclusively for hardcore fans. You ate, slept and breathed football, and so did most of the crowd. You got legged every other week at away grounds after getting kept in half an hour after the match, presumably just to let the nutters get round to the away end exit gates. You didn't dream of wearing a Liverpool top or scarf at an away ground and I'm sure Anfield was much the same for visiting fans. Again, why am I telling you this?

When I went, after a 13 year hiatus in 2020, things had changed. Dramatically. There were still a core of hardcore fans but you had the tourists, the once in a lifetime trippers from Tokyo or Oslo. There was a band on a stage by The Kop playing "Sit Down" but with Egyptian Kings. You could even get passable food inside. I suspect my 20 something self would've despised it, but my 50 something self is more tolerant. Football isn't just for the obsessives any more. It's also for the selfie crowd from Stockholm, Singapore or South Africa. So why, for God's sake, why am I telling you this?

It was student day at Musselburgh on Sunday. Check back through my blogs; I like student days. It may look like a set of extras from Peaky Blinders and you won't have seen this much tweed unless you've recently taken a day trip to Harris. They made up approximately 50% of the crowd today. And what an unfailingly polite, lovely bunch they were. Barely any of them knew the front end of a horse from the back but that didn't matter to them or, frankly, to us. Go to virtually any Saturday, when the crowds actually attend, and you'll find 95% of the crowd have the same level of racing knowledge, though rather than students, they may be stag dos, hen dos, birthday bashes or frazzled parents with kids dressed up as Batman. I didn't go racing in the 80s but I'd imagine there are parallels you can draw with football. Racing crowds, like it or loathe it, are not the same as they were 30-40 years ago. The purists are in the minority, the trippers are in the ascendency. To think, suggest, hope otherwise is, to paraphrase Blackadder, like a broken pencil... pointless. These students are the racegoers of tomorrow, like it or not- personally I like it.

So, on Sunday, we had a student guy who won 40 quid in the last. He said to me he had broken even on the day. I made some vaguely encouraging noises. He said to me "I've had an absolutely brilliant day- I've just bought 3 hours of fun". Wow. I've been moaning about premierisation, 6 race cards and, to some extent, intrusive off course affordability checks for months. I've tried to present logical arguments and rationale and this guy has nailed it in one, single, sentence.

So, to the BHA, the parliamentarians behind the white paper and the Gambling Commission, please, for the love of God, open yourself a Word document, get the biggest font you can fit on a page and type the words "I'VE JUST BOUGHT MYSELF 3 HOURS OF FUN", get your laminator out, laminate it and stick it on the wall in your conference room. This is, for good or for ill, your bog standard punter. This is the person you should be considering in every decision you make.

1) This guy shouldn't have to send their life history in, even if they don't win 40 quid in the last- this is their accepted price of a days entertainment, just like going to the pictures, going to the theatre or having a steak and chips.

2) This guy shouldn't have to travel a million miles on a Saturday to find a "premier" meeting when, frankly, this person doesn't care about the standard of the horse on show. This guy wants to rock up to his local track, have an acceptable for him, level of stake that he is prepared to lose and BUY HIMSELF 3 HOURS OF FUN.

3) This guy shouldn't have to set his alarm at an ungodly hour on a Saturday morning just because his nearest track is Thirsk, or Hexham, or Newton Abbot, or Perth who are being forced to start at 10am. This guy just wants his 3 hours of fun and, at this precise moment, he wants it by going racing because he's never been before and now, after today, he already loves it.

And you're all doing your damnedest to deny him that. And guess what? If you make it almost impossible to have his 3 hours of fun racing, he'll go and get it somewhere else that isn't racing. And the local go karting track, or cinema, or footy ground, or (in my particular passion) board game club will get his patronage and racing will be something, in 20 years time, he remembers doing once and wonders why he never did it again. But we know why, don't we? We know why and we stood by and let it happen. Shame on us.

Finally, I get the argument regarding prize money. I see a lot of stuff on social media saying "if they don't put the prize money up, they don't deserve the Saturday meetings".

Cheltenham Gold Cup Tattersalls ticket £82 and likely to be higher nearer the event.

Hexham's October Saturday meeting ticket £12

It's horses for courses. Literally and metaphorically. It's the equivalent of telling Forest Green they've got to kick off at 10am because Manchester United are on at 3 o'clock.

Some folk want to watch Forest Green, some Manchester United in the same way that some folk are happy to pay 7 times as much to watch the pinnacle of National Hunt racing and some people want a bloody good day out at a pretty track, at a price they can afford, cheering in their £2.50 each way selection.

I have just read that the fixture list for next year is delayed again. It's not too late. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Don't kill the grass roots. Don't be Beeching, or the small, often vibrant racetracks of today will be the abandoned, derelict, unused overgrown rural train stations of yesteryear.