Floyd's Column - What's your story?

I can clearly remember my first visit to a greyhound track.  

It was at Wimbledon. It was a school night and the second round of the Laurels. 

I recently checked out the date to discover it would have been 11 September 1972. 

I was instantly smitten. 

Dad soon had dogs with Phil Rees and a lady who had just taken over the kennel from her father, Norah McEllistrim. They were followed by runners at Ramsgate and Rochester. 

At 13 I went to the Breeders Festival at Northaw. At 14 I was spending every spare minute and weekend working for Aldershot trainer Phil Potter, and at 16 when I should have been doing ‘A levels’, I had left home and was working at GRA’s kennels at Northaw. 

This is not the introduction to a self indulgent ‘This is your Life’ autobiography– but something much more fundamental. 

And dear reader – it absolutely concerns you too. 

Because while Greyhoundracinguk is an increasingly complex organisation, you found your way to this part of it. 

Why? 

This isn’t a novice’s introduction to greyhound racing. 

This isn’t the branch of the organisation for people who have just adopted their first ex-racer and want to know more about the breed. 

Or simply a place to look for punting inspiration (though we do that too). 

This part of the set-up, a spin-off from the defunct Greyhound Star website, is for the people with more than a passing interest in the sport/industry. 

We are interested in the stars, the owners, trainers, track records, breeding, history, politics etc etc. 

We are the purists! 

So from one purist to another – what is your story? 

I’ve been asking that question to quite a few industry friends recently, and discovered some common threads. 

Being introduced by relatives or friends is perhaps the most common. 

‘Dad always loved a bet and used to go to Walthamstow, Hackney, Hinckley, Ashfield . . .and I used to go with him’ 

‘My boss was an owner at Hove and one night he asked if I fancied a night out. I was hooked from then’ 

‘One of my mates was into the dogs and he persuaded another mate to go to Romford at the start of his stag do’ 

‘I got a Saturday job working for a trainer in the village and loved it. . .’ 

Very few of my fellow purists stumbled in off the street to discover greyhound racing. 

And that presents a real problem. 

For a start, there are only 18 ‘streets’ that host a greyhound track and not many of them are near letter boxes. (We used to say ‘chimney pots’ though that expression has dropped out of circulation. Letter boxes are probably next on the endangered list.). 

There are great chunks of the North West without a dog track. By the end of this year, there will only be one track in the South West, and nobody is betting on there being one on the South coast in the longer term. 

(We will soon have two in Wolverhampton though – around three miles apart!!!) 

To think there was a time when South London racegoers could choose Charlton, Wandsworth, Stamford Bridge or Wimbledon. West Londoners might have gone to White City, Wembley, Hendon. In the East there was Clapton, Dagenham, Hackney, West Ham and Walthamstow. (Romford was considered ‘the countryside’). 

We often talk about the alternative entertainment options to greyhound racing, in terms of internet, digital TV, for a generation who no longer leave the house on any evening between Sunday and Thursday. 

Even assuming you could persuade them to venture out, are they likely to drive 80 miles to find a track that only races on one evening meeting per week? 

And then find out that the track isn’t open to paying customers? 

I surely don’t need to explain why this matters. 

Put simply, with every passing generation, there is a significant decrease in the number of people who like to participate in greyhound racing – and THAT is unsustainable. 

So how do you reverse that trend? 

I can’t be the only one who has spoken to a ’30 something’ about greyhound racing and them ask ‘is that still going?’. 

We have almost disappeared from the public consciousness. 

I am probably too old to have all the answers, but I can still make a few observations. 

In my view – you can’t persuade a Millennial that greyhound racing is a great sport until they’ve been properly introduced to it - though I have never then yet met one who hasn’t subsequently enjoyed it – at least to some level. 

‘Number three is the favourite’, ‘the one in the orange jacket will probably lead’. ‘That Bockos Diamond is a champion, just watch him,  he's amazing’. ‘Trap four is 10/1 in the betting. I’ll show you how to have a bet’. 

Now nobody is pretending that any more than a small percentage of these newbies will stick at it. 

Former BGRB CEO Geoffrey Thomas had an interesting theory about conversion rates. 

He suggested that if he took ten ‘young and trendies’ racing for the first time, most would enjoy themselves but only one ‘would really get it’ to a point that they wanted to do it again soon. 

But we kind of know that. 

For all of our whining about greyhound racing not promoting itself, or the locals not being aware of the stadium, they don’t have any problem finding the place on Boxing Day. 

So only one person in ten is a convert – and that is assuming that they have been mentored through their first racecard.  

Clearly we need to attract a bigger audience. 

So two obvious questions remain. 

The first is – can we attract new enthusiasts without 100 strategically located tracks? 

I think the answer is self evident – yes!  

If the Millennials and Gen Z insist on viewing midweek through the prism of a smart TV screen, computer monitor or mobile phone, we can still deliver. 

Put another way, how many Manchester United fans have ever visited Old Trafford? (It’s a long journey from Surrey. Even further from Indonesia.).  

Yet there are still millions of them!

Furthermore, I can give you a fag packet analysis on the strengths and weakness of the Gujarat Titans or the Sunrisers Hyderabad without ever visiting India to watch an IPL cricket match. 

The second question is – what do we deliver? 

You can find the answer to that in other parts of the Greyhoundracinguk habitat. 

Thriving and surviving, in the mysterious world of social media (Youtube, Facebook, Tiktok, WhatsApp, Instagram and God knows how many more), you will find bloggers, vloggers and influencers. 

They replace the old guy who first shared his knowledge of race distances, sectional times and betting with the racing virgin. 

I’m talking about ‘the lads’ who enjoy a punt on footie but would need the likes of Ryan Conneely to explain the value of a ’23.60 Romford’. 

There are influencers who can comfortably flip insights between horse and dog racing. We haven’t even got into poker players looking for some excitement before 11pm. 

Perhaps ‘we’ will release figures showing the response to some of the content currently being distributed by Greyhoundracinguk. 

I think you would be pleasantly shocked by the figures. In some cases, running into hundreds of thousands of engagements. 

The potential audience is global, and for the first time in generations, greyhound racing - through Greyhoundracinguk – is reaching out to them. 

It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick, but maybe in 10 years time, when anyone asks how they first became involved in greyhound racing, 

they will may well point to a Youtube broadcast or Instagram reel as the starting point. 

Someone might even suggest, ‘Back in the day, there was an old fossil called Floyd Amphlett who predicted all of this. 

‘Never heard of him’