Yes English Open Class = Irish A2. That Wimbledon RM is some tool, no 480m race on Juvenile night, then he relents only to start worrying about not getting a sponsor. FFS this forum could have sponsored a race there that night without any difficulty. They are such fatalists over there itâs ridiculous. Theyâve a real âcanât doâ attitude to everything.
Did you see the prize money for the open 480 they are putting on⌠a Whopping 600 to the winner.
The Free Kick Ivitation race would have been a good one⌠we could have gotten your bitch inâŚ
Myself and one of the lads were thinking of sponsoring a few races at Walthamstow last year, you could sponsor a race for 80 brick. I wanted to go with the âDeclan is a twatâ A5, but Dec wouldnât go for it.
For a monkey you could probably sponsor a stake to with a final on Derby night down the 'DonâŚ
The âBarnfield on Air would only make A2 in shelbourne Stakeâ perhaps
Where is that fooker lately? The real âBarneyâ was the Hee Haw variety. 
Just looking at the Nottingham dogs site you can sponsor a graded race for 75 quid. Or an open for 200. Tht even includes the trophy and the whole lot. I think TFK should sponsor a BAGS race and see whether traffic is affected on here. Iâm sure hits by degenerate gamblers would skyrocket.
They would have the vBookie straight up in front of IBAS, palpable error could go an fook !!
[quote=âSHANNONSIDER**â]Where is that fooker lately? The real âBarneyâ was the Hee Haw variety. 
[/quote]
Now, that was a dog
SS**, i know you have previously done it, but how do I go about watching tonights racing from Shelbourne live on the web. I want to see a bitch running. Do I need a tote account or something ?
HB, yeah you just set up an account on IGB and have a fiver on the race you want to see or 20 quid will get you the whole card. Make sure you keep clicking and refreshing, but you should get a count down to the next race, it will pop up then when the dogs are just finished parading.
Sound. I have an IGB account⌠thought i would have to open a tote account as well⌠thats the job so ! Thanks.
Young bitch running tonight, not backing her as 3 monkies have gone west already due to tumbles. Hoping to get it back in a stake in a while, will PM you the details when she is due to win.
Sound. Iâm too mean to get Sky Sports so Iâm watching Swindon on the live feed, had to have a âŹ6 Tote bet with Bluesq to watch it so had âŹ6 place Flying Winner, should get that back⌠
I usually trade the betting without markets, just got gelded there with Droopys Bocelli, the fcuker pinged out.
[quote=âSHANNONSIDER**â]Sound. Iâm too mean to get Sky Sports so Iâm watching Swindon on the live feed, had to have a 6 Tote bet with Bluesq to watch it so had 6 place Flying Winner, should get that backâŚ
[/quote]
Just about got the 6 back !!
Full Bloom was some price.
The bitch won.
If Iâd known sheâd be 2/5 to be placed Iâd have steamed in though!! Hard to peg back that course specialist around there.
7/4 College Causeway to beat all the english challengers around the derby trip at the Don⌠Ninja Jamie is the only other genuine derby dog in the race. Free money me thinks.
Oi Oi !
Good article on the Dog Findlay in yesterdayâs Times.
Harry Findlayâs risky business
Harry Findlay, co-owner of Denman, has known how to back the right horse for years David Walsh
On Champions League evenings, Harry Findlay will be in the office at his home in rural Wiltshire; one big screen, four smaller ones, eyes dancing from game to game, mind calculating the odds. Like you and I, he has opinions on every question. The difference is he backs them. If he gets it right he continues to gamble in the professional league. If he doesnât, heâs a mug.
His place is worth more than 2m and when the runners for the Cheltenham Gold Cup go to post 12 days from now, the horse he owns with Paul Barber, Denman, will be trying to win the race for a second year. Another of his horses, Big Fella Thanks, is one of the fancies for next monthâs Grand National and when you add all the horses he owns or part-owns, the number rises to 80.
To pay the training fees and keep him living in the style to which he has become addicted, he has to keep backing winners. Which explains why he has been a little on edge these past few months. Findlayâs been having a bad run. One losing week after another, tens of thousands that become a couple of hundred grand and no knowing where itâs going to end. On good days he says all the money is just chips to play the game of life. These days, he talks to the bank manager.
On this Wednesday evening, not only the money is bugging him. He and his betting mate, Glen Gill, have been chasing a Tote 7 accumulator pot for weeks, itâs now risen to 1.4m, they invested maybe 300,000, and theyâre still Captain Ahab with no sign of Moby Dick. Every day they spend five or six hours doing their homework; boring, tedious poring over horse races that otherwise wouldnât matter, 11 times theyâve got six of the seven but they havenât nailed it.
âIn the nuthouse itâs got me,â says Findlay and heâs had enough. This evening theyâre going to eat at a respectable hour, miss the first half of the football and remind themselves there is more to life than the next bet. Thereâs Harry himself, Glen Gill, young Bradley Montague whom Harry found in Australia many years ago, Harryâs friend Eamonn Wilmott and theyâre sitting at a quiet table at the Amici restaurant in nearby Bradford-on-Avon.
They eat pasta, drink wine, talk sport. Seve Ballesteros, Sir Alex Fer-guson, Tiger Woods, Diego Maradona and eventually they get round to the eveningâs football. Harry canât have Italian teams in this Champions League and heâs had a good bet on Chelsea to beat Juventus. He also backed Liverpool to get a nil-nil at the Bernabeu and leaving the restaurant, heâs feeling okay - with half an hour left, Chelsea are still leading and itâs goalless in Madrid.
He then gets a text from a friend: âHope you were on!â He knows straight away and heâs horrified. A friend told him about a horse that wouldnât get beat and Findlay knew the information was right. Heâd checked the horse, form was good enough, starting price would be around 3/1 and Harry decided to have 30,000 on the horse. The horse bolted in. The pasta he has just eaten, the conversation he has just enjoyed, has cost him 90,000. âI hate unprofessionalism,â he screams through the darkness of Bradford-on-Avon and Glen and Brad and Eamonn all feel it. How can you be a professional gambler and forget to back a certainty?
He sits in front of the screen in his office, tuned in to Betfairâs prices, his hand resting on the mouse that waits for the first crump of value. Another friend, David, turns up with cups of tea and all the while an imperious old greyhound lies half-asleep in his bed beneath the screen. After missing the 3/1 winner, Harry knows the day canât be salvaged. Heâs recently heard a line from a poem that he liked: âNo worse, there is none,â meaning no matter how bad things are, they can get worse.
And they do. Chelsea hold on but he needs the nil-nil in Madrid. How do you know the gods are taking the mick? Yossi Benayoun heads the goal that kills you. Then the following dayâs Tote 7 races appear on Harryâs screen. âF****** Thurles,â he shouts, bemoaning the choice of an unpredictable race in Ireland inserted to mess up the heads of experts like Harry. Temporarily, it has succeeded. It is now 20 minutes after eleven and Harry tosses you a towel, says itâs time for a steam bath. He says that in this life you can roll over and die or you can get the bad stuff out, then take a cold shower and start again. And, like there is no choice, you begin to undress.
HIS parents were both nurses from Glasgow, Rangers supporters and though they left Scotland when Harry was five, heâs never forgotten how much his mum loved Willie Henderson. His dad has died but his mum is very much around. The thing Harry often remembers, and it makes him emotional when he says it, is that he was fifteen and a half before he realised his parents had no money. When platform shoes came out, he got them; flared pants, had them too. His dad came home one day with football boots for him: Adidas Santiago.
Not that it was all smoothness and light. When he was 16, his mum tried to tell him he had to face his responsibilities. âShe thought everyone should have a job and pay their stamp. I used to say, âMum, what is a stamp? If Iâm alive when Iâm 65, I will be as happy as any man in the world, I will not give a damn if Iâm penniless drunk or sleeping in a bus shelter. I will just be happy to be alive at 65 but donât expect me to put money away every week for something 50 years down the line. This stamp thing, I ainât having it, Iâm sorry mum, I ainât having it.â
âI got a job walking greyhounds for eighteen quid a week and all I wanted to do was walk greyhounds. In a way, itâs all I still want to do.â
With greyhounds you end up going to the dogs; literally most of the time, occasionally metaphorically. Harry did both. At the dogs, he met some good people who did some bad things and some bad people who did very bad things. At 18, Harry got caught up in the wrongdoing, a small link in the chain that turned stolen goods into cash. Eventually he used credit cards that werenât his and at the age of 20, he spent 11 months in prison.
He laments that when newspapers try to summarise the story of his life, undue attention is focused on his prison time. What he did was wrong, but it was, he says, a crime that hurt banks, not individuals.
He wants to move on but even he canât resist it, thereâs one little point he wants to make about his short journey on the wild side. âYou know the film, Catch Me If You Can,â he says, âabout the guy who committed the credit card fraud, supposed to be a true story and the geezer Leonardo DiCaprio called it the greatest story heâd ever heard, and thatâs why he took the part. F****** hell, thatâs just embarrassing. I mean this conman dresses up as an airline pilot, has his way with a lot of birds, does the credit card bit, gets nicked and then becomes a grass for the cops.
âI get a few credit cards, I disappear and I become a wine expert while attending all the European sports events. Whatâs his story compared to mine? The only thing our stories had in common was that, in the end, we both wanted to be nicked. Like me he wanted to bring an end to all of the lies.â
We come back to his office after the steam bath. Pictures hang from his walls, most of horses he has owned or backed. He says he doesnât think Denman can win this year because he hasnât been himself. But winning last yearâs Gold Cup, that must have been the greatest of all his sporting moments. He laughs and shakes his head.
âYou see that old greyhound lying down there, beneath the big screen, in human years he is 85 now and if I had 100 Denmans and 100 Gold Cups, they could not mean a fraction of what that dog means to me.â So Harry Findlay begins to tell the story of Big Fella Thanks, which is the story of his sporting life.
It goes back to the National Coursing Championships at Clonmel in Co Tipperary 11 years ago. Findlay owned a brilliant bitch named after his daughter, Jadeâs Dilemma. It was 7/1 on to win the Oaks final, they had booked a hotel for the celebration but Jadeâs Dilemma got beaten in a desperately tight finish. Harry owned the dog in partnership with Michael âCurleyâ OâDriscoll from Co Cork, whose brother Denis trained the bitch. They called off the party, Curley was due to travel home with two Skibbereen friends, the former Cork football star Mick McCarthy and his best friend, Jack Pat Collins. But Curley decided he wanted a drink before travelling, his two mates wanted to eat. They dropped him at a pub, travelled on to the next roundabout, were involved in a crash and both were killed. Harry knew them well, understood how loved they were in Skibbereen and wondered if he could find a dog for Denis OâDriscoll to train, one that would win the National Coursing Derby. If he did, it would be a tribute to the memory of the two lads.
He heard of a great big white dog in the north and asked his Derry friend, Martin McDaid, to make inquiries. Anthony OâConnell, from Newry, owned the dog and wasnât inclined to sell. McDaid told him the story of what happened in Clonmel.
What he said to McDaid was that if ever he did sell, Findlay would be given the chance to buy him. âI rung Anthony,â says Harry, âtold him what had happened to Mick and Jack Pat travelling home from Clonmel and what it would mean to Skibbereen to have the Derby winner trained by Denis OâDriscoll.â Nineteen thousand was what OâConnell wanted for the greyhound. Harry had his chance. âI lived in Sheffield at the time, my bank was in Chester-field and I had flight booked to Australia that left in 36 hours. So off I went, got the money, got to Ireland, drove to Newry and bought Big Fella Thanks.â He was 4-1 ante-post favourite for the Irish Coursing Derby four months away but by the day of the final, against just one other dog, you could still back him at 3-1. His opponent, Toy Razor, was 1-4 and considered unbeatable.
Harry Findlay never felt as he did that afternoon. âBefore the semis, I just broke down. I went behind the stand, cried a little and then threw up. I donât believe in God or religion but before the final, which I didnât think Big Fella could win, I looked up at the clouds and thought, âIf thereâs anyone up there, if there is anything you can do to let Big Fella win, please, please do itâ.â
It was the last coursing Derby of the 20th century and, as Harry Findlay tells it, the greatest race of the century. First Big Fella got his nose in front, then Toy Razorâs speed got him into the lead, Big Fella got back to him and stretched a half-length in front, Toy Razor responded and surged past his rival, a long neck in front. Then the most extraordinary thing happened, Big Fella Thanks found something more and accelerated again. It all happened in seconds. Seventeen thousand people watched, many had tears, and when Harry and his wife, Kay, drove into Skibbereen the next evening, bonfires blazed outside the town. Big Fella Thanks went on to win 31 consecutive races and when he retired, Harry brought the dog back to England and made a bed for him in his office.
Heâs old now, Big Fella, he has cancerous tumors all over his body and when he got an awful virus six months ago, Harry was sure the dog was gone. On the night he expected him to go, Harry stayed with him. At 1am, Harry went to make a cup of tea. On his return, Big Fella wasnât there. Harry woke Kay. They knew the dog had gone outside to find somewhere quiet to die. âWeâve got to find him,â Kay said. They woke Bradley and the three of them went into the pitch dark. Bradley found Big Fella in a little cave, behind bushes at the side of the house.
They dragged him out and lifted him onto an old mattress in the warm boot room. The next morning there was blood everywhere, the fever had raged through the night but, remarkably, the dog was still alive. He recovered and now heâs back in the office, listening to Harry forever telling him heâs a legend.
IT IS Thursday morning and like every other day, it begins with Harry taking Big Fella for his walk. Of course, it is more than that because this greyhound reminds Harry of what it is about life that he loves. Two years ago, his friend Paul Barber called and told him he had found a horse worthy of being named after the dog. Big Fella Thanks, the equine bearer of a great name, is many peopleâs idea of this yearâs Aintree Grand National winner.
After his morning saunter, Harry is ready for the hours of homework and the choices he and Gill will make to try to win that Tote 7 pool. He calls late on Thursday. âGot it,â he says, triumphantly. âNine winning tickets in the Tote 7 and we had three of them. Wins us 360 grand, weâre back on an even keel.â
More chips with which to play the game of life.
Harry steers clear of rugby after All Blacks woe
On an October evening in 2007, Harry Findlay took a train from Bath to Cardiff, met some friends and settled to watch New Zealand play France in the quarter-final of the Rugby World Cup. Findlay believed the All Blacks would win the match and go on to win the World Cup. In fact, he was convinced of it and had told everyone they could bet what they liked on the Kiwis. He backed them to the tune of 2.7m.
âI thought Dan Carter was a god,â says Findlay, âthe dimension that made them unbeatable. But he had an injury, he carried it into the game, he wasnât himself and then his replacement got injured. The press and the public are too quick to label people bottlers or chokers, I donât believe the All Blacks choked. They were victims of circumstances and bad luck. Two forward passes, I still canât believe the touch judge didnât pick up the second one.â
He travelled back on the train that evening, a large sardine packed into a carriage teeming with triumphant Frenchmen. It wasnât his best train ride. âThe people I felt sorriest for were those Iâd convinced to back New Zealand, people whoâd had twenty, or two hundred or two grand on them. I heard that one of the All Blacks talked about the stench of decay and death in their changing room. I would rather have been in that dressing room sulking with them than sitting on that train with those French p***heads.
âFundamentally, I believe I was right in my assessment of the All Blacks but it didnât work out and I will never again bet on rugby because I could never fancy a team as much as I fancied that New Zealand side.â
[quote=âHangBlaaâ]7/4 College Causeway to beat all the english challengers around the derby trip at the Don⌠Ninja Jamie is the only other genuine derby dog in the race. Free money me thinks.
Oi Oi ![/quote]
Free money sounds great⌠just one questionâŚwhen and where?
Fuckâs sake isnât this the sly little thread with tips and nods to eachother and everything and the rest of us not involved. Iâd echo Juhyâs call for a full and frank disclosure of how to accumulate some of this free money.
On another note sponsoring a race in the UK sounds like a great idea.
My tip for free money is on a race called teh Emily Wood memorial invitaion race to be run around Wimbledon tomorrow night. They dog that I am predicting a comfortable win for is Irish raider, College Causway who will be housed in Trap 5. His price is 7/4. The bet can be found under the Greyhound Cups section of PaddyPower.com. It is also available on plenty of other betting websites.
Clear as crystal Hangblaa. One thing, Maybe tell the dog next timeâŚ
Club faces 4m bill in land row
Things arenât looking good for the Coursing Club. Any idea what this will mean?
By MICHAEL BRENNAN and BARRY DUGGAN
Thursday March 05 2009
THE Irish Coursing Club (ICC) is facing a bill of up to 4m after losing a legal action brought over a land deal which was scuppered following a bitter internal row.
As the club is an unincorporated association, its members could be left personally liable for the bill â or forced to sell off some of its valuable property portfolio.
Greenband Investments took the case after the ICC withdrew from an agreement last year to sell a ânarrow strip of landâ used as a roadway beside its premises in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, for 100,000.
The ICCâs auctioneer wrote a letter in March 2008 confirming the sale of the land, but the club then withdrew the following month and returned Greenbandâs deposit.
Loss
During the case, the developer revealed that it had suffered a âsignificant lossâ by having to make alternative arrangements. It wanted the land to provide a goods entrance for its Marks & Spencer shopping development on the nearby âShowgroundsâ. It also wanted to use it to install a sewage pipe on the site, while allowing the club to retain its right of way.
But due to the collapse of the deal, it had to buy an alternative piece of land at a cost of 4m.
The Commercial Court has now ruled that Greenband was entitled to âspecific performanceâ of its contract with the club. It warned that the developerâs claim âis a very substantial one, running into a significant number of millions of poundsâ. The legal costs of the case for both sides are estimated at more than 500,000.