My 2006 published Justracing book (pictured) consisted of 606 pages. I sincerely hope I didn't come across as a "complete fool in a lot of your articles" as Rob Heathcote suggests I do. My apologies if I did.

In terms of Justracing, which started in 1997, it is true that for a period of many years it was a financial burden on my wife and myself. Amid a torrent of demeaning emails, death threats, my car being vandalised at an Eagle Farm meeting, presumably over an article I'd written - and my wife being emotionally distressed and begging me not to continue with the project, I stood back and smelled the roses and made the decision to continue my mission which was “to do something constructive for the racing industry” and to “keep the bastards honest.”

I am very proud of where my hard work and never taking my eye off the ball has taken the website. Today my Sectional Times service has clients in six countries who bet via the wonder of the Internet - and Justracing has large clients, the likes of Unitab, Racing Queensland and Betfair, as well as thoroughbred and harness studs who have been with me for years. I respect the fact that none of those entities have no persuation over what gets written here. I can bag Unitab in an article tomorrow and they don't suddenly throw their toys out of the cot and say we aren't going to advertise with you any more. Love him or hate him, I could pen an article about Racing Queensland boss Bob Bentley tomorrow morning also, but he would never issue a directive that "we will advertise with everyone but Justracing". On that subject whilst I'm on it, I may as well clear up the "Phil Purser and Bob Bentley are mates" garbage that does the rounds from time to time - and advise that we would speak to each other, via any method you can name - phone, email or in person - about once a year if we were lucky and that would generally be at a race meeting. If I write a "negative" story about the thoroughbred breeding industry, Jeff Kruger, Gary Turkington, Paul Burns or Noel Denning who all advertise with me and consign yearlings to most Queensland sales, don't suddenly ring me and ask me to desist, as whilst in a perfect world all stories would be positive, the facts and realities are that we live in a far from perfect world and there will be negative stories in abundance, from all walks of life, all over the joint. Ask yourself do newspapers put the "negative" story and allied photo of the plane crash that killed 200 on their front page, or do they put the story of the little old lady in the nursing home who just turned 100 and has amnesia on the front page? When the television news comes on at 6pm at night is the lead story a "negative" story with dramatic pictures, such as the car wrapped around a tree that killed six drunken teenagers, or is it of little Johnny's first day at school? You see media outlets don't ever have to go looking for negative stories - they just occur in abundance daily - and rightly or wrongly racing is no different.

Today Justracing remains the only racing entity in Australia that advertises racing across any of its three codes, via highway billboards. Last year I outlaid a healthy five figure sum for my own billboard on a privately owned property at Hatton Vale between Ipswich and Toowoomba. Any racing entity from a race club, to a person with a racing business, is welcome to contact me to lease it. Justracing also has billboards on other major Queensland highways and has just signed a two-year lease on a Pacific Highway billboard in New South Wales following my recent trip to the Grafton Carnival. It would seem controlling bodies across the various codes and race clubs detest advertising their product. That seems awfully strange to me when big corporations as diverse as McDonalds, Telstra and Coca Cola see advertising their product as a necessary part of running a "successful" business.

Articles I pen are often reproduced in magazines such as the (now) Racing Queensland Magazine, or in Practical Punting. The most recent article published in the Racing Queensland Magazine was my “research” (which I do poorly apparently) into the life to date of four of Queensland’s apprentices – Alisha Taylor, Kazuki Mizobe, Renee Hinricks and Kayla Cross. I drove 1500-kilometres round trip at my own expense to do those stories to help the kids out, because no one else seems to bother profiling our young jockeys of tomorrow. There are also racing stories on the way to Rockhampton at tracks like Gympie and Bundaberg, but mainstream journalists treat those places like they are towns in Kazakhstan or somewhere, for if you read any of the South East Queensland newspapers, the axis of the globe revolves around about three jockeys, and four trainers. I just don’t subscribe to that theory, as every “top” jockey I’ve ever seen can easily slaughter a racehorse, whilst most “top” trainers can’t get a horse to run two races alike. Gee I've found a lot of battlers in racing have wonderful stories to tell, yet no one ever gets to talk to them. I have another story on racecaller Barry Jones coming up in the next edition of the Racing Queensland Magazine. He called races for four decades and when he decided he’d retire from racecalling at Warwick, it didn’t make the news. How pathetic is it that a man can dedicate 40 years to racing and no one is on top of that story? Oops, sorry, I’m being negative.

I also sponsor races at various tracks across the three codes. My latest two sponsorships involve paying for a new results board at the Lockyer Turf Club at Gatton - and an annual sponsorship to the Ascot Park (Southlands Greyhound Club) in New Zealand. I have committed to upcoming sponsorships in the coming weeks on 14 August at Gatton for the Gatton Horse Show, as well as on September 12 at Parklands where Justracing will be a major sponsor for the third year in a row of the big Festival of Harness Racing day, so everyone across the three codes benefits from Justracing. Why do I sponsor greyhound racing in New Zealand and not Australia? Well I advised the Brisbane Greyhound Club at Albion Park in Brisbane some years ago that I would like to be given the opportunity to sponsor the 520-metre boxes as I got tipped off that the person whose advertising was on there wasn't going to continue past a certain date. When that person's advetising finished I received no correspondence and one of their mates signage went up. No problem there, but I'm sure there's another 100 greyhound clubs who would like my sponsorship. In any event, I get wonderful service from the people at the Ascot Park track, so I'm sure my sponsorship to them will last a long time. To that end, I will be having discussions with them in coming weeks to sponsor a major race series there. Funny thing how getting good service can help a business be successful - and yet you or I could email six racing entities today, big joints like race clubs and Inglis' and so on and I can guarantee you that you won't get a reply from most.

Totally free of charge and behind the scenes, I also help many lesser known racing websites out with free advertising and in some cases I have banners constructed for them - and pay for them as well. Dan Costello, Graham Potter and Kevin Skene (Trackdata) from within Australia and Neil Davis (Formpro) in New Zealand have all benefitted from this gesture, as I see it is important, as even Rob Heathcote alludes to, to get as much diversity of opinion in racing as possible.

So for the benefit of Rob Heathcote and the constant enquirer's - in summary, I called trots at age 12, therefore I’ve been attending race meetings for at least 43 years. I was a bookmakers clerk for a couple of years at age 18, and I spent a year or so as a Secretary/Manager of a TAB race club. Justracing is the only racing entity in Australia that advertises any one of the three codes of racing 365 days a year, but I can only do that in Queensland and New South Wales currently, as it is not a cheap exercise. I receive not so much as one solitary dollar in any subsidy from controlling bodies etcetera, to do that, so technically my valued clients fund it. I’ve trained greyhounds, bred numerous greyhounds and thoroughbreds and have owned winners across all three codes. I put the first race club (Sunshine Coast Turf Club), stud (Wattle Brae Stud), trainer (Kelly Schweida), jockey (Ken Pope) and horse transport company (Higgins Transport) on the Internet in this country. I have assisted numbers of premiership winning trainers across Queensland to improve their racehorse's performance through inventing a racing joint lubricant, with the assistance of a couple of elderly racing people. In 2005 I was awarded the Queensland Racing “Best Print Story” media award for “the best racing story contributed to a newspaper, journal or website” in the year, with my article entitled “Bill Smith was Australia’s first woman jockey.” In respect of that story, I also launched a Justracing website appeal to raise the funds, assisting with a personal contribution of $500, so that the woman who rode as a male to disguise her identity, due to females being banned from riding in Australia at the time – and who lay in a pauper’s grave at Herberton Cemetery - could be remembered via an appropriate headstone, then flew to Cairns and drove to Herberton to speak on the day of the unveiling. The “research” in my story has been reproduced everywhere from the Cairns Post to a Canberra newspaper, so even though Rob Heathcote doesn’t think my research is up to scratch, I’m sure correct weight was declared on the Wilhemina Smith story. I am happy to publicly admit to having absolutely no journalistic qualifications whatsoever, however that didn’t stop me publishing a 606-page racing book in late 2006.

I trust that all the aforesaid information, from both yesterday and today, much of which is nobody’s business, will let Rob Heathcote and all the others who constantly enquire - see that I may have some credentials that would allow me to have some knowledge about the “behind the scenes” aspects of the racing industry - and that I have stared at "the coal face" of racing a few times.

As for whether Justracing is full of “negative” stories emanating from my “bitter and twisted” mind, I didn’t know Rob Heathcote was going to send in an email last Friday night, so let’s look at the previous 20 stories that were put up on Justracing to see if the “negative” claim of Rob Heathcote has any credibility.

In descending date order the last 20 stories before the QTIS 600 race story that appeared on Justracing have been:

I fully acknowledge there will be greater and lesser persons in life than myself and I'm happy to take on board any constructive criticism that comes my way, as I think that constructive criticism is good for a business. I will bear in mind what Rob Heathcote has told me and I congratulate him publicly for winning the Brisbane trainers premiership, as I did privately when I emailed him back last Friday night to say I was happy to put his article up. His effort to go from being a Contiki tour guide in the late 1990's to win a Brisbane's trainers premiership or two is commendable, albeit he would probably agree with me that his "strike rate" could be improved.