The Justracing billboards are seen around the highways of the State. I trained the greyhound that is featured Sanctuary Gold - and landed a couple of decent plonks with her. I part owned the 15 times winning pacer who is featured - Heatherique. I could have put the photo of a winning racehorse of mine up there, but decided to instead give that gig to Sunline, on this billboard, even though Might And Power features on the vast majority of billboards I have, as he is the best horse I have ever seen in my time on the planet. It will probably shock Rob Heathcote to know that I am one of the few people in Australia who has owned a winner across all codes.

Emails like the one by Rob Heathcote which was reproduced yesterday on this website are common occurrences when you run an opinionated website. I had a host of emails yesterday complaining about the wording in Rob Heathcote’s email, but believe me his terminology and insinuations are relatively tame compared to many that have turned up here over the 13 years the website has been going. I accept all that as part of the job, as I acknowledge that I give a bit out, so it is only fair that I have to accept I will cop a bit back - for that is the way life is. However this would be the only media outlet in Australia that offers “an unedited right of reply” if I bag a person, or their horse. To that end, over the years I have had numerous emails from owners whose horse I have bagged as being a “chaffbandit”, or “glue factory candidate”, etcetera. None that has been tagged “chaffbandit”, or “glue factory candidate” in previews has ever saluted, so there has been no great drama in that regard as long as you are accurate.

In his email Rob Heathcote stated “I don’t often agree with the comments you make about the industry”. Rob kindly offers to “help me improve my knowledge on some aspects of the industry”, as I’m “so ill informed about the industry”. I also come across in most of my articles as “a complete fool”. Rob has kindly invited me to his stables so I “can see what does go on behind the scenes” and to “get a much better understanding of the industry at the coal face.” He says of his owners “they took the risk (of buying a yearling) web wankers like you don’t”. My websites are full of “constant negatives that do nothing but harm the industry”. I “so often” write “bitter and twisted views” and my articles are often not “reasonably factual”. So it seems my life is a total waste and that I clearly should be busking at Nimbin instead of trying to run racing websites.

There's no problem there, as Rob Heathcote’s and everyone else’s negative emails generally have similar theme about “what would you know about a horse”, “what is your background”, “have you ever owned a horse” - and the same type of query that goes on longer than War and Peace. I’ve been sitting here week in and week out answering a myriad of questions for over a decade. When premiership winning trainers want to have public slanging matches, I'm happy to oblige, but that would be highly unprofessional in my view. I don't need to stoop to that level, but I can't stand in the red corner with my hands tied and be unmercifully bashed either, so what I have decided to do - once and for all - is I’ll tell the whole world my life story – that way the Rob Heathcote’s of the world will have all their demeaning statements answered in the two articles – across today and tomorrow. At the end of the two days, readers, along with Rob Heathcote and the people in the blue corner, will either 1) agree that I am well enough versed in the racing industry to own and manage and contribute to four racing websites, or 2) they will conclude they were right all along and I’d know nothing about anything including racing.

I was born in 1955 so have had 55 years in which to gain a knowledge of racing and life in general.

Being born and growing up on a dairy farm one gets an intricate knowledge of both livestock and dead stock. Horses are an essential part of farm life so one learns to ride them, do their feet and generally look after them - long before hitting double digits, age wise.

My family lived in a little country town called Brooweena, which is 30 miles west of Maryborough. My parents have both passed away and during their life my father was the Shire Clerk and a dairy farmer and later grazier and my mother was the family rock. Together they had 10 children, but sadly my mother lost six girls at various stages of pregnancy, including at full term, so it goes without saying that their living four sons, of which I am one – were no doubt special to them. To this day, I marvel at how harrowing those difficult times must have been for my parents. The man who owned the sawmill in the town was a chap called Max Lahey. Our families were very close and I always regarded Max as my second father. He had racehorses with both Doug Bougoure and Jim Griffiths. Max would take me to the races when my father would let me get out of working on the farm doing fences, or ringbarking and poisoning trees, etcetera, on a Saturday afternoon and he’d take me to the Maryborough trots. The racecaller at Maryborough was a diminutive man called Stan Tappenden. He had a radio show on local station 4MB and a fishing show on television station WBQ Channel 8 called Hook Line and Sinker. Stan used to let me stand next to him when he called the trots. When I was aged 12 he let me call my first trot over the public address. In those days many top pacers, the likes of Queensland's Inter Dominion representative in Perth – Harleray, would come to Maryborough to race. The meetings were so big that the Chief Steward for Queensland, Jack Greig, would attend some of them, before returning back to Brisbane for part of the program at Albion Park that night. I was only ordinary at race calling and to this day I don’t know how racecallers call 20-horse fields.

Educated to senior (Year 12) level at Maryborough Boys High School, my first job was in the National Bank at Maryborough at age 17. The manager was a lovely chap called Alan Adsett and he was involved in racing, as he stood a stallion called Grey William on a stud outside of Toowoomba. I only spoke to him recently at Frank Penfold’s funeral – and at work racing was often the topic of discussion, in fact Maryborough was a racing town back then. Melbourne Cup winning jockey Frank Reys sister, Dell Coleman, lived in the town, a doctor in the town, Brian Rudolph, stood stallion Ease The Squeeze at stud there and he owned that good mare from the early 80's, Show Joy, who was by Ease The Squeeze. Brian Rudolph’s son Greg is Deputy Chief Steward in Sydney these days. A butcher called Louie Gitsham had owned a talented Brisbane sprinter called Emperor’s Leaf in the early 60’s, so it was an easy place to get to meet a lot of well versed and experienced racing people across both thoroughbreds and harness racing.

When I left school and started work at age 17 in the National Bank in Maryborough I had to move to that town to board. Upon attaining the age of 18, I got licensed as a bookmaker’s clerk to earn extra money, as I only earned $70 a fortnight after tax in my National Bank job and $50 a fortnight of that money had to go towards my board. For a couple of years I pencilled for a bookie named Jimmy Murray at the Bundaberg races. His family owned a dry cleaning business in Maryborough – and that is still in the name today.

I enjoyed a small bet midweek back then, just a dollar each way here or there, and would bet at the main Maryborough TAB which was just around the corner from my work. A woman who worked there attracted my eye. The TAB banked at the National Bank. I’d get in her queue when visiting the TAB, and then when she did the TAB banking, she’d get in my queue. She was divorced with two children, but eventually a relationship developed and despite my late father telling me on our wedding day that “it will last six months,” some 34 years later that TAB sheila Denise and I are still together.

Upon our marriage in 1976 we moved to the cheapest housing we could find in South East Queensland, as we had nothing – Ipswich. I worked three jobs to support my family, working at the National Bank by day, cleaning department store Cribb and Foote’s at night and on Saturday afternoons I’d pencil for a bookmaker named Trevor Marsden at the Ipswich trots. In later life, Trevor owned the fish and chip shop that Pauline Hanson operated when she came to notoriety in this country.

In 1978 when I was aged 23 we bought a greyhound pup by Gabba champ Laurie’s Joy out of an imported Irish bitch called Drumlamph Again. We reared the little bitch in the backyard and the children I’d inherited loved running around the yard with her. We’d take her to a huge public park in Ipswich called Limestone Park and teach her to gallop properly up the steep hills there. A local trainer named Brian McEvoy had befriended us and he was a prominent greyhound trainer in the town. In later life he trained the champion greyhound Acacia Ablaze who became one of the top stud dogs in the country. Brian taught me a lot about training greyhounds and helped me break her into the boxes, etcetera. I took out a trainer’s licence and the brindle bitch racing as Denny (short for my wife Denise) Jesse (my wife’s surname) won at her second race start. Over the next 15 years we reared many greyhound litters and I trained winners at all tracks of the Gabba, Beenleigh, Lawnton, Toowoomba and Ipswich. Two highlights in those years were firstly our first Gabba winner who was named Stacey’s Delight after our daughter Stacey. In the days when there were plenty of bookmakers fielding at the meeting I also landed a couple of big plunges with a greyhound called Sanctuary Gold. One successful plonk on her saw her firm from 12/1 into 4/1 on the TAB race at Beenleigh and it even made the local paper. I remember the prominent whitegoods shop owner Errol Stewart, who was also a bookie, fielding at Beenleigh on that day. We had our own straight track on our acreage property just outside Ipswich. I’d driven the lure for hundreds of trials up that track and knew the bitch was flying. She was the closest thing to a “certainty” you’d get on a racetrack. I told her aloud, not that she’d understand, on the way to the Beenleigh races that day “if you win today Connie (her kennel name) I’ll give you a home for the rest of your life and you’ll never want for anything”. She romped in and I kept my word to her and one of the worst days of my life was putting her in the car one day when she couldn’t stand up at age 12 to take her to the vet to be humanely euthanised. She was more human than most humans I have met along the path of life. Twenty years after that win I still travel with her daily as she is the greyhound featured on the side of my car and on Justracing billboards.

When owning the acreage property at Rosewood and having greyhounds, we also got involved with thoroughbred breeding and to that end I attended a Toowoomba mixed sale in 1993 and bought a beautiful chestnut broodmare called Cheer Squad. She was owned by a bookmaker with the surname Fitchew. We mated her to Yeats and she produced a filly on 30/9/95 which we reared and raced called Sanctuary Gold (named after the favourite greyhound from the last paragraph) and she won for us in Rockhampton on 17/11/99, so for the benefit of Rob Heathcote and any other interested person, my wife and I bred, reared and owned our first thoroughbred winner back in 1999.

Eight years earlier than that, in 1991, we had bought an ageing mare called Village Dancer from a chap named Len Raftery, again at a Toowoomba mixed sale. In later life Len Raftery owned the bonny mare Seawinne. We sold Village Dancer’s colt foal, by then Lyndhurst sire Pride of Century, back in 1993 at the Pelican Waters Classic sale at the Sunshine Coast. I was thrilled to pieces on the day that a wonderful auctioneer Garth Hughes got to sell him, as my late father spoke highly of the man.

The most recent thoroughbred foal we bred was in 2006 when we mated our mare Simanca (a derivative of part of the names of our granddaughters Simone and Bianca) Gold to Bagger Vance, the sire who produced Aspiran to win at Doomben last Saturday week. That foal named Simanca Magic was entrusted to Eden Petrie to train and Eden trained Group 1 Brisbane Carnival winner Albert The Fat . Whilst we still own the gelding, he has been leased out, as at $2000-odd a month to train, both Eden Petrie and ourselves felt he had had his time after $20,000 had been spent on him. He’ll race as a 4YO and we’ll still get 30% of his prizemoney, with no further outlays, if he can gallop. That seems like better business acumen, as my wife and I have, like most people, been up enough dry gullies in our cumulative 100-odd years on the planet, to appreciate the value of a dollar.

For the record, the most recent yearling we purchased at a yearling sale was in 2008 at the Gold Coast Magic Millions January sale when we bought a colt foal by El Moxie out of the Green Desert mare Sand Dunes for $27,500 including GST. The horse was owned between five people and our share was in my wife’s name, as whilst I paid for it, I gave it to her as a gift for the wonderful role she has played within our family. The yearling was given to Darryl and Tony Gollan to train. Racing as Bokarina, the horse started six times for us and ran three placings, two at Ipswich and one at Caloundra and he earned $4,500 in those three placings, but after four experienced jockeys had ridden him, namely Stathi Katsidis, Michael Cahill, Ric McMahon and Glen Colless – and they agreed that he’d “only be a provincial horse, not a city class horse,” we made the decision to sell him, so he was sold at the Tried Horse Sale at the Magic Millions in April of this year. You see what Rob Heathcote would know better than most, but would be understandably reticent to acknowledge, because it’s “negative”, is that at $2000-odd a month to have a trainer train your racehorse, if the horse can only win a $6,000 to the winner race at Ipswich, you have to win a race each three months just to pay the training bills, without worrying about paying a vet, a jockey’s percentage, a trainer’s percentage, paying the transport company to take the said champion to the track - and so on and so forth. What I’ll do one day soon is I’ll reproduce a monthly trainers bill or two on the website and Bokarina would be an ideal subject to use to show the public just how easy it is to lose money buying a yearling - if the purchased horse can’t win a city Saturday race. Whilst I acknowledge Rob Heathcote’s point that it is a great thrill to win a race, it is also disheartening when your thoroughbred can consistently run a place at TAB meetings, like Bokarina did at Ipswich and Caloundra, but you still have to put your hand in your pocket at the end of each month to cover expenses. And that’s not Tony or Darryl Gollan’s, or Eden Petrie’s fault, it is simply the lack of prizemoney in provincial racing, yet when I stick it up Racing Queensland over that issue it is apparently being "negative". I don’t need to do much “research” into how to lose money, it’s easy – I’ll show the whole world how that’s done over the next couple of weeks in that article which Rob Heathcote’s email has now inspired me to write.

About a decade ago I also accepted the offer of a part time job being Secretary Manager of the Ipswich Greyhound Racing Club - and at the time the club was treading water going nowhere. In the year I did that job on a part time basis, in conjunction with running Justracing, the Club’s income improved markedly which helped put them in the sound financial position they are in today. I also used both the Internet and people being registered prior to the sale to be able to bid via mobile phones to make the Ipswich Puppy Auction of that year an outstanding success, as Magic Millions General Manager David Chester would attest to, as he’s been the auctioneer at most of them. In conjuction with Ipswich couple Rob and Jackie Sellars, who part own last Saturday's Eagle Farm winner The Sixties, we also ran some bumper "Fite Night's" at the Ipswich Greyhound Club during my tenure.

The monies generated for the Ipswich club in trialling fees alone at the track, went through the roof, due to my wife, totally voluntarily, being responsible for handling the money at nightly trialling sessions and changing the format of the trials, so trainers travelling long distances could get in and out of the place as quickly as possible.

Whilst that stint as Secretary Manager wouldn’t enter the history books for its longevity, it certainly gave me a valuable insight into running a high profile TAB race club that was founded in May 1982.

From a harness racing perspective, I’ve owned pacers at various times over the last 18 years. I don’t currently own any pacers and for the record the best one I part owned was multiple Albion Park winner Heatherique who won 15 races and $71,990 in her career under the care of close friend - Tim Gillespie – in the early 1990’s.

Outside of racing I have had what any fair person would deem a reasonably successful life. A couple of career highlights would be in 1985, at age 30, I was installed as the Business Manager at the Head Office of Queensland’s biggest privately owned company Zupps Motors Pty. Ltd. Around the same time, I had been successful in my application for the job of State Lending Manager for the Metropolitan Permanent Building Society which later merged with Metway Bank. I didn’t proceed into that job as I decided to accept the major motor industry role.

In 1992 I was awarded an Australia-wide award for excellence in the role of Business Manager in the motor industry. The award was restricted to only large dealerships across Australia. Valued at $25,000 the prize involved a two-week cruise on the QE2 from Honolulu to Auckland and back to Sydney. It was on that trip that my wife and I got to meet and spend time with Tommy Smith and his wife Valerie. Tommy told us he took cruises annually on medical advice.

Being brought up on a farm and around horses, cattle and dogs gives one a pretty fair knowledge of all three. Working with stock horses all day mustering cattle can quickly give one an insight into sore horses and to that end – and without being arrogant - I have always had an ability to spot a sore thoroughbred about a furlong away. In the late 1990’s with the help of a couple of then ageing, now deceased, trainers, I mixed up a formula to lubricate horses’ knee and fetlock joints. Naturally horses with arthritis were the ones I’d target to help out. When I had a few spare days I’d travel throughout Queensland and work on joints of horses. I noted that the country areas were riddled with arthritic horses, as when the horse was finished racing in the city they would get “bushed”. Places like Rockhampton had plenty of racehorses and pacers that needed attention. I’d generally source out the horses by seeing them racing sore in race replays. As a matter of interest, only one trainer ever hung up on me in hundreds of phone calls. Just so I restrict my comments in this facet of my racing background to primarily “premiership” winning trainers, like Rob Heathcote is, I’ll throw three “premiership” winning trainers names who I stood “at the coal face” with – and they would be Alan Bailey who probably lost count some years ago about how many premierships he’s won – ditto for Trevor Miller who at last count had won 12 Caloundra premierships – and premiership winning Rockhampton trainer John Wigginton who sadly walked away from the industry last year, due to discontent with local facilities.

About Year 2000, I approached Alan Bailey to see if he had any horses I could work on, so I could prove to him that my product that I was trying to get registered really worked. Alan told me he had a good horse in his stable but confessed, “I think he’s buggered Phil”. I said, “he’ll do, can I have a crack at him” and he agreed to let me try to help. I worked on the horse for the first couple of treatments, and then left the mixture and the directions with Alan and his foreman Sylvia to use. Racing as Dashing Image the horse started to recapture form in the city almost straight away. Just a few months after working on the horse that Queensland’s leading trainer called “buggered”, Dashing Image, won the Listed Goldmarket Handicap at the Gold Coast in 2001. Alan was so impressed with the product he even kindly offered to endorse it for me. Unfortunately I canned the project as when I went to register it with the National Registration Authority in Canberra, they wanted 40 horses impounded for a year on a property, with four vets overseeing the results and after already spending a lot of money to have analysts reports, etcetera, done for them, I was going to be up for over $100,000 to conduct the trials. You could buy a decent house in Ipswich at the time for about $75,000 - so sadly the sums didn't add up. You see no one would believe anyone but Vetsearch, or some similar entity, can invent anything that may actually work in racehorses. Whilst I had a permit to use the product on racehorses in training, obviously when that permit expired and I didn’t want to proceed with the quarantining of 40 horses etcetera, I could not enter racing stables to do the work.

For his part Trevor Miller had a horse that had lost form by the name of On Ventura Highway. Like Alan Bailey, Trevor Miller told me I could have a go at On Ventura Highway, but he didn’t hold much hope, due to the big bone chip he’d had removed from the horse’s fetlock, which had left the horse very arthritic in that joint. I worked on that horse for the first four treatments and he showed almost immediate improvement and won another city Saturday race within a couple of months of the treatment starting. Today in the montage of photos on the www.brisbaneracing.com.au website I show readers the chip that Trevor kept that was removed from On Ventura Highway’s fetlock, before I started working on that horse, as well as a couple of others of interest.

Rockhampton’s “premiership” trainer John Wigginton let me loose on a Melbourne tried horse he’d bought called Skymaker. The horse had run last at Moonee Valley and had 219 days off when John started him. John had a good opinion of the horse, but he ran 8^th of 11 on debut for the stable. John told me he thought it was only his arthritis that was holding him back, so I started working on him after his debut defeat. The horse never missed a place in the remaining eight starts John got out of him and in fact he won five of those eight starts. Included in his wins was the Listed Rockhampton Cup in 2001. Six weeks later he went down narrowly in a tight photo to Party King in the Townsville Cup.

One special memory I have of my product was when I lobbed in Rockhampton one trip and a trainer called Kevin Fisher had a horse called Burning Zone who had been a promising 2YO. He’d won a Rockhampton 2YO on 30/5/1998 but couldn’t win another race. In January 2000 when I was in Rockhampton, Kevin said to me “ah bugger it, you may as well try using that stuff of yours as he can’t win a race anyway.” I then treated the horse for two days (Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon). His regular rider was now retired jockey Wally Welburn. Kevin told Wally nothing about the treatment I had done. On returning from riding Burning Zone in trackwork on the Thursday morning, Kevin later told me Wally Welburn said to him, “What the hell did you do with this horse, he feels much freer in his action.” The horse won his first race in 19 months at his next start at Yeppoon, and then he won another two races, the Ridgelands Cup and then an Open company race in Rockhampton, in that same preparation.

The longest a horse was out of the winners’ circle before I helped it win another race was a grey horse called Pride ‘N’ Passion. I fancy Lorraine Erhart trained the horse when it was domiciled in Brisbane and in any event he’d won a race when ridden by Tony Erhart at Eagle Farm on 21/6/1997. I came across the horse in Bundaberg one morning and a woman called Sharon Simpkins trained him. She let me work on him, but his legs blew up like balloons, as the grey pigment in his skin had a reaction with the Epsom salts that was in the brew when exposed to sunlight in his day yard. Sharon lunged the horse to get the swelling down and a few days later took him to race at Wondai where he ran third of four. Being now wiser about the sun and the grey pigment factor, Sharon kept working on the horse and 19 days later she took him to a TAB race meeting in Rockhampton where he charged home to win at big odds. That gave me immense satisfaction, as the horse had been over 30 months out of the winner’s list.

To be continued tomorow……………….