Sport is made for betting

I'm sick of this bullshit of the 'age of forgiveness'. Not that long ago, people had honour - when they laid their cards on the table and screwed up royally, they packed their bags and left. These days it's like the Aussie cricket team - harder to leave than it is to get in, no matter how shit you are at what you do. Ricky Ponting was allowed to lose the Ashes three times before being forced to walk the plank as captain. If you can bullshit with the best of them, you've got a job for life apparently. BHA Chief Exec Paul Roy has made at least three absolute blunders whilst at the helm which should have sent him to the dole queue a long time ago. But it seems he is impossible to sack and won't walk because he has less class than a Premier League footballer with a superinjunction. Blunder 1 - in his other role as big cheese of an investment firm, he recommended buying a big chunk of shares in Betfair. The fact he didn't notice they were massively overvalu...

Racing NSW supremo, or should I say, head muppet, Peter V'Landys, has banked his reputation and the future of the NSW racing industry on winning the race fields legislation against Betfair and corporate bookmakers in Australia. The issue - paying for the right to use Racing NSW information to take bets on NSW racing. Nobody is disputing the fact that the body that runs the show deserves to be paid by companies making money from it. The issue is how much and what is fair. Australia has two main states of racing - Victoria and New South Wales. NSW might have a bigger population but their racing isn't on a par with Victoria. When Takeover Target won last weekend on Doncaster Handicap day, it was a feat worthy of being cheered on by 40,000 people at least. They didn't even get 20 thousand on Sydney's second or third biggest raceday of the year - pathetic. Racing Victoria sets the standard in Australia - better prizemoney, bigger fields, better crowds, racing not as dominate...