“Gooses” And “Galahs” At The Forefront
So called experts, incompetent stewards, and backward leaders, unfortunately stand at the helm of our sinking ship.
In my opinion, only Victoria are doing things the right way. It’s a little hard to be critical of our so called experts, as I expect most of them are great people, but you shouldn’t be labeled an expert if in fact you’re an amateur.
For example, resident greyhound expert and weekly commentator Peter Davis is not immune to the odd error when commentating on greyhound meetings. Now he’s not alone and Simone Fisher has been know to do the same, and I’m sure most, if not all of the experts make mistakes. No one is perfect and I’m sure we would all be prone to the odd error in the same pressure situation in front of the camera, but how do we trust these people when they can barely get the basics right?
Last night Peter Davis made two blatant errors that I’m aware of.
He labelled Group 1 winner and top flight stayer Proven Impala a male dog. How can a “expert greyhound commentator” label one of the country’s best, as the opposite sex? Surely he’s aware he won’t be able to use Proven Impala over one of his bitches – isn’t he?
His second mistake was picked up by a friend of mine who knows nothing about the game and has only been introduced too it 2 weeks ago.
During Peter’s race preview he referred to Dyna Daina, as Dyna Dianna – who? Surely he had to have read the names of the runners too when making his selections; or is he merely reading lines from a piece of paper written by someone else. He must be! Peter is regarded as a greyhound expert and it’s not the first time he’s made errors.
Let me give you the definition of an expert:
Expert: A person who has extensive skill or knowledge in a particular field.
Calling a Group 1 winner a male when infact she is a female, and calling a dog Dyna Dianna instead of her correct name Dyna Daina, isn’t conducive to the the label of “expert” in the strict sense of the accepted definition.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one forced to go scrambling for the form guide to make sure I had backed the right runners after our on-air commentator had spruiked the wrong information.
Surely our experts can get the basics right, can’t they?
All to often commentators and race callers make obvious errors. If the on-air “talent” has no knowledge or even little knowledge of what their talking about, then why don’t the decision makers employ people who do?
Now I know Peter is passionate about the game and does a lot of good for greyhound racing but last night’s performance was not at all good enough for nationally televised coverage of our great sport.
Now lets move on to the Stewards. What were they thinking when they declared race 5 at Dapto a No Race?
Camouflage Model pinged out and landed straight on the bunny and was never headed. How on earth can the boxes opening prematurely affect the outcome of the race when the leading dog was always in front? At no stage did she stop chasing, at no stage did she lunge at the lure and lose momentum. The entire field were left chasing the leader and it mattered little that the boxes opened early.
I’m at a loss to work out how it affected the outcome. Someone please explain why common sense is not applied to certain situations.
Does the reason behind such decisions lie in the fact that many of our greyhound stewards have little or no real world greyhound knowledge and have come straight out of university or from some other unrelated industry?
We see it time and time again – poor decisions made by stewards. Lets take for example the dog who fell and crossed the line in fourth position but was later stripped of its correct placing by GRV stewards before corrected weight was announced. It’s total madness.
Surely we’re all frustrated and fed up with silly errors being made by our so called experts? I know I am.
If they can’t get the basics right, how can we trust them to carry our industry forward. Either shape up or ship out.