Four resign as club’s meetings are reduced

Almost half the members of the Warragul Harness Racing Club committee have resigned.

The four members, all volunteers and including long-serving president Doug Cameron, had given the committee a total well in excess of 100 years’ service.

All the resignations came soon after Harness Racing Victoria announced early last month that the club’s program for next season would be further reduced to eight race meetings.

Exiting along with Mr Cameron were Rex McLeish who’d been on the committee for over 40 years, and Paul Mitchell and Grant Rathgen that served for about 20 years each.

Remaining on the committee are Jenni Mitchell, who has taken over as president, Kyle Galley, Greg Fusinato, David Talbot and Barry Field.

After 13 years as president Mr Cameron said the latest reductions in race meetings – HRV has decided all clubs will have one fewer meeting per year – prompted him to think he didn’t want to be part of it any more.

“They (HRV) seem to think bums on seats don’t matter; it’s all about TAB turnover,” he told The Gazette.

Mr Cameron’s resignation came within weeks of the club’s highly successful Easter Sunday Warragul Cup meeting that drew a crowd of about 2500 people.

The club has previously stated its concerns about fewer meetings and a four-month stretch from August without a race day at Warragul and the impact they had on attracting race entries and sponsorships.

Mr McLeish said he had been “disappointed about the way things were going”, especially the progressive loss of race meetings.

He said he had mixed feelings when he resigned but also felt it was time for change.

When Mr McLeish first joined the committee more than four decades ago there were 14 night harness race meetings at Warragul each year.

There were strong crowds and 26 bookmakers in the ring, he recalled.

The next race meeting at Warragul will be on Monday of next week.