At Form A to Zyrg we are, I am, straightforward, honest and open with the punting advice.
Zyrg, back in 2010, offering some coaching advice to the “Fly” Craig McRae
Zyrg has a long history in the punting game and has meet many wild, wonderful and interesting characters. His story and their stories bring you what we have here today.
The Early Days
I am the Zyrg in Form A to Zyrg, I am an avid punter on the horse racing and I have been for more years than I really want to remember.
I have stated elsewhere about my Uncle Vin and my discovery of horse racing after trying to work out his scratchings on the newspaper form guide. I quickly worked it out, much to my mothers chagrin and my regular punting started a few short years later, not long after starting work.
For you youngsters out there, I can still remember when we went to the tote (TAB) to put our bets on, we wrote all the bets out by hand, pen on paper, and the bets had to be placed 30 minutes before the advertised starting time of the race.
Later, there was that curious punter who had to leave it to the last second before heading to the window to place his bets. These days, does he still exist?
When I saw him, I knew I never wanted to be a punter like that. Like most things in my life, I wanted to be prepared.
In my early punting days I was a summer punter, winter was taken up playing Aussie Rules football. My home race track is Geelong, my favorite race track is Moonee Valley and I think I am most successful on the punt when they race at Bendigo. the Nursery of Champions.
I had some great punting mates, mainly blokes I played footy with but a few who ventured to the track in the winter. Some are still quite well known in horse racing circles.
We were lucky enough to have a bit of an “in” with the Jim Moloney stable and through this connection we got to have some good wins on horses such as Warri Symbol, Mr Independent, Rom’s Stiletto, Joy, Aare etc.,
Somehow, we had a connection to a budding trainer from New Zealand named Wayne Walters and boy, didn’t that stable know how to set up and pull off a plunge. Horse like Torbrek, Astrolin and my favorite, Cobra all put money in the kick on a regular basis. Like Zyrg, Wayne is still going around and training horses today, based in Mount Gambier. I think his nemisis was the Ararat Cup “winner” Gary Bruce.
The video is newspaper and not very clear sound clips.
His plunges however were nothing like what was witnessed in, from memory, early 1982 when Mark Read and Henry Davis pulled off the Getting Closer plunge at Canterbury. It was an atmosphere I only experienced once on a racetrack, a mid week meeting (again from the old memory) and I cannot even describe it today. It was like everyone was on Getting Closer and no other horse existed. 200/1 to eights.
My luckiest day on the punt was a day I was wandering through the Interstate ring at Flemington. I had a read story about the wonderfully named Beans during the week and its race was due. The call went over the tannoy “Beans 9 to 2” and as I had a $20 note in my hand had 90 to 20 Beans. A big bet for me at the time (even now).
Beans was by a sire named Blazing Saddles. If you can get a copy of the movie Blazing Saddles, watch it.
No sooner than I had my ticket in my hand the tannoy crackled into life again, “correction, Beans 9/4, Beans 9/4”, Beans duly saluted and I got an extremely wry grin from the bagman as he handed over my $110.
Luck should only play a small role in your punting successes.
Another horse named Beans, last ran in 2023 at the picnics. Never won a race.
My favorite horse was and still is Manikato, I was lucky enough to see Kingston Town race and watched the fantastic 2 year old season of Rancher, who belonged to arguably the greatest crop of two year olds to three year olds of all time. That three year old season we watched the battles between Grosvenot, Cossack Prince, Marscay, McGinty, Strawberry Road, Veloso and the great mare Emancipation.
Racing was huge and not just a day on the squirt although we did have plenty of them as well.
Finally on these early memories, you will recall earlier I mentioned preparation. If anyone wants a lesson in how NOT to prepare for a plunge, go and read or listen to the Fine Cotton story. A lesson in how not to prepare for anything especially anything dodgy and/or illegal. Colorful racing identities aplenty.
The Fine Cotton affair
All those occurrences and many more created my love for the punt and the punting game and made me determined to be a winner. I am just as determined to be so today.
Statistics
I am also a lover of statistics and the truth and the lies they tell.
As I kid I played a lot of footy in the winter and cricket in the Summer. My Dad was a bit of a local footy legend and my earliest memories are being the mascot for the team he coached. School started, he was still coaching so I had a fascination for all things footy, especially how percentage was calculated on the League Ladders.
I played cricket and had to keep a tally of my batting and bowling averages. The batting average never took too long to calculate as there were not too many big numbers. I managed to take a few wickets so the bowling averages took a tad longer.
Statistics kept you up to date with how you and your team(s) were performing, helped you set goals and gave you a reason to celebrate when those goals were achieved. They still do today.
I should have kept better records and statistics on those early punting days. Like most punters I knew, we had our standard answer when posed the question, “how did you go today”? That standard answer? “Yeah, broke about even”. Me and most other punters. we always “broke about even”, even when we didn’t have a cracker in our pockets.
After 25 years of stumbling around in the dark and experiencing the highs and lows that all punters seem to relish, I took a break from investing on the equine athletes but continued to gather statistics and follow the horse racing, without the angst of a financial investment, that more often than had resulted in a loss.
I strongly believe in being properly prepared for whatever task I am undertaking. Painting the fence, going out for a night on the tiles or playing the horses, one needs to be prepared. I didn’t have the time to properly prepare for investing money on the horses so I had a spell, I put myself out in the paddock.
That spell lasted about ten years.
Given a chance to punt again.
Come September 2019. the time available to make use of those statistics came about in unfortunate circumstances. While organising the Saigon Australian Rules Football Club’s AFL Grand Final Brunch for the 21st or 22nd time , I was the subject of some sort of intervention when a good mate and my employer at the time M, decided that I was looking ill enough to be taken to the hospital. I had been feeling “off” for a number of weeks, but as I was organising the function for the Australian ex-pat community, I thought I could get through AFL Grand Final weekend and then go off to the doctor. In fact, I had been to a doctor that same day and was waiting for the results of blood tests. M and others decided I couldn’t wait and spirited me off to the French – Vietnam hospital. This was half an hour into the Sponsor’s Night get together.
Anyway, tests were run, and I was admitted. I woke the next morning to the sight of a very good mate sitting at the end of the bed with tears streaming down his face. This can’t be a good sign I thought.
Next, a young female doctor enters the room and I question her, “yes” she answers “you are dying, cancer everywhere”. My telephone then rings with an unknown caller and it is the doctor from yesterday imploring me to come and see him immediately as the blood test results were not good! I replied that I was already in hospital.
Then the first good news for the day. The senior doctor on duty for the day enters the room, scowls at the female doctor and issues his news, “no sir, you are not dying and it will take me 14 days to cure you”. Well that’s better I mumble as I am moved to a private room so no other person can infect me further with any other horrible disease. Everyone entering my room is gowned up to the max and all wearing masks.
I had been diagnosed with a little known disease (to me) named Melioidosis. The key points from Wiki include,
Most people exposed to B. pseudomallei experience no symptoms; however, those who do experience symptoms have signs and symptoms that range from mild, such as fever and skin changes, to severe with pneumonia, abscesses, and septic shock that could cause death.
The signs and symptoms of melioidosis resemble tuberculosis and misdiagnosis is common. I had experienced that!
Approximately 10% of people with melioidosis die from the disease. In less developed countries, the death rate could reach 40%
I was in a less developed country.
I was in the septic shock range but the Doctor had said to give him 14 days to cure me. That was about 14 more days than the female doctor had been giving me, full stop.
On Day 12 of 14 the Doctor advises that the antibiotics available to him in Vietnam were not killing Melli and he wanted me to go to a hospital in Australia, “we can’t have a foreigner dying in a local hospital”.
There are too many people to mention and thank here, they got things organised and my biggest concern would be leaving someone out so I will not try. I have expressed my gratitude to those I am aware of, in person, and of their work, for which they wanted no thanks, it will never be forgotten.
Next thing you know I am in a taxi and off to Ton Son Nhat International Airport for a flight to Melbourne, still as crook as a dog and with the weight loss I had undergone, available to ride a 55kg in next months Melbourne Cup.
Austin Powers
Next thing you know, I am arriving at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne and being given the VIP treatment at reception then red carpeted to a private room. Seems my mates in Vietnam know some people in high places!
I am put on the strongest antibiotics available and on Day 4 at the Austin, Melli is still running rampant inside my body. The Austin is getting their advice from the Cairns Hospital and I am prime example number one for all the students making their rounds of the hospital.
Day 5 and the signs are better, the antibiotics and the doctors seem to be getting on top of this disease.
Australian television was not much better than the local version back in Asia but the coverage of the Caulfield Cup Carnival provides a lot of entertainment.
During the Carnival I discovered an interesting fact, Interesting to me at least, the only other person I know of who has had a battle with Melioidosis is gun race-caller, Matt Hill.
At this point of my life I hadn’t had a real punt in about 10 years. I had still done the form every week, played around with systems, put together excel spreadsheets of same and kept all the records of how all the different systems performed.
I needed a betting account. I was a 6/4 chance to die 4 weeks ago and now I wanted to punt again.
The Doctors and staff at the Austin continued to get on top of Melli, and word got out that I may only be required to stay at the Austin for another 5 days. I couldn’t be pricked, prodded and poked too much more or for too much longer. Then 2 young ladies that I thought were on some school project visiting sick people, inserted a PICC line in my arm and I knew I was soon to be set free.
One month in hospital(s) and time for some love from Mum.
However, I can’t leave my time at the Austin without recounting a few highlights, apart from their great care and professionalism and those highlights were,
The Porter who came to see me asking for advise about dating the girl from Da Nang he had met recently on a holiday in Vietnam.
The Dietician coming to see me and telling me that as I needed to put on weight, they were now going to serve me morning smoko as well as arvo smoko and would I like the cheese and biscuits or the cashews. I was having the cheese and bickies in the afternoon so opted for the cashews. Next morning as I heard the coffee trolley rattling up the corridor the salivating began, I was really looking forward to those cashews. The plate of cashews arrived, all 5 of them!. I’d be a heavy weight before you knew it!
The pretty, young Viet Kieu nurse who came to say good bye to me at the end of most of her shifts. It gave her a giggle each time, hearing an Australian accent bidding here farewell in her mother tongue. I think she was actually born in Australia.
The matron, of Vietnamese descent, who started to abuse me in Vietnamese because I would not speak to her in Vietnamese. She then copped rather a spray, in Vietnamese, and found out that mine is quite rudimentary and doesn’t lend itself to talking about medical procedures. Dough Mare!
Being told, after enduring the camera down the throat, that “my lungs were beautiful”.
I don’t want to sound like I am being frivolous about the illness and the time it took to get some sort of “all-clear” from the hospital. I am not. I consider myself very lucky and this year (2025) have really discovered how lucky I was when almost 40 people died in North Queensland with the same illness. I remember all that took part in the recovery almost daily.
It was not quite over yet.
When Darren met Harry
Then it was down the highway to Geelong, with Jimmy Hey behind the wheel and of course the radio was tuned into RSN and the punting information flowed all the way to G Town. Patrick and Billy were the combination of the moment and Nick Ryan was the young gun trainer to follow.
My interest in country racing was piqued.
We arrive at the Geelong Hospital, they run the basic tests and I am admitted. During the admission process into the “Hospital in the Home” program, I am introduced to Dr. Harry, who sees me as a project, Harry tells me that he is the Tropical Disease specialist at the hospital. I think to myself that he must have plenty of spare time, I had lived in Geelong for a long time and in no way could I remotely describe it as tropical.
Later I learnt that his title also included “infectious disease”.
Little did I know then that in 3 months time any spare time that I thought he may have had would be nothing but a memory.
While recovering at Mum’s place was a relief after spending a month in hospital, I knew sleep was still going to be difficult to come by. Remember that PICC line that I had “installed”? It was still in my upper arm and now attached to a bottle of antibiotics carried in a bag around my waist via a tube. Now, I am a restless sleeper and didn’t want to either strangle myself or detach myself from the tube during the night.
We managed. We had too, the PICC was in for a few more weeks yet.
I ask the question, in hospitals, why do they wake you up to ask if you are asleep?
Plenty of Data, Now for the Entry
Next morning I pulled out the new laptop and discovered it really was new, not a single document, spreadsheet, presentation or other file contained wherein. No information recorded but plenty of time to start anew.
Where to begin? But before beginning it was time for more matters medical. Apparently, everyone needs a Doctor, a GP, someone to issue the drugs that were going to ward off the evil bugs that were coming to get me. I knew just the person.
That data collection would need to wait just a little bit longer.
How do you choose a doctor in a place you have not resided in for 29 years? That was the topic of the conversation I was having with Mum when Jimmy came to collect me for my first “outing“ in over a month. Whoever knew that a trip to Aldi and an afternoon having a punt at Jimmy’s apartment could be so refreshing. But back to the choice of Doctor.
Always full of information and never afraid to share it, Jimmy advised me that his doctor was Mick, the same Mick who lived in a unit next to me when I had last lived in Geelong. Ok, it was Dr. Mick for me. Making the appointment to see Dr. Mick was a little bit difficult. The receptionist where he had his practice had never heard of a Dr. Mick although they did have a Dr. Michael. Luckily, Michael was Mick, the one and the same.
The meeting with Mick went well particularly after he told me that it was very lucky the meeting actually was taking place.
In Mick’s words “you shouldn’t really be here” but the punt was to the fore again with Mick explaining that he was part of a syndicate that was racing 2 of Australia’s top greyhounds,Simon Told Helen and Who Told Stevie. That in itself is a terrific story and when your time allows, use Uncle Google and find the story of the Emma’s Boys Syndicate.
After the consultation with Mick it was off to see Harry again and we set a goal that my date of departure from Australia would be 90 days. I had a wife to go and see.
But still not much data being collected.
Another Medical Emergency?
The bottles connecting the PICC continued to be changed daily, there were numerous trips to the GP and to the hospital for further tests and in late December, hopefully, a final trip to see Dr. Harry. He gave me an early Christmas present, I was clear of the melioidosis and he and the GP were happy with my recovery. I could return to Vietnam mid January provided I came back to Australia in early May for a consultation with him and I keep up with the antibiotics for another 3 months. Check and check, the antibiotics were now in tablet form, tablets being the diameter of a 20 cent coin. The PICC would be unpicked in a couple of hours.
A ticket was purchased to travel from Melbourne to Ho Chi Minh City (and return in May) and all looked good with this world.
Or did it?
A week out from the departure date and I have been actively entering racing data and then analysing that data for what facet of form I would use to begin finding winners with, when some lovely lady on early morning television starts to tell us about this dangerous virus in/from China and that it could soon be worldwide. I comment to my sister that I wouldn’t be too concerned about this Covid virus until a couple of thousand a day start dropping dead. I had lived in Asia for many years and numerous cases of bird ‘flu and pig ‘flu had not lived up to the hype, this was just another warning to not cross contaminate when cooking with chicken.
Little did I know at that time that Dr. Harry was about to start earning his keep. Infectious Disease specialist indeed.
Good Morning Viet Nam!
I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City just prior to Tet 2020, Tet being the Chinese New Year, the most exciting time of the year for Vietnamese. Think Christmas Day, New Years Eve and your 21st birthday party all rolled into one with the party being hosted by and at Disney Land.
Think four old fashioned Good Friday’s all rolled into one for ex-pats.
I call it the Chinese New Year here as that is the common term. When talking to Viet Namese folk, please refer to it as the Viet Namese New Year.
I had 2 weeks of R&R to get through before thinking about my return to work. I should mention that the 4 or 5 official days of the Tet holiday go for about 2 weeks. There is not a lot to do for ex-pats during the Chinese New Year and although it’s not nearly as bad as the first few years I spent in Vietnam, there are still many restaurants closed, bars work on restricted opening hours and transport options are few. The only answer to relieve the boredom was to continue pumping data into the excel spreadsheet.
The highlights of these 2 weeks were the traditional pork and egg dish (Thịt kho trứng) that is served in most households over the holiday period. I think this dish was the key to the Vietnamese deflating the American and allied forces in the Tet Offensive of 1968. They threw these eggs, that have been boiled for numerous days and resemble rubber hand grenades, at the enemy.
Thịt kho trứng
1.25kg pork belly or pork butt
10 eggs (rock-hardboiled). I prefer duck eggs
1 can coconut juice
1 can coconut soda
¼ cup fish sauce
1 tablespoon mushroom powder
1 tablespoon chicken powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon oil
1 tablespoon caramel sauce
water for parboiling
5 cloves garlic
1 large shallot or 2-3 small shallots
1. Cut Pork Belly Into 25mm wide pieces.
2. Parboil – Add pork belly into a pot and cover with water. Cook on high heat for 10 minutes. You will start to see the impurities from the blood start to come out and foam at the top of the water.
3. Drain the pork belly through a colander and wash off all the impurities. (Some say optional)
4. Have the pork belly next to your stove before the next step.
5. Heat a pot to medium or medium high and add in 2 tablespoon of oil, then 1 tbsp sugar.
6. Use a non stick spatula to stir the sugar once it starts to brown. The sugar will turn a rich brownish color but watch for burning. To get the deepest color for the braise, you want the sugar to be almost black but not burning. This caramelization take a little practice because once cooked too long the sugar will turn bitter. If you are not comfortable doing this you can bring the sugar just slightly darker than caramel before adding the pork.
7. Once the sugar is caramelized, Add in the parboiled pork belly and cook 1-2 minutes on each side until all the sides are coated and caramelized. Let the pork brown for the full 1-2 minutes before moving or flipping to give the color time to develop.
8. Add in the aromatics and mix well for 1-2 minutes until fragrant. Combine 5 cloves of garlic, 1 large shallot or 2-3 small shallots.
9. Combine the rest of the ingredients : 1 can coconut juice, 1 can coconut soda, ¼ cup fish sauce, 1 tablespoon mushroom powder, 1 tablespoon chicken powder, 1 tablespoon caramel sauce.
10. Turn down the heat and simmer on Medium/Medium Low heat for around 40 minutes or 4 days, whatever your preference
11. Prepare your hardboiled eggs, and add to your braised pork belly pot. Use a spoon to submerge the eggs into the broth for an even color.
12. Cook for an additional 20-30 minutes until the pork is tender. Longer than that if you feel inclined.
13. Optional but recommended, use a skimmer or spoon to scoop out any impurities and oil that surfaces.
Serve with rice. I like it with toast rather than rice
Right after the celebrations were over and the pork had been consumed, I had a chat with the employers about returning to work and the decision was made that as I was still on the antibiotics and that nobody knew what was going to happen if this Covid continued to concern the health authorities around the world, the return was placed on hold. If I returned to work I would be sharing a mini bus with other people. We would wait another month before another round of talks took place. I took plenty of precautions by staying in the one house and not moving around too much. My thoughts behind this were that if Covid was ever going to take off anywhere it could very well be Ho Minh City which is very much a high density living type of city.
It is something like 600 people per square kilometre in Vietnam compared to Australia’s 6.
Billy Ray or the Bee Gees?
Returning to work was put on the back burner and the trip to Australia in May was looking very much in doubt. Doctor Harry wouldn’t miss me as I presumed his workload had ramped right up.
The result was that the data base was building up quite nicely and I was about to make a decision on what data from these results I would first commence to analyse. Time for decisions and I did make a momentous decision after giving the matter a great deal of attention. Forget the Metropolitan meetings, forget betting on the best horses and take a completely different tack. I was going to concentrate on the Maidens, BM58’s and BM64’s. Out goes the Metropolitan meetings and Country Victoria racing would be visited, scrutinised and dissected.
March the 8th 2020 was the kicking off point. Then back to thinking about this menace called Covid.
Some key statistics to consider here were that the Vietnamese Government had suspended the entry of most foreigners from the 22nd of March 2020, a suspension that would end almost two years later in November 2021.
Australian borders were closed to all non-residents on the 20nd of March 2020 with returning residents required to spend 14 days in quarantine in designated hotels. Yes, the check in/up appointment with Dr. Harry was officially off as it would be tough getting into Australia and impossible to get back into Vietnam. I wasn’t even going to take the chance that I was considered a resident of Australia at this point. The rigmarole and hoop jumping I had to do to prove I was who I said I was and that I was in fact Australian was enough when I was in the country six months back just trying to stay alive.
I supposed at the time that I had at least until the end of March to get some sort of new data base together. I then scratched (red tagged) the BM58 and BM64 races. It was going to Maidens, all Maidens.
First I had Melli to contend with and now there was the Miley (Cyrus/virus) to face and as March turned into April and April into May etc., at least I had the Maiden database to keep me occupied.
The city was not in full lock down as yet but movement between Districts and even Wards was restricted
Back on the tools
It was early October before I got the call, Darren would you like to recommence work in November and how do you feel about work in Vinh Long. Yes, I would love to recommence employment and yes, Vinh Long sounds fine with me. Here was my Daily Double, earning some cash again and in a new location
I found very pleasant lodgings on the banks of the Cau River, across the river being the City of Can Tho, the fourth most populous city in the country. My actual accommodation was actually in the middle of nowhere, in the hamlet of Binh Minh, the perfect place to travel to and from work and sufficiently away from any night life so that my recovery from near death could continue without any distractions. Who wouldn’t love that for twelve months, the projected duration of the project.
Life on the Mekong Delta was quiet, giving me plenty of time to continue with data collection and by the end of November, I had enough data available to decide how to best attack the punting future. Where to start and what data to start with. I concluded that every race was indeed a race and most, if not all, races were won by the quickest steed over the given distance of the race. Details of the Zyrg Time Ratings can be found elsewhere on this site.
Progress on the punting database continued as did the progress on the construction site although on site, progress was not as speedy as I had anticipated.
I had the Maiden data collection to continue in the evenings and the Zyrg Time Ratings to put together Friday through Sunday night.
The new “digs” on the Delta
The Miley was still swinging her sledge hammer and now people all over the world were listening to her father and dying with Achy Breaky Hearts, lungs and other various organ failures. From all reports, two of the biggest knuckleheads ever to be entrusted with the leadership of major countries seemed determined to kill as many people as possible, drinking bleach or using a hair drier up the proboscis were a couple of their solutions to saving mankind.
The completion of six month living and working in the Delta came and went, Dr Harry would need to save the world without my input and my first mua mua (wet season) living in a swamp was about to begin and there was even some visible signs of progress on building site.
June passed with the Miley continuing unabated and then as July approached, full lock down, social distancing and care packages from the wife began.
Apart from the continuing data collection and the mathematics behind the ZTR’s I can report that there were more lowlights than highlight over the next few months.
First cab off the rank, the Astra Zeneca vaccine was being rolled out in Ho Chi Minh City but us folk living through lock down in the Delta were stuck, no intra Province travel was allowed. I then had to decide if I wanted to have the Chinese vaccine administered but then even that decision was taken away from me as the local health authorities had decided that the Chinese vaccine could not be used on foreigners let alone diabetic foreigners.
Ah well.
Doctor Dolittle
To be honest, the lockdown wasn’t a huge challenge for me. Where I was was in the middle of nowhere and there wasn’t another foreigner for kilometres around anyway. I was on a block of around 4 acres so could stay active and one person from each property had been delegated by the local authorities to go to the market daily so food was no problem, On occassions a boat loaded with vegetables and meat product pulled up at our little jetty on the Cau and the local bottle shop owner would drop a slab off at the front gate when required.
But besides collecting race data and having a punt, I needed something else to do.
I am a person forever looking for a challenge and the challenge I undertook during lock down was to teach the three bitches at the Home-stay, all heavily pregnant at the time, to understand English. Mission accomplished after 21 days and three days later there were a total of 27 pups to care for. The bitches neither know nor understand how to say “no” to the local dog pack, whatever the language. Both dog registration and dog “birth control” are not high on the Viet Namese agenda. Bi-ingual dogs, a success that does not appear on everyones CV.
9 of the 27 pups were born in my wardrobe. I adopted the runt of the litter.
The runt of the litter, we hoped one day the rest of his body would catch up to his stomach.
We then hoped that one day the rest of his body would catch up to his ears.
Five years later and we have given up hope that his mental capacity will ever catch up.
The Big Smoke beckons
Then in October, I was finally granted permission to travel to Ho Chi Minh City and be vaccinated. Alas, now travel was banned in the other direction and a return to the Delta was delayed until I had had my second shot and that was scheduled for mid December. I think I was one of the last to receive the second shot in Viet Nam. I had to travel to 5 different injection sites before locating one that actually had a stock of vaccine.
I then returned to the Delta, spent my second Christmas there and spent a few weeks trying to solve a cracking slab problem with the project team. Not the slabs the bottlo was leaving at the gate but the slab where I had thought that someone had gone a bit light on the reinforcement.
And that my friends was the 14 month period when I had more time on my hands than anyone needed or wanted, but a period that allowed me to put together the various stages of my punting methodology, to decide how I would apply 5S to investing time on the horse racing, how that information would be best adapted by the Lean methodology and finally deciding how best to share this information as I proved to myself that it could be successful.
Construction took a lot longer, about 3 years longer so there was ample time at nights and weekends to collect and analyse data. Continuous Improvement.
Having tweaked, re-tweaked and tweaked again for the next few years, I am happy to share this information with everyone (to a certain degree). My intention has never been just to tell people what to back. I am not a tipster in the true sense of that profession.
I see myself as a thinkster and this site as an extension of that.
Time will tell and you good people will be the judges of my success or lack thereof. It has been one hell of a ride and one I intend to keep enjoying.
Nossy the Hare
Even in the embryonic stages of this venture, I was looking for a mascot and was always thinking what would be an appropriate mascot. Nothing really jumped out for me.
Then one day, my P.A. asked me what I was doing that night and I told her I was “going home to do the form”. Not unsurprisingly she asked was the form in English or Viet Namese. Anyone who has done business in Viet Nam or any other Socialist country would understand that a great deal of time is spent filling in/out forms.
I explained what “form” I was going to do and also spent some time explaining that the word “form” in English could take many forms and I explained that different meanings of the word form as I knew them.
Now Ms. Tram was a very bright and inquisitive young lady, a qualified lawyer and way to smart to be my P.A. She came to work the next morning and told me I did not explain all the meanings of “form”. She then educated me and explained that the correct name for a hare’s next was, you guessed it, form.
Our mascot had been found. The hare.
A male hare is a buck. All punters want more of them.
A female hare is a doe, All punters want more of that.
A young hare is called a leveret. I had named my computer folder for the punting files, Lean Evaluation. Close enough to Lev.
I am not a great believer in coincidence but I couldn’t go past it here.
Nossy the Hare it was.
Our
Values
Facts not Fiction
It all began with an idea. And not an original one. That idea was that the quickest runner normally wins a race.
Aesop was a fabulist. Punter’s must be realists. The fact is, we don’t even know if Aesop existed.
The fact is, we know Phar Lap did.
Traditional Innovation
Even in these fast paced, ever changing days we inhabit, we believe horse racing still operates along traditional lines. The punter is looking for that edge and we know that by offering a triple pronged attack to punting, the wise punter can find their own edge.
We encourage the punter to think.
Educational
It all began with an idea. Maybe you want to develop your own ideas. We can help you develop your idea. We have a plentiful supply of eager operators filling roles from data entry to database design.
Respect
It all begins with an idea. Your idea. We think any idea needs exploration.
We are explorers and will discover with you.
However, if we think we are going nowhere we will tell you.