I wouldn't be too keen either, but it'd still be better than just 4 of Barry's 🤣

13/01/25 Partnership 'pure fantasy' Make what you like of this from the treaty submissions  Julian Batchelor - representing Stop Co-Governance - made his submission using a presentation on the English text of the Treaty of Waitangi, arguing there would be no need for Treaty Principles if the "true, Bonafide, English final draft of the Treaty was in the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975." Using the English text he said the British said they would "set up a government in these islands." Batchelor said there is no mention of "partnership" in the Treaty, nor that the British would only rule over British settlers. "Why are these ideas blatantly and obviously missing from the plain reading of the entire Treaty" he asked. "Because those ideas don't exist in the Treaty. They're simply not there. They're pure fantasy. They are modern day inventions." He said any party or MP who says the Treaty is a partnership is not just "intellectually lazy, but they're also delusional, or deliberately and knowingly lying to the people of New Zealand." He said it's "oxymoronic" for a country to be both a sovereign and a partner. "Partnership and sovereignty are mutually exclusive concepts. The idea that the treaty is a partnership is the greatest lie to ever come out of the courts." Batchelor said "judges are not gods," they're just people, and people are "fallible and very capable of corruption." "We ought to never accept their judgment when these judgments contradict the plain reading."

Am just wondering too PS who works for Nathan do you know ? I bet there will be an interested Junior in the North who would want to join his stable . Will be interesting to see 

Yes time will tell but a seven or eight horse field is not that attractive to me even if half them are Barrys and half them are Marks.

Time will tell, but l can't imagine Mark's and Barry's horses being in different races very often, thus increasing the amount of $1.30 winners, but competing against each other thus increasing the numbers the competition and therefore the dividends. But we'll know for sure this time next year. 

Mmm I am not sure another heap of 1.30 winners appearing on an already unappealing betting landscape is going to turn too many punters on. Quite the opposite I would have thought.

You accountant types are about as much fun as a fart in an elevator. With the Allstars now shifting back North , (as Mark returns to his roots) the Northern scene will see some of Finest Horsemen On the Planet strutting their stuff. So not only Barry and Scott with their phenomenal horses that earned awards like Merlin, Duchess Megxit and Meant To Be (amongst others) there will be Tony Herlihy , and now his brother-in law Mark and a whole troop of nice horses to engage in the North Island racing.  If you Southerners weren't so BIASED , Nz harness would do a lot better. Shame you're too tight to get the Freebies in the NexGen tent. could help you loosen up a bit. Get your bets on and enjoy the racing !! enough moaning like Myrtle 😂

Bigrig, Sadly pretty much all of New Zealand - maybe even much of the entire world - operates on the "ambulance at the bottom of the cliff" theory for many or most things. Hopefully after your post and scooby's feedback, one small thing might be fixed in future.  

Harrison will probably get the Junior drive's to keep it in the family anyway? . Crystal is still working at Barry's too ? so should be getting the 'plum' Junior Drives there.  Actually Harrison Orange would be ideal to go work with Scott Phelan on the team at Pukekohe , as could get a great launch pad like Olivia did at Allstars . 

RACE or the Wellington Racing club? 

I'm picking they and their owners will be the biggest spenders next week So they will refresh the tanks and go well in the next few years despite a quiet start to this year Dr Robert with this stethoscope is always a sight to behold at the sales🫢

Idol mate, I was no 'patched member' either, but after a hard day in the woolshed an a few beerseys later in the Puke, I didn't give a shite who was in there, you pick on me I'm gunna pick right back....🤣 ahhhh those were the days....I wasn't allowed back in there for 6months, 6 fricken months whaaaaat?!   Cheers Iraklis  

That is fantastic! Thanks for sharing this. Time will tell I guess. However to be blunt- it shouldn't happen in the first place Far too often in this industry we are needing the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, rather than having good processes in place to prevent any such occurrence happening However, we take the positive from your comments and move on

So maybe just maybe it is the trainers voting with their feet and saying enough of the Sunday BS...everyone needs a break and the extra overtime must be killing too...but the people who make these decisions dont have a clue...it needs urgently addressing.

I have been told there has been two emergency committee meetings this week...maybe it is in some trouble????

One good thing is they have seen the thread and are addressing the posters concerns...thats what happens when you are the leading racing site people come from all facets of the industry.We get the message out there.

Very interesting article indeed. Thanks for sharing😀

Just had a thought , Blair is going to miss out on a lot of good drives now 

Now, there’s a blast from the past. Remember Shocking, who reeled in the Saeed Bin Suroor-trained Crime Scene to win the Melbourne Cup for Mark Kavanagh and Eales Racing in 2009? The son of Street Cry also won the Australian Cup back at Flemington on his swansong. He has been quietly standing as a stallion at Rich Hill Stud in New Zealand since his retirement 14 years ago, cropping up every now and then with the odd top-notcher like Toorak Handicap and Makybe Diva Stakes winner I’m Thunderstruck, but he made a big noise when notching a Group 1 double as a sire at Te Rapa in New Zealand on Saturday. El Vencedor, a six-year-old gelding trained and owned by Mark Freeman and David Price, ran out a three-length winner of the Herbie Dyke Stakes and an hour later Here To Shock, a seven-year-old gelding trained by Ben, Will and JD Hayes, slammed fellow Australian challenger Bosustow by four lengths to land the Waikato Sprint. El Vencedor was already a Group 1 winner, having scored in the New Zealand Stakes last March, but Here To Shock was gaining a first top-level strike. He takes Shocking’s tally of elite winners to five. Not a bad record for a horse who stands at a fee equivalent to £5,700 or €6,800. Shocking’s (pictured below) weekend exploits got me thinking back to a curious little chapter in the recent history of breeding in Britain and Ireland.  A decade ago this year Dunaden became the first winner of the Melbourne Cup to stand in Britain since the 1890 scorer Carbine was imported by the Duke of Portland in 1895.  The apple of his owner Sheikh Fahad’s eye, he was retired to Overbury Stud in Gloucestershire, with a range of bonuses unveiled to encourage breeders to take the chance on supporting him. The incentives were inspired by French premiums, with two-year-olds and three-year-olds from the stallion's first crop having their winnings in Britain and Ireland supplemented by 64 per cent, and those horses’ breeders earning 15 per cent of the combined prize-money and premium. Furthermore, the breeders of all Dunaden’s stakes-winning two-year-olds and three-year-olds in Britain, Ireland and France would earn a one-off £25,000 prize. In truth, even at Dunaden’s negligibly small fee of £3,000 those juicy carrots were needed. He was undeniably a talented individual, as he demonstrated when grimly repelling the challenge of Red Cadeaux in the Melbourne Cup and later also winning the Hong Kong Vase and Caulfield Cup, but stamina just isn’t what commercial Flat breeders want, and his pedigree was a bit out there, too. He was one of 15 foals in the first crop of Ian Balding’s Group 2-winning miler Nicobar, who stood for little money in obscurity in France, and was one of four winners out of the unraced Kaldounevees mare La Marlia. Until his niece Ribera ran second in Listed company a few years ago, he was the only black-type horse under his first two dams. Nevertheless, the novelty factor of a Melbourne Cup hero standing in Britain, those generous breeder bonuses and that refreshing outcross pedigree all conspired to generate plenty of good will for Dunaden. His novelty factor didn’t last all that long, mind you; like London buses, another Melbourne Cup winner turned up in the British and Irish stallion ranks soon after Dunaden’s arrival at Overbury Stud. Americain, who won the Melbourne Cup in 2010, had been part of the lucky bag of stallions that Brad Kelley stood at Calumet Farm in Kentucky, and had shuttled to Swettenham Stud in Victoria for two years before it was announced in the January of 2015 that he would stand at the Irish National Stud that season. Americain was more conventionally well bred than Dunaden, being by the internationally recognised stallion Dynaformer and out of the Wertheimer brothers' Group 2-winning Arazi mare America, and he was at least as tough and classy as Dunaden, having also won Group 2s in France and Australia and regularly run with credit at the highest level down under. However, there were no incentives provided to use him, and in a market that values sprinting over stamina for better or worse (definitely worse), he unsurprisingly proved to be a bit of a hard sell, even at his bargain basement fee of €5,000. That turned out to be his sole season in Ireland. Still, the number of nominations sold shouldn’t be the ultimate arbiter of success in the stallion industry. So, looking back ten years on, how did those two Melbourne Cup winners get on at stud in Britain and Ireland? Dunaden’s first crop of 49 named foals yielded 11 winners, including two really admirable geldings: Ranch Hand, who won seven races on the Flat including the Listed Rose Bowl Stakes and one over jumps, in a novice hurdle, and Just Hubert, whose seven victories included competitive handicaps at Glorious Goodwood and the Shergar Cup meeting. Both horses, who won at two and/or three and should have unlocked bonuses for their connections, were the work of smart-cookie breeders. The Kingsclere Racing Club-campaigned Ranch Hand was the result of another pragmatic mating devised by Emma Balding, who would have known Nicobar well, and Foursome Thoroughbreds’ Just Hubert was bred by the Veitch family of Ringfort Stud, who don't tend to let fashion concerns get in the way of a clever plan. Penelope Johnson’s first-crop Dunaden gelding The Pink’n also scored at two, and was later Listed-placed over hurdles. Among the other highlights of that debut crop were Corey’s Courage, Hidden Pearl and Pearl Warrior, all multiple winners at a slightly lower level. Demand for the sire’s services petered out over his next four seasons before his death due to a paddock accident at the age of 13 in 2019. The 14 named foals in his second crop included five winners, one of them being the fairly useful three-time Flat scorer Merryweather, and the 25 named foals in his third crop included two jumps scorers in Little Pi and Weaver's Answer. The ten named foals in his fourth crop don't yet include a winner, though four have been placed, while the four named foals in his fifth and final crop number no placed runners or winners. Dunaden wasn’t a roaring success, then, but neither could he be called a failure, not least because he wasn’t competing in the commercial realm. There was no shame in getting a handful of decent winners from small books of mostly modest mares. He might not leave any mark on the breed, but he gave a good few breeders a great deal of enjoyment, and even a little profit on a few occasions. Poor old Americain meanwhile sired only nine named foals during his sole season at the Irish National Stud. They included three multiple winners over jumps in American Gerry, Early Education and Camilla’s Choice.  Not a bad strike-rate, but none were stars, and it goes without saying that the sire’s brief service at the Irish National Stud will be a deeply buried, minor footnote in the distinguished history of the operation. Americain didn’t leave much of note in America or Australia either, with one Group/Grade 3 winner in each hemisphere – Causeforcommotion in the north and Eperdument in the south. He died at the age of 17 in 2022. Americain and Dunaden set a bit of a trend, as Europe welcomed several more Melbourne Cup winners as stallions in the following years.  Protectionist, successful at Flemington in 2014, stood at Gestüt Röttgen in Germany from 2017 until his death at 13 in 2023, although his principal attraction to German breeders was probably his pedigree, being by Monsun and related to Peintre Celebre, and his domestic victories in the Grosser Preis von Berlin and the Hansa-Preis, twice. He has delivered the dual Group 2 winner and Group 1 runner-up Amazing Grace, who was sold to Moyglare Stud for €850,000, and further Pattern scorers Lambo and Lazy Griff. He’s also had a smattering of winners in the National Hunt sphere, including Fergal O’Brien’s unbeaten Warwick bumper scorer Kaylan, a clever €26,000 purchase by Yorton Farm from the BBAG October Yearling Sale who was resold as a two-year-old at the operation's own sale to Highflyer for £55,000. Green Moon, the son of Montjeu who followed Dunaden on the roll of honour of the race that stops a nation in 2012, appears meanwhile to have been stood on a private basis by the Comer family in Ireland, and has produced for them their dual winner Roman Palace and a few other place-getters. Rekindling, the son of High Chaparral who was sent out by Joseph O’Brien to win the Melbourne Cup in 2017, has also covered a few mares in Ireland in recent years, first at Kenmare Castle Stud and then at Longford House Stud.  Weatherbys records him as having sired six foals in 2023 and another four foals last year. He will have to perform miracles to make a name for himself as a stallion, but stranger things have happened in the breeding world. No doubt about it, Melbourne Cup winners standing at stud in Europe are more for hobbyists than hard-headed commercial breeders. But I’m all for something different in the stallion ranks, in particular a healthy injection of stamina and some invigorating new bloodlines. Without horses like those the breeding industry would be awfully beige. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that Dunaden or Americain might have worked out better, either; especially if they had received more mares. Sheikh Fahad and Brad Kelley deserve some credit for giving it a go. Nothing ventured, nothing gained in breeding. The Duke of Portland came to realise that after he paid £13,000 to purchase Carbine out of Australia at the end of the 19th century.  The New Zealand-bred, who supposedly couldn’t bear to get his ears wet – so much so that his trainer designed a small leather umbrella and attached it to his bridle so the rain wouldn’t fall on them – sired the Derby winner Spearmint and a number of other big-race scorers. Spearmint meanwhile sired another Derby winner in Spion Kop, and Spion Kop sired yet another Epsom hero in Felstead. Spearmint also made a deep impact on the breed through his daughters Catnip, maternal granddam of patriarch Nearco, and Plucky Liege, the blue-hen dam of Admiral Drake, Bois Roussel, Bull Dog and Sir Gallahad, all of whom became influential stallions.

You're kidding?  190 horses going around over nearly 5 hours and they couldn't work out how many would turn up?  Although I guess everyone could have taken a cut lunch and a thermos.