IT’S racing’s greatest asset but it can also be one of its failings.

In contrast to many sports, everyone knows everyone. If you are attracted to horses, you are attracted to those who also follow the horses. Bitten by the bug, they say.

As a jockey, your greatest rival could be married to your cousin, your sister working in the yard of the trainer whose horse you are trying to beat. And the younger brother gaining experience riding out in a couple of yards.

It’s often the best of things. Racing looks after its own, we’ve seen many examples of everyone pulling together if one is wounded.

But note also the need for many to stay onside with the bigger owners who give their patronage and pay their wages. It can be a tight unit.

But there are rules to be observed, public money funds the sport like no other, punters likewise contribute considerably. The customer deserves a fair deal. On the occasion that the rules are broken, how does racing react?

Getting a handicap mark has always been an art. It’s always been so, and for the most part, it’s accepted as how it was and how it is.

All is never revealed until the chosen day, but it doesn’t have to be such a dark art that it drives punters away.

If there is no confidence that even those with some betting nous have a fair chance then it is a problem.

If some feel disillusioned enough to turn away from the sport, and they are primarily Johnny punter, is racing too bothered? It can often just close ranks. In those instances policing the whole thing around a rule to determine a non-trier, insufficient effort, injudicious ride, is difficult.

No one was surprised at the outcome of the Barry Geraghty/Noble Emperor appeal and subsequent lifting of the 30-day non-trier ban. There was no expectation of keeping the initial bans in place.

If stewards are going to whack a 30-day ban on a top jockey, its needs to be much more watertight than Noble Emperor’s race. The subsequent climb down on appeal makes it a pretty pointless exercise causing more harm than good.

The stats revealed on the success rate of such appeals are as damning as the negativity spread on social media. Does racing have a general apathy for those having a bet in good faith?

Going forward it’s likely to be even more of a problem. Willie Mullins is forever filling from the bottom up, from the bumpers and novices hurdles up to the chasing ranks.

The top stars will be around for at least five years (barring injury) and what goes up, forces something else down.

Take a high quality horse like Gilgamboa and try find him a race to win. That’s the problem of the next few years. The lesser ones have to come down into handicaps but those horses are of better quality than before. Trainers will be forced to try keep a few pounds for themselves ahead of the handicapper more than ever.

When a top sportsman’s livelihood and good name are brought into question, all possible evidence will be brought into the appeal court. Highlighting wrongdoing and making it a water-tight case is no easy task.

Watching Noel Fehily’s ride on Cloudy Dream at Ayr last Saturday, you could easily be led to believed he didn’t try his best to win although he more or less admitted he gave the horse a poor ride, and things didn’t go right up the straight. It still didn’t look good if you backed him. It was a worse ride than Geraghty’s.

INTERPRETATION

There is a call for professional stewards but even with professionals, you will have a degree of interpretation.

You only have to look at the different opinions by professionals on the decisions in the Leicester v West Ham match last week to see that rules will always be open to interpretation.

It may be that a better short-term solution is to refer any inquiries that are on the day deemed to be serious breaches of the non-trier rule and hear the inquiry a week later where the stewards’ panel has more time to consider a wider range of defence evidence that may be later brought up at an appeal, (as in sectional times, betting evidence), rather than run the risk of having an on-the-day decision overturned and charges of incompetence. Just gather the evidence on the day.

Hardly any professional race reader looking at the Limerick race a day later expected the 30-day ban to stay in place. In many other sports, offences are referred on and sentences given down days later, in rugby dangerous play offences are cited and punished days after the match.

Policing the sport in a fair and consistent manner, that can stand up to challenges and is seen to be fair to all, must be the goal and this week didn’t do much to give confidence in that regard.