Betting ring
banter missed
Sir, – So the on-course turnover with the bookmakers has yet again fallen. Quelle surprise!
What’s the reason? To me, it is glaringly obvious. Those cloned electronic boards and bloody Betfair.
The on-track bet with the layers has absolutely no relevance to the prices on offer, the same price right along the line. No wonder the betting ring is moribund.
Gone are the days when you could go down the line and get a point or two more than on the rails, or even more rarely you might spot a ‘rick’, where a bookie might put up say 5/1 rather than 5/2, before Wattie Meehan tic-tacked the correct odds down the line!
There was lots of banter between bookies and punters and lots of layers had their own mantra. “Let them in, let them out,” was Sean Graham’s catchphrase. Going back to the 1950s there was an old bookie at the end of the line in Baldoyle, Billy Magill, with light grey felt hat and chalk on his lips, whose shout was “Bar the two, any price you like” and Olly Fanning, with 11/8 on the board, shouting, “Eleventy to eighty!”
God be with the days – so much for nostalgia now. It’s ‘accountants rule O.K.’ –Yours etc.,
LIAM HERON,
13 Longlands,
Swords,
Co. Dublin.
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