Normally low-key Turf Club determined to protect its independence

Racing politics in Ireland can be Afghan tribal, with a long history of swaggering interlopers finding out the hard way the land of tweed is where reforming zeal goes to die.

Charlie McCreevy went in a decade and a half ago, the then minister for finance flaunting lots of money in return for an amalgamation of the sport’s two ruling bodies, the state board which controls the cash, now known as Horse Racing Ireland, and the venerable integrity body which polices the game, the Turf Club.

To the sound of marching-charging-people – and artillery fire from the army’s nearby firing range at the Curragh – the revolutionary result was everything more or less stayed the same.

The current Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney has developed an interest in the great game and spent the last four years moulding legislation for imposing an 'appropriate governance structure' in order to streamline administration of a sport which will receive €54.5 million in state funding this year.

And rather like most everyone who has gone in with the firm conviction they know best, the Minister now faces the prospect of getting bogged down in a potentially desperate and lengthy territorial squabble.

You would think racing's rulers might be best served focusing on how to pull the sport's reputation from the ashes of an anabolic steroid saga which ultimately saw one trainer, Philip Fenton, 'warned off' for three years and left a normally self-assured industry feeling rare pangs of insecurity.

There are plenty other problems too, such as trainers quitting, others barely surviving, ownership rates dropping dramatically, and we are assured things will get a lot worse before there’s any chance of it getting better.

Constitutional challenge

But despite all that what is consuming racing’s leadership right now is Coveney’s Amendment Bill, due to go before the Dáil in June, and which has prodded the normally low-key Turf Club into announcing it will legally challenge parts of the legislation if it is passed in its current form.

The Turf Club is so upset it’s even talking about a constitutional challenge.

The minutiae of why is as boring as all sports politics is: but basically, just like most sports politics, it comes down to money.

Coveney wants the semi-state HRI to control revenue streams and dole out a budget to the Turf Club. The Turf Club says the impact of that will effectively geld it of the independence necessary for its credibility, a credibility critics say is shot anyway, with the Turf Club’s abject performance in relation to Fenton just a final coup de grace.

Needless to say relations between the respective brass are Himalayan-cold and the latter describes its treatment from Department of Agriculture officials as contemptuous.

What Coveney feels is unclear, although he could be forgiven for some dodgy stereotypical ‘they all look the same to me’ perplexity at what’s unfolding in front of him.

And they are mostly the same: all are racing insiders, either in terms of being owners, trainers, breeders or officials: all are determined to secure as much of the Government money-hose for their own particular interest-group as possible, and all are wary of any outside influence.

You couldn’t pick out Turf Club from HRI in a line-up.

Yet even with so much ‘big-picture’ around them, everyone still appears intent on sabre-rattling over relatively trivial administrative detail, to the extent you wonder why Government appears so keen to go down this route at all.

Ostensibly it’s about accountability in terms of public money. But this internecine squabbling can blur the reality of how, in comparison to many sports administrations, Irish racing’s governance structure is actually pretty appropriate as it is.

Because the principle of keeping integrity separate from promotion is surely admirable. Britain’s own 2013 steroid scandal with Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin proved the folly of the same body being responsible for both. That sorry tale concluded in a fudge which did credit to few and fooled even fewer.

Other sports

Over time however, and almost despite itself, Irish racing has come up with a governance structure which, theoretically at least, is much sounder than a lot of other sports where the demands of both promotion and regulation result in an official instinct towards containment which is at odds with vigorous problem-solving.

Racing, with its gambling culture, is always vulnerable to perceptions of looking the other way. And the deep-rooted public suspicion that there’s one set of rules for the big guys compared to the little ones is hard to quibble with.

But the basic structure in dividing promotion and policing is surely sound enough for it not to be sacrificed on the altar of cosmetic accountancy. If the usually staid Turf Club feels strongly enough about a comparatively minor balance sheet tweak potentially threatening that division, then going to political war over fixing something which isn’t broken looks a huge overreaction.

What racing actually desperately needs is the sort of financial investment and political backing which will fill the integrity structure with meaningful intent.

Professional stewarding for instance would be a first step which would resonate among the racing tribe which remains glaringly irrelevant in all of this – the punters.

In fact if Coveney wants to be really radical he could remind all concerned that punters are entitled to more than condescending lip service from tribal elders because if revenue from digital betting turnover really is the future, then putting in place a governance structure where punters don’t feel their interests are superfluous would be both appropriate and constructive.

Either way the potential is there for Coveney to ultimately emerge from this as some gasping Dr Brydon character, retreating from the Curragh, wondering why he ever went in at all.