Saturday June 29 saw the final Race Meeting at Moonee Valley Racing Club for the season, with racing not set to return until early August. A reasonable person would expect the final day of the season to be an opportunity to attract fresh blood to the track, to potentially sign up as members for the following season. An opportunity helped by the cancellation of two Sydney race meets including the key metro meeting at Rosehill. This was not the case, infact, any person who turned up in general admission will most likely be turned off from attending another meeting.
I have been a paid up member of the Moonee Valley Racing Club all year attending a fair share of meetings (10+) and normally have nothing but praise for what we are offered on course. Unfortunately, I was shocked by the clubs actions on Saturday, actions that can only be called greedy.
General admission to the track was set at $10 which seems pretty reasonable, until you got on track and found a ‘construction site’ taking up the whole ground level of general admission. In the pathways not roped off, the security guards were telling any and every person including myself to ‘please move out of the construction site area’. When I asked why I was not allowed to stand on the pathway which linked the members area with the tower at the entry to the straight (which we were able to use to move around) I was told the whole lower section was a construction site. I didn’t see any hard hats in use by security though!
Furthermore, you were certainly ‘out of luck’ as a member if you wanted to attend the meeting in plain clothing, with 1900s dress regulations in place for such an informal meeting requiring a suit and tie for men.
We all understand that Moonee Valley is a highly sort-after conference facility and that racing is only one revenue source, but to prepare a conference area to block off the racing public on the Saturday meeting is simply unacceptable. I was informed that the same conference occured last year and the construction was completed POST races on the same Saturday (unconfirmed this fact).
We wonder why people are retreating from going to the track these days. It is probably because of clubs treating non-members as fools. The club has to put racing above any conference facility required and Racing Victoria should look into what occured at Moonee Valley on Saturday and a please explain should be issued to management.
