SPORTING NEWS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 299, 16 May 1889, Page 4

SPORTING NEWS.

THE TOTALISATOE. The use of the totalisator in a district is under the control of the R.M. The following suggestive circular has been issued by the Colonial Secretary to the Resident Magistrates of the colony :— 1— The applications should in all cases be endorsed by the recommendation of the stewards of the Metropolitan Racing Club. 2— The races should be held under the rules of the Metropolitan Club. 3— The amount of public money added to stakes should never be less than £lOO at any meeting.

4— Licenses should never be given to use the totalisator at a pony race, a trotting race, or hack race meeting ; nor at a meeting proposed to be held in an isolated place, where the surrounding population is not sufficiently large to furnish a tolerably numerous attendance st the meeting. 5— License to use a totalisator should not be given to any club other than the metropolitan club for more than three meetings in a year. 6— Each recommendation should be for a specific occasion, and not in general terms, for meetings to be held under the auspices of any club.

In reference to the above the Napier Telegraph comments :—The circular of the Colonial Secretary issued to the Resident Magistrates of the colony, offering advice on the vexed question of the totalisator, will be aura to provoke a storm of disapproval, more especially in the country districts. We want to see the number of race meetings in the colony reduced, but in common with most people who have no interests of their own to serve, we do not wish to see the country gatherings, which are true sporting fixtures, interfered with, though we desire to see gate money meetings altogether abolished. The Metropolitan Clubs have shifted their ground more than once, and though they are anxious to stamp out certain classes of racing fixtures in their own interests, so far they have only succeeded in intensifying the evil. These gatherings, which depend entirely for their existence on the machine, have done much to damage racing as a sport; they have injured the Metropolitan Clubs' gatherings by reducing the attendance at them, limiting the fields, and in curtailing the investments on the machine, so the Metropolitan Clubs have been very anxious to suppress them, but up to the date all their efforts have been fruitless. It remains to be seen whether the Colonial Secretary’s circular will aid them in thsirendeavora. The circular leaves a discretion to the Magis* states, but still, it is somewhat sweeping in de* man ding that all meeting should be under the Metropolitan Clubs’ rules, that no license should be issued for a meeting at an isolated Slice, and in saying that no club not a letropolitan one should hold more than three meetings a year. We do not like monopoly in any shape, and meetings held at isolated places would not be gate money or machine gatherings, but would be catering for country districts. The statement that only Metropolitan Clubs should have licenses or more than three meetings is absurd. Taranaki and Nelson are Metropolitan Clubs, •nd could hold as many meetings as they like, while a club like the Napier Park Pacing Club would be limited to three. The absurdity will strike the reader, and its injustice will be at once apparent. We are inclined to think the circular has been drawn by the wrong Minister—Mr Hislop—and that even if the work did not fall within his province, the Native Minister—Mr Mitchelson—through his acquaintance with sport, would have been able to draft a more workable one, and which would have met with more approval than that now under notice.