By MIKE HILL COMING to Australia in his early twenties was one of the best things John McCarthy has done in his life. He married an Aussie girl, Maggie, began a family and rekindled his love for greyhounds. “My dad had greyhounds when I was growing up back in England,” McCarthy said. “We lived at […]
By MIKE HILL UP in North Queensland Harold Hovi is referred to as ‘The Magic Man’. And it’s a tag Hovi, who we feature in this month’s The Trainer column, is happy to live with. Based at Gumlu, 134 kilometres south of Townsville between Ayr and Bowen, Hovi only ever has a few dogs in
By MIKE HILL STEVE Keep has been around greyhounds most of his life. As a nine-year-old living in Casino, NSW, he remembers helping his grand-mother Lila Simpson (mother of leading Northern Rivers trainer Peter Simpson) with her dogs. Keep, who has been in the sport almost 50 years, is featured this month in our The
By MIKE HILL IN the past 10 years Nev Jackson has travelled more than 500,000 kilometres to race his dogs. The Mackay-based administrator-trainer lives for dogs. “They keep me going,” said the 80-year-old, whose mantra is to ‘give back to the sport that supports you’. Jackson, who we feature this month in The Trainer column,
By MIKE HILL GREG Stella says he is enjoying training more now than at any other stage of his long career. Stella, who has been in the sport since 1987 and who celebrated his 56th birthday last month, is featured in our The Trainer column. “You do the best you can and take what comes,
By MIKE HILL GREYHOUND racing is made up of hundreds of trainers who may never win a Group race but that doesn’t mean they are not vitally important to the industry. In fact, they are the backbone of the sport. This month we feature one such trainer – Townsville’s Thomas Jackson, better known as Keith
Thomas ‘Keith’ Jackson Read More »
By MIKE HILL THIS month we feature recent winner of the Queensland Young Achiever Award John Hutchinson in our The Trainer column. Hutchinson, 32, is the grand-son of Queensland Hall of Famer John Reimer and has been training for 14 years. His parents, Bill and Joanne, have also had a long association in the industry.
By MIKE HILL CHURCHABLE-based Kerry Hoggan is featured in this month’s The Trainer column. Hoggan, a former high school teacher, has been training for at least two decades although she’s been around greyhounds most of her life. With the benefit of ‘some very good owners’, she has built up her kennel numbers in recent years
By MIKE HILL THIS month we feature north Queensland’s Joan Newnham in out The Trainer column. Newnham says she just loves her dogs and it was this passion that drew her to greyhounds two decades ago. “I’d been breeding fox terriers but when my broodbitch died in the late 1990s I decided to buy a
By MIKE HILL THIS month we feature country Queensland trainer Louise Cameron in our The Trainer column. Cameron has just completed a highly successful year, winning the Bundaberg trainer-of-the-year title – for the second time. And her kennel star Cambla Lala just failed in the greyhound-of-the-year award, finishing one point behind winner, the Marie Richards-trained,
