This Armchair Punter has woken up on the wrong side of the bed and Mr Grumpybum is handing out a few whacks in his first-up run at this column.
TOO MANY COOKS
If I paid any attention to Sky Racing's huge stable of tipsters I would probably end up having a spell in the funny farm.
I rarely turn on Sky before the races but I did on Saturday morning and I reckon there were at least six tipsters throwing out tips for the one Sydney meeting in the space of an hour.
Rookie punters who watched all the live and pre-recorded preview shows on the various Sky platforms would end up far more confused than when they tuned in.
Sky has so many tipsters chucking in their five cents worth you end up getting tips on half the fields in many races.
Too many cooks are spoiling the broth.
The cynic in me thinks Sky likes having numerous tipsters tipping lots of different runners so it validates the punter's opinion.
Basically they want punters thinking whatever they have circled in the paper can win – thus increasing turnover.
It would be a boring world if everyone thought the same way, and extra information in racing is a good thing, but having so many different tipsters/tips has reached the point of ridiculousness.
While I'm on my rant, wouldn't it be fabulous if some of the tipsters out there could give themselves a spell on twitter?
I'm all for putting up a set of tips on twitter and if you tip a 20-1 winner you are certainly entitled to give yourself a bit of a spruik.
But the blokes who persist in publicly patting themselves on the back for tipping a $2.10 winner at Muswellbrook on a Monday or Tamworth on a Tuesday need to have a long, hard look at themselves.
CRAIG WILLIAMS' CLASS
I have covered two decades of sport from cricket to rugby league to racing and I've always thought it's easy to be a good-day performer.
What I mean by that is there are plenty of sportspeople who are happy to play up to the media and be good guys/girls when things are fine and dandy for them.
But I have the ultimate of respect for the bad-day performers, those who still front up and aim up when things aren't going so well.
These are the sportspeople who don't turn to water or look for somewhere to hide when everything goes pear-shaped. They are essentially the same people on good days and bad.
Craig Williams is one of those and he went up another notch in my books, showing why he is a true champion when he made a classy apology for his controversial ride on second favourite Charlevoix at Caulfield.
Williams was copping it from everywhere and could easily have battened down the hatches and not aimed up but he said he felt terrible and remorseful.
It was a horror show as Williams ran into plenty of rumps in the straight on fifth-placed Charlevoix which almost certainly should have won.
Charlevoix's trainer David Hayes said he hadn't had a bigger hard luck story all year and suggested high Melbourne winds had played some role in the gelding's position approaching the home turn.
One punter summed up the prevailing mood on twitter.
"Did Williams think there was another lap to go?" he raged.
Another tweeted: "I have to see the head on I suppose but the apparent lack of urgency is hard to cop."
Williams soon showed his champion qualities when he went from the outhouse to the penthouse, producing a lovely winning rode on Shamport in the next.
But he didn't lap up the plaudits for that ride, instead going out of his way to apologise to Charlevoix backers and saying it was the worst luck he had experienced.
Whatever you think of Williams and his ride on Charlevoix (and clearly it wasn't good), you have to admire the way he tackled the issue head on.
Mind you, I wasn't one of these who backed Charlevoix!
SILLY STUFF IN THE SUNSHINE STATE
Is racing in Brisbane at the moment really so good that it deserves 10 races on a Saturday?
The Armchair Punter is striking a medal for anyone who sat through all 10 Brissy races – and there were some pretty dusty affairs amongst them.
The first race jumped at 11.10am before many punters had turned on the telly and before some had polished off their bacon and eggs.
The traditional eight-race Brisbane card was inflated to nine recently when Racing Queensland in their wisdom decided to add an extra $30,000 race (who really cares?) to the Saturday metro card.
And there was an additional race on top of that this weekend with authorities deciding to split two races which offered up the last of the QTIS 3YO bonuses.
There were a few decent horses racing (Prioritise is a promising galloper) but the end result was generally a yawn fest. And some of the races really only reinforced the chasm in quality between Brisbane races and those in southern states.
Spare a thought for the poor old Doomben track, which has so far done a magnificent job given Eagle Farm has so often been out of play.
Doomben has had so much traffic recently it is only a matter of time before it has major headaches of its own.
FUNK IT UP
This Armchair Punter has always been an advocate for more innovations in racing, as it is a sport which mostly doesn't sell itself.
Rusted-on punters will bet anytime, anywhere, but most of the rest of the population only get seriously interested at Melbourne Cup time or when horses like Black Caviar or Winx come along.
What better time than the horses birthday this week to spark more some conversations about what horse racing should look like in the future.
Surely it must centre around the consumer and their experience.
One of the more funky ideas I have heard comes from a marketing man who suggests an innovative way of getting racegoers back to empty tracks.
"How cool would it be one day if you could be at the track and purchase those virtual reality goggles? You could select which horse you want for each race and you see what the jockey sees during the race," our man says.
Sounds far-fetched? They are already looking into that sort of stuff in Aussie cricket's Big Bash. And VR technology is a big part of many American sports.
Anything which can broaden racing's fan base and make it more appealing to the next generation is surely worth debating and exploring.
JOCKEYS DESERVE EVERY CENT
Jockey premiership winners across the nation rightly received plenty of accolades but we should also spare a thought for the fallen brigade.
Riding 500kg+ racehorses is a dangerous business and I don't begrudge any big-earning hoops one red cent of what they earn.
For every jockey driving a flash sportscar and living in a harbourside mansion there is another busting his guts for a few bucks on a goat track in the bush.
Let's not forget when we bag jockeys on social media for a bad ride, they are risking life and limb every day on the race track.
This racing season has tragically seen the deaths of present and former jockeys including Darren Jones, Roger Booth, Donna Philpot and Brian Mason.
And Toowoomba trackwork riders Ben Saunders and Wade Clasohm will spend their lives confined to wheelchairs after a fall in April.
Next Saturday is Jockey Celebration Day and we should all get behind it.
RACING GEOGRAPHY LESSON
You know you are a punter when you are an expert at geography despite never taking the subject at school.
Punters got another geography lesson on Saturday when they sat through meetings at Roma (500km north-west of Brisbane) and Coonabarabran (500km north-west of Sydney) on Sky 1.
I was going to give it a bit of a panning considering few had probably heard of any horses running at either track and it took away from coverage of the best metropolitan Saturday racing products.
I have no problem with Sky 1 showing these sort of races on Sundays or other days but I don't generally like it when good Saturday races are on.
But having said that, with the Caulfield meeting abandoned due to high winds, it at least filled in some time and gave us a little look at some off-the-beaten track racing.
You would have thought though, especially with Caulfield called off, that Sky would have found time on one of its channels to show the Sydney protest from the stewards' room?
As a journalist, I find it fascinating to be in the stewards room for protests and I reckon the majority of TV viewers find them compelling viewing as well.
PUNTER PULLS DOWN BOOKIE'S PANTS
Mark down one for the punters over the bookies.
The Armchair Punter loves the story out of Brisbane, reported by my good friend Nathan Exelby in The Sunday Mail, about a punter who got one over an overly enthusiastic bookie's clerk.
The clerk paid out a four-figure sum early on Rosehill winner Wild 'N' Famous but was left red-faced when the horse lost the race in the stewards' room.
The punter made a quick exit for the Doomben gates with plenty of cash stuffed in his pockets.
FORGET ME
Zourkhan gets a spell in the sin bin after an ordinary effort at Rosehill.
My name is Billy not Silly and I'd normally be reluctant to put the pen through a Chris Waller import, especially one which has won at Flemington.
But there just seems too many quirks to this guy to back with any confidence in the future.
For starters it is always a worry when you see Hugh Bowman say of a horse: "He was not particularly genuine in his performance today."
Even Waller has admitted in the past the Sharmadal gelding is an awkward horse to train.
The key to Zourkhan is clearly getting him on a soft track but even then I wouldn't want to be on.
FOLLOW ME
Call me Captain Obvious but I am following D'Argento .
Chris Waller's grey colt is about to turn three and the sky could be the limit.
The son of So You Think has now won two from two and is doing it all on raw natural ability.
Backed off the map around Australia, he showed a great will to win as he knuckled down for a fight in the final stages at Rosehill.
His narrow win gave favourite backers some heart palpitations in the run but was probably even more meritorious given Waller seemed surprised he was so short ($1.75) coming to town off a Newcastle win.
He broke Danewin's class record, set back in 1994, and Hugh Bowman said post-race the colt would only going to get better once he matured in the head and got out over more distance.
Feedback, questions or some news left of centre - email ben.dorries@racenet.com.au
