An Irishman's Diary

MY six per-cent shareholding in a greyhound has held up surprisingly well during the recession so far. It’s more than a decade old at this stage, and it wasn’t always so successful. But now at last, the critics who sneered at me for not getting into bank stocks instead have the smile on the other side of their faces.

True, our 17-member syndicate has never received a dividend, and there remains little prospect of one. Second-quarter earnings for 2009 were again nil, as in most previous quarters. The crucial difference is that the rate at which the syndicate loses money has slowed dramatically since the downturn: leaving our bank balance – paradoxically – at an all-time high.

Careful analysis of the figures suggests that a key factor in this turnaround has been that, for a couple of years now, we haven’t had a dog. The last one retired, coincidentally, around the same time as the Celtic Tiger. Since when, members’ monthly contributions have continued to accrue, with no training or veterinary bills to drain them. Deposit interest rates are of course low: but what with deflation and all, we’re ahead of the curve for the first time.

A wily Kerryman once gave me this hard-won financial advice: “Never own anything that eats while you sleep”. He meant horses in particular: in fairness to greyhounds, they don’t eat much, even when you’re awake. But the general wisdom of his adage holds true in my experience. If any readers are thinking of getting into greyhound syndication and hoping to profit from it, I can’t recommend the no-dog strategy highly enough.

Which said, our experiment on this score was accidental. By the time our last adventure derailed, some of the glamour of attending Harold’s Cross on wet Tuesday nights in November and seeing your dog lose yet again had worn off. The syndicate was at a crossroads, with opinion divided on whether we should continue in the sport or divert our savings into something more worthwhile.

Bank shares were probably mentioned: at the price they were then, we could have bought several. But at length it became clear the members’ emotions about the future ranged from apathy to complete indifference. So, at even greater length, we called an EGM to discuss the syndicate’s orderly wind-up.

The meeting was a bit like Twelve Angry Men; except there were only six of us (an unusually high turn-out) and nobody gave a toss. Also, we met in a pub, rather than a jury room. The only similarity with the movie was that there was initially a consensus in favour of us giving up, until one member, Henry Fonda-like, shocked everyone else by disagreeing.

The bit from the film where the others argued against him, sometimes revealing deep personal traumas that had influenced their initial stance, before coming around to his view one-by-one, didn’t happen either. We were in a pub, after all. Instead we all just shrugged, said “yeah, okay”, and agreed to give greyhound-racing one last chance.

SO IT WASrecently that the syndicate abandoned its most-successful-ever strategy. On an appointed evening, we went to Harold's Cross to see the proverbial man about a dog. Maybe he wasn't proverbial, exactly. But he was certainly more proverbial than the dog; which turned out to be a bitch.

Despite this, our trainer liked the look of her. So we agreed a price. And as always happens at the start of any new enterprise, optimism began to infect us anew. Maybe having failed during the boom, the syndicate would flourish in hard times.

Perhaps our latest investment would be another Mick the Miller (or, more realistically, Michelle): that legendary greyhound whose career coincided with the Wall Street Crash. Then an alarming thing happened. Agreement reached, we were about to go home when we noticed that a race had just been abandoned. A dog had keeled over in a collision; become disoriented; and then resumed running, but in the wrong direction.

If he continued his new course, he would have met the electric hare coming the other way: or worse, the other five dogs; all still going flat out in the right direction. So the organisers had no choice but to “kill” the hare and declare the race void, to the great annoyance of everyone involved.

Talk about omens! If this sort of thing had happened in ancient Rome, soothsayers would have presaged the fall of the empire, or worse. The stakes were not that high for us. Even so, the rogue dog appeared to be trying to tell us something; and as usual on these occasions, it was too late.

fmcnally@irishtimes.com