AT 4.28pm on January 21st, Gowran Park bumper winner New To This Town was being welcomed back into the winner’s enclosure. The crowd applauded. Winning bets were being collected. Losing tickets were already ripped up. Racegoers strolled towards the exits talking about how My Murphy had landed the Goffs Thyestes Chase earlier in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, out on the track, far from the murmur of the crowd, 24 lads in wellies, all armed with pitchforks, fanned out across the track replacing sods of earth. They had already forgotten about the success of Thyestes day.

They worked quickly in the fading light that January afternoon for an hour until darkness forced them to surrender. But they were back replacing sods at 7am the next day. And at 7am the next day. And at 7am the day after that. Until every last sod was replaced, every square foot repaired. These tasks have to be completed quickly in winter. Rain water fills holes, making repairs extremely difficult, if not impossible. In three weeks it would be Red Mills day – the track had to be perfect.

Eddie Scally was one of the 24. Although Gowran Park’s manager, when it comes to the turf on his beloved course, with pitchfork in hand, Scally leads the line. He is dedicated. He is passionate. He has visions, for his track and for the industry. He leads by example. And he is not afraid to take a risk.

He is at the coal face of racecourse management at a provincial track but he stands up for Gowran Park as being a vital cog in Irish racing, and particularly in the south-east. Scally can envisage his course helping the racing industry reach a wider audience.

“We’re massively important,” explains Scally of Gowran’s position within Irish racing. “On our doorstep is the Willie Mullins operation and just a few miles away is Jim Bolger’s yard. They’re two of the biggest names in Irish racing. They regularly run horses here before winning bigger prizes, yet we have no live racing on terrestrial television from Gowran, or from any other south-east track. The Thyestes is a Grade A handicap, the same as the Grand National – that’s how good a race it is. Djakadam won the race last year and he’s now a leading contender for the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Every opportunity to showcase racing should be utilised.

“Leopardstown are on RTÉ a lot, but there are other tracks too. In England, Channel 4 cover lots of different tracks. Over here, the IRIS truck is fully kitted out with fantastic technology and are doing huge work – surely now it’d be cheaper than ever to broadcast Irish racing on terrestrial television?”

HOTEL MANAGEMENT

But getting Gowran Park on the box isn’t really one of Scally’s issues. He’s running a track whose attendances are growing, and whose corporate hospitality is regularly booked up. The secret of his success? Consistent hard graft. Coming from a hotel background – he managed two hotels in his native Wexford for the Treacy and Carlton hotel groups over a 15 year period – Scally treats every raceday “like a wedding or a banquet”.

“It’s the very same set up,” he says. “I want the public, from the moment they arrive until they leave, to have a good day out. I want the track looking beautiful, I want the staff looking the part, and I want the dining experience to be the best it can be. There’s lots of crossover between hotel management and holding a racemeeting, and it all comes down to the customer experience and perception.

“Our core customer comes from Wexford, Kilkenny and Carlow, in that order. For us, to entice a crowd from Kilkenny is a massive challenge. It’s a small city with a hell of a lot going on. We try to get involved with businesses in Kilkenny, and they in turn support us. We’ve built a very good relationship with Kilkenny GAA which triumphed last year with the Chairman Ned Quinn asking the public to support the racecourse. It was a huge endorsement, which has worked. Interest has spiked on the golf front here – we’ve had over 100 new members (an increase of 33%). The All-Ireland winning squad played a round of golf here the week before appearing at Croke Park.

“The year 2015 was our best since the recession. We had fog on Thyestes day so we started the year on the back foot, but finished the year very strongly.

“The gates on Thyestes day this year were marginally up but we completely sold out the corporate hospitality (up nearly 500 people on last year).”

Indeed, corporate hospitality plays a large part of Gowran Park’s raceday success, even for a weekday meeting. For a racecourse manager, it’s a nightmare scenario to have a fixture cancelled for any reason. Worse when it’s the course’s flagship meeting. In 65 years, only one Thyestes meeting was abandoned (2010). Always scheduled for a Thursday, that Thyestes was rescheduled for the following Saturday but the gate was down some 50%, and the corporate end suffered too.

Scally explains that the corporate world only want to dine midweek. “The corporate environment needs to be held from Monday to Friday. Executives see the weekend as their ‘down time’ to be spent with families, not at a business day out, whereas hotels have to be busy on a Saturday and Sunday. But there’s no way we’d swap our Thursday Thyestes day for a Saturday!”

However, next Saturday, Connolly’s Red Mills will take over Gowran Park. And hopefully Vautour, who may run in the Red Mills Trial Hurdle as a prep for Cheltenham.

“Red Mills have 36 years of unbroken sponsorship here,” says Scally. “Their managing director Joe Connolly is also chairman of the racecourse here, so we’re very lucky. They send tickets to every customer and also feed some 2,500 people. The levels they go to are extraordinary – it’s brilliant what they do. It would be incredible if Vautour were to run here next Saturday – it would certainly boost the gate.

“Gowran Park needs Goffs Thyestes day and Red Mills day, and more days like them. The television money doesn’t come in on my radar at all because if that wasn’t there, how would we survive?”

You get the impression, Scally would find a way.

EDDIE'S OPINIONS . . .

ON TRACK DEVELOPMENTS

"We recently compiled a five-year plan for Gowran Park. Phase one is the refurbishment of the current entrance area. We’re constructing a new entrance building which will be fresh but will fit in with track façade, and we’re going to refurbish the existing toilet block. It should be finished before July this year.

"The next phase consists of a brand new Owners & Trainers bar adjacent to the parade ring, outside the weigh-room door. We’ll get started on that in October and it’ll be ready by March 2017. From March 5th, the Denny Cordell suite will be used to feed owners with a runner. We know what owners do for racing and we want to look after them.

"Out on the track, we’ve got plans in place to construct slip trenches – which are drains to deal with lots of rain very quickly. The chases finish here in March and work will begin straight away."

ON WATERING

"The single biggest challenge to racecourse management is watering. When you turn on the taps, you know someone is not going to be happy. There’s only seven winners a day, so it’s usually the other 75 who won’t be happy. Jockey welfare is always to the fore of your mind, and we want them to be happy and comfortable with the ground. Ask our clerk of the course Paddy Graffin and he’ll tell you that it’s impossible to have a perfectly watered track. He tells me to close my eyes and walk track without hitting a hard patch so that it feels the exact same all the way around. We’ve watered in October for three years in row, and then in November, the ground becomes bottomless. Every horse is king of someone’s yard, and we want the track to be perfect for everyone."

ON SPONSORS

"When Goffs started showcasing National Hunt sales and we were lucky that the Thyestes had no sponsor at the time – it was a perfect fit for such a historic race. Joey Cullen and Niamh O’Hehir work really hard, and help us with advertising, marketing and promoting the day.

"Goresbridge Sales are just a mile down the road, and the Galmoy Hurdle is sponsored by Eimear Mulhern who personally sponsors it year-in year-out. This year it was great to have a British-trained runner in At Fishers Cross. It was very exciting to see Rebecca Curtis here and lovely to have her around the place talking to people about her horses."

ON FIXTURES

"Probably the worst day ever to be handed a racing fixture is the Saturday after Cheltenham. We race on March 19th, and after a long week for everyone watching Cheltenham from Tuesday to Friday, I don’t know how I’m going to sell that day. The Kilkenny hurlers are coming here that day and we may do something with the grooms, but it’s a hard sell.

"We’re racing on Aintree Grand National day. It’s not quite the disaster you’d think – it’s a flat meeting on a jumps day but corporate-wise, it goes quite well. Last year, we’d a couple of stag and hen parties which gave one of our quieter, weaker meetings a bit of atmosphere.

"The Cat Laughs Festival is in Kilkenny on the June Bank Holiday weekend, and as part of the Festival, they’re coming racing on June 6th.

"So at Gowran we’ll have top comedians doing improv, stand-up shows, and we’re even toying with the idea of having two of them commentate on a race!

"The concept of having bands play after racing is successful, so we’d thought we’d try something unique.

"I love the idea of trying out new ideas and of keeping Gowran Park relevant. I’m lucky that the board here are very proactive and supportive."

ON OWNERS

"Racetracks are seemingly taking heat from all angles when it comes to catering for owners. I think racecourses unfairly take the brunt of most of the criticism.

For someone to suggest that an owner should receive five complimentary tickets from the racecourse and be fed as well would cost a track like Gowran Park roughly €119,000 per year.

"Expectations have to be realistic. You cannot compare a HRI-owned track to an independently run track like Gowran, whose board is unpaid and all profits are reinvested. Racecourses in Ireland are graded into levels one, two and three, and there should be different minimum standards for each category.

"I want to enhance owners’ experiences when they have a runner, but with limited resources, these things take time to implement.

"The buzz argument at the moment is that owners have to be fed when they come racing, but if we gave a free chicken curry to every owner at Gowran Park, would that convince the owner to keep a horse in training? Would it encourage more owners to enter the industry?"