BLAST FROM THE PAST
ANDREW RATTRAY - Club Administrator
ANDREW RATTRAY - Club Administrator
There has never been a club administrator, before or since, to match the achievements of Andrew Innes Rattray. That is partly because he was one of the first and worked in an era when innovation, efficiency and the fight for respectability were paramount aims all of which Rattray achieved through sheer dedication.
His vision and especially his early "centralisation" activities were decades ahead of their time.
Rattray was the Secretary of the Heathcote Racing Club in the early 1880s when it hosted the first full trotting meeting in the South Island. He then became secretary of the body which would become the New Zealand Trotting Association. All southern (and later Northern) clubs, racing and trotting who wanted to hold trotting races, joined for a small fee and set out the dates. You could argue it was an early Racing Board model. With Rattray a driving force this became the NZ Trotting Conference in 1896 gaining the full and vital support of the Auckland clubs.
Soon afterwards Rattray was one of the leaders in the formation of Addington Raceway and the NZ Metropolitan Trotting Club. Even then, more than a century ago, Rattray handled the Canterbury, Lancaster Park, New Brighton and Plumpton Park clubs all centralised on his office as well as some Racing Clubs. Similar innovation around the country 60 years later would be hailed as a "major breakthrough" in administration.
Addington was a wilderness before it was transformed into a racetrack and Rattray's work, organisation and sometimes his own money, was vital to its growth. To match the surrounds of Riccarton the club spent thousands of pounds to make it a showplace on the Rattray "build it and they will come" philosophy. Within a few years the popularity of trotting in Canterbury the so-called "illegitimate" sport rivalled and then outdid crowds at Riccarton an incredible achievement in less than a decade and for which Rattray could take most of the credit.
Rattray even got Prime Ministers to tour every city trotting tracks during visits to Christchurch. He championed the tote, whose possibilities he had noted when it was introduced in 1880, to help pay for facilities (clubs got 10%) and hired off duty policemen to run bookmakers off the course. He often caught the dawn train to Lyttleton to check out horse arrivals so there would be no "ringers" at any of his meetings.
Rattray could be stern and set high standards for his assistants nearly all of whom were also administrators of high calibre. He was an ideal mixture of discipline, honour, discretion and aggression and his air of authority gave him added stature. He was incorruptible and gave trotting the leadership image it so desperately needed. Sometimes the secretary's office could be threatened with invasion by irate punters in the days before stipendiary stewards. It was a tough job.
True, he had many supporters but their is little doubt that Rattray was virtually the president, secretary, treasurer and organiser of the major clubs of that era. He was the secretary to the New Zealand Metropolitan Club for an incredible 41 years.
For many years his memory was honoured through the Rattray Handicap, a feature at the NZ Cup meeting before sponsorship eliminated the tributes to many outstanding trotting administrators such as he - more's the pity.
Credit: David McCarthy writing in Harnessed Aug 2016
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