Amazing how you've found those so quickly ! On a similar subject and onto a jockey mentioned a couple of pages back,  Gerry (GP) Kelly also has a connection with the Sheriff Hutton area, riding a few for MW Easterby at the same time Lucas was having his first stint there, and also breaking horses in from a small row of boxes next to a cottage that he probably rented from MW. They used him to break in the nutcases and he broke in a few for Michael Dickinson too. In the early 80's GP Kelly was the oldest jockey with a licence, and in the 90's he trained for a few years - had a horse called Distant King that won a couple of sprint handicaps.

VL
Gerry Kelly is still listed as Training in Sheriff Hutton.
Can you use Google Earth...if so put in Post Code YO60 6SY in the fly to box.
He is listed as training from 3 Church End Cottages...I think that's Mick's yard at the back there.

Tambourine - Is that "Racing in Yorkshire" website -
The currently one - called - www.goracing.co.uk/ ...

- or, an historic site, that I cannot find?

Thanks.

Yes - That IS Mick's yard - Three-quarters of a mile EastNorthEast of Kelly's

Entitled Carrick House on the map - but when you Blow-Up the Earth image to it's full size - then the overlay has the correct name of Sittenham Farm

Happy Valley

Mr. Eubank is listed as a Permit Holder in Carlisle in the late 60's early 70's.
The only thing I could find was this RP snippett.

March 5, 1976

A mixed day at Haydock for Barry Brogan. He is sent on to the Disciplinary Committee when the stewards do not accept his explanation for not turning up for three rides at the previous meeting, but does better when Brilliant Boy (Bob Clay) takes the novice chase from Raise Your Hat (Gordon Richards/Jonjo O'Neill).

Only two Haydock races are won by non-claiming riders. The other is the two-mile chase in which Phil Mangan partners Teddy Bear (Arthur Eubank) to victory over Emperor's Jade (Fred Rimell/Sam Morshead).

I remember the name but his reputation is as usual more parochial than universal.

i remember eubank hv,i seem to think he rode a bit as an amateur? although not sure at all,remember him having runners at catterick in my youth but can't recall any names,don't think it was him but who trained A Kinsman?

On this day in . . . 1968 Sir Ivor, trained by Vincent O'Brien and ridden by Lester Piggott, ends his racing career in a blaze of glory as he gets the better of Czar Alexander in the Washington DC International at Laurel Park in Maryland.

Piggott comes in for a slating from the American press, who reckon that he has ridden an abominable race by running the risk of getting boxed in. The Long Fellow is not impressed by the comments, and so when he was asked by US reporters after his success on Karabas the following year when he thought he would win, he replied: "About three weeks ago." 1983 A Kinsman, trained by John Brockbank and ridden by Geordie Dun, trounces Sir Marcu in the novice chase at Newcastle. The seven-yearold, who had won last season's Stayers' Hurdle at 50-1, again showed his liking for Prestbury Park with a ten-length defeat of the favourite Forgive 'n Forget in the SunAlliance Chase.

thanks tm,thought it was dun who rode him,yellow with black or brown hoops i think.

A Kinsman was trained by a fellow called Brockbank i think,pretty sure its maiden win was at sedgefield 33/1 but i think it had previously won a point.

PaulBu

the John Joyce floorman, it wasn’t the big guy from Liverpool who I think was called Sid, he was 18 stone 6foot4 bald head ex-boxer type, when he come running through the ring he always got on as you WOULD get out the way.

What on earth are we doing at 11.30pm chatting on a Thursday night, well it’s as someone once said to me Ronnie gambling’s in your blood.

Re our conversation last night do you remember a darlo bookmaker called Dougie Webster, he had a shop in Cockerton, where I’ve lived all my life.

PaulBU

the one opposite willow road was Dougie Webster’s it’s now a barbers, the one in cockerton was Ralph Sugden’s taken over by Stanley then by bill hills, I think the one on Chandos street was Franky Leas.

Can you remember Joyce’s floorman, he made George Forman look small.

Paul
Hope you're having a great time in Queensland....love that Goldwyn story ..quite a touch.

Here's a Tom O'Ryan piece from 1999 about the Legend that is MH Easterby.


When God created Mick Easterby, he obviously threw away the mould. Within minutes of climbing into his huge Mercedes, Yorkshire's very own son has steered off the road into a grass field and carried on through a ploughed one. Talking the whole time. About anything and everything.

"Yer know sum'it?" he says, "if you just trained 'osses all a'time, you'd go bloody mental. When yer've got an active brain like mine, yer must have a switch-off. I go round't farm. Farmin's easy. It's pure common sense, whereas in racin', there's so much unforeseen, horses goin' wrong. Most o't time, I love it. But if yer did nowt else bar train 'osses, you'd go off yer 'ead."

Play questions and answers with Easterby and never the twain shall meet. What do you think

about . . ? And off he goes again on a completely different tangent. By now, we're in the same car. But in a different field.

"When I first came to Sheriff Hutton in 1955, I had a rented yard and about 12 'osses. See that hill there? I used to take me 'osses in there every morning at six o'clock and gallop 'em. Gospel truth, I did it for four years and't farmer who owned't field never even knew I was using it!"

He heads off into yet another field. And switches to yet another subject.

"Do you want to know how to make money? Inflation, that's how to make money. Yer'll never make money by working, because yer taxed on it. Well, yer can make it, but yer can't keep the f****** stuff, can yer? Yer've got to buy things and keep things to make money. That's the secret. Let inflation take care of it.

"I bought land. Every chance I got. I love land. Yer know why? Because nobody can pinch land. They can walk on it, but they can't take it away. They can pinch your car, pinch your horse, pinch your cattle, pinch yer sheep. But they can't pinch land."

He's also got plenty of it. Quite how much, he's not prepared to say, but from the next field, looking down from a spectacular hilltop, he owns everything the eye can see - even with a pair of binoculars. He buys farms like the rest of us buy cornflakes. "I can't help meself," admits the man in the frayed shirt and old patched sweater, "I'm a joke, really."

Blunt and bold, wise and witty, crude and colourful, Easterby is very much his own man. It has been claimed that one of his speciality spits can hit the toe-cap of a well-polished boot at 20 feet. And he doesn't give a toss whether he's in the company of princes or paupers when he does it.

Predictably, he had been reluctant to do this so-called interview.

"Dunno," he replied when asked. "I'm a bit doggy on those sort o' things. What's it for?" "Racing Post," I tell him. "Are you getting paid to do it?" "Well, er, yes, I'll get paid." "Good job one of us is getting sum'it then, in'it !"

Not that you'd know it by the way he goes on, but he was 68 last month. He promptly sang Happy Birthday to himself over the loudspeaker at Newcastle races. It was a typical, high-spirited Easterby stunt. Most of the others are unprintable.

"Yer don't need to spend a lot of money in life to enjoy yerself. It's good company yer need," he says. "I love beer," he adds, smacking his lips. "Beer

is . . . relaxing. It stops yer brain ticking. I go to t'pub every night. Two or three pints and I sleep like a log. Yer could take t'roof off me house and I wouldn't know yer'd taken it. And next morning, I wake up as fresh as a baby."

You'd need to get up early to put one over on him.

"What you need in this game is an eye to buy winners. It's simple to go to't sales and spend big money on an 'oss, a half-brother to this or a half-sister to that. Anyone can do that. But it's not how much yer can spend, it's how little yer can spend. I just love buying a cheap 'oss and making it a good 'oss."

"What was your best-ever bargain," I ask, expecting him to opt for his 1,000 Guineas winner Mrs McArdy (bought in a job-lot of 10 for only 6,000gns), or his champion sprinter Lochnager, a mere 600gns purchase? "Good 'ealth," he replies. "If yer've got good 'ealth, yer've got everything; nowt else matters."

Easterby has horses spread all over the place. His boxes range from age-old prefabs with corrugated roofs held down by breeze blocks to DIY barn conversions. The doors and fronts, all made in his own workshops, are bolted in such a way that they can be opened up completely. "Days of mucking out by hand are gone," he explains. "We do it all with t'machine once a fortnight."

We're now at Dalby, his second yard. Neat as a pin it might be, but it lends itself to a bygone age reminiscent of All Creatures Great And Small. Easterby trains his eagle eye over 'Little and Large' - his good sprinters, Westcourt Magic and Blessingindisguise - and seems suitably satisfied.

Does he ever weigh horses? "Nah," he says, "don't have to. I can tell what weight a horse has lost, whether he's too fat or too thin, just by looking at 'em. I'm not being big-headed. It's called being a stockman. It's the same with sheep or cattle going to t'market. I can sort 'em out in't blink of an eye."

Back in the Merc, the conducted tour continues. "See that hill? Rises 150 foot in five and a half furlongs. Brilliant it is for bad-legged 'osses. I hold t'record yer know for winning races with broken-down 'osses. I'm a bloody artist at it. Can't tell yer what I do, else everyone would know as much as me."

Into yet another field, and Easterby stops off at a gallop he's making. He goes into great detail about drainage and the pros and cons of various surfaces. He's tried them all - woodchip, sand, dirt, plus more subtle combinations of pig hair and mushroom compost.

"I just love making gallops. Experimenting. It's like a drug to me. I get a kick out of it. It's the same as farms. I love converting things, changing things. If I hadn't been a trainer, I'd have been a builder."

But not, it seems, an inventor. As we drive past one of his four horse-walkers, he says: "It vexes me that I wasn't the first to think of those things. I had me chance. When I worked for me Uncle Walter, he had one of those big wheels for grindin' corn, with a cart'oss walking round. I never thought of doing t'same sort of thing for a race'oss. Should'a done. I'd have made a fortune."

The fact that Easterby has made a fortune in other areas is neither here nor there. Money has never changed him and never will, despite the sign which hangs in his office, showing a bundle of readies, and proclaiming, 'If I can't take it with me, I'm not going'. For all his banter, the streetwise trainer is as shrewd as they come, as sharp as a tack. "I'm not a great believer in luck," he says. "Everyone needs a bit, but luck lasts only so long. At end of t'day, it's down to yourself, down to using your 'ead.

"Training's like a hobby to me, a way o' life. I love it. It seems harder now than it used to be, maybe 'cos I'm getting older. I'm not an easy man to work with, 'cos I'm not an easy delegator; I want to do everything meself. But I've got a wonderful assistant in Robin O'Ryan; I can just leave it to him if I want to."

His lifetime in the game has taught him plenty, but, he admits, not everything. "Just when you think you've got it right, it goes wrong. That's the thing about racing, you can't conquer it, it's a game you can't master. You're like a lamb to t'slaughter."

Back at the main yard, my tour almost over, my education almost complete, Easterby slams shut the door of his over-worked Mercedes and contemplates training on into the Millennium.

It begs one final question. Does he ever see the day when he'll say enough is enough?

He thinks long and hard. About how much he loves what he does. And for once, he drops his guard ever so slightly. "Yer know sum'it," admits racing's most colourful character, "I wouldn't mind dying in harness."

How did the golf go Happy Valley? Still waiting with great anticipation for the Carr/Piggott anecdote

Paul
Just 2 old farmers bangin' on about 'osses eh...but what a day to remember.
I always wanted to live in Middleham,Leyburn or Malton just so I  could sit in the pubs and take in the craic back then.
Wouldn't be the same today I'm sure.

Now what about Dave "Donkey" Dutton. Another character from the Northern jump circuit in the 80s.

Re Arthur Eubank,

here's a piece written by John Budden in the Evening Mail from March 2006:-




THREE, two and – hopefully – one.

That would be the ideal sequence which will see Arthur Eubank and Nita, his wife, back in the winner’s circle at Hexham on Sunday.

Bromley Abbey is the mare at the centre of attention and she is expected to make her third appearance of the past month in the two and a half mile handicap hurdle.

The home bred eight-year-old may have taken rather longer than the Eubank family might have anticipated but, as Arthur said at Ayr last week: “The penny may finally have dropped.

“She has been so laid back that it has taken all this time to get her to realise what racing is meant to be about. We were pleased with the way she went at Catterick and delighted with what she has done this time at Ayr.”

Today’s racegoers might be perplexed about the name of Eubank, but those with longer memories (and perhaps those getting a bit long in the tooth!) will recollect the Eubank brothers Arthur and Jonsol riding a plethora of point-to-point winners back in the 1960s and 1970s.

Both rode with conspicuous success for John Brockbank, the Westward permit-holder and former Carlisle steward.

Arthur was much sought-after by northern trainers requiring an experienced horseman to partner their runners in amateur riders races under rules, and he booted home plenty of winners for the late John Dixon, whose son John junior continues in the same vein at the family farm in Thursby.

Names like Kilmogany Five and Crofton Hall slip easily off the tongue while Teddy Bear II, his own horse, was also a household name in these parts.

Since retiring from the saddle, Arthur Eubank has remained closely connected with the Cumbrian and Border jumping scene both as a breeder and permit-holder at his farm near Cockermouth, and as a valued steward throughout the region.acting at courses as far apart as Carlisle and Ayr.

...Bromley Abbey's dam was Little Bromley, who was the last winner that Arthur Eubank trained.

paulbu,

The Mick Easterby/Terry lucas brings back happy memories.

I think the Singapore trainer, the late Ivan Allan was involved.

A horse called Cherry Corner? sticks in the mind. Not a great horse but he won me a tidy sum.

Sparrow
Only vaguely remember Michael....I guess he was riding for about 9 years so you'd think there would be stories aplenty but nothing.
Here he is on his Ascot winner which was his 1st.

[   This image is no longer available.   ]

Here is the Pathe link to that race ....good for its time.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/royal-ascot-22

The only thing I found on his death was this clip from a Missouri paper....how mad is that!



http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LulTAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9zgNAAAAIBAJ&pg=6049,1235467&dq=michael+hayes+jockey&hl=en

ged many thanks for the arthur ewbank news, albeit sad

ribero you are right, of course, i should have been thanks the T.Man for the Teddy Bear reminder, so thanks T.Man

Donkey Dutton is a good golfer, btw, and loves nothing more to hustle you for a few quid - as I know to my chagrin!!