One of my more notable early sporting achievements was winning the 'Champion Boy Rider' (dead-heat with my old mate, and now-notable veterinarian, Ian Gollan) at the 1954 Dungog Show. 

I have a genuine long-standing affinity for horses and, so, am quite disturbed by the news this week that 'jiggers' and cocaine were found among the stable equipment of prominent Melbourne Cup winning trainer Darren Weir.

Jiggers and cocaine? Surely this is taking the 'carrot and the stick' approach to animal training quite a bit too far...

Seriously though, I was familiar with 'jiggers' (or 'cattle prods' as they used to be called) from the days when my father transported semi-trailer loads of cattle and the prodders were used to 'encourage' animals laying down into a standing position to avoid them being trampled to death.

The idea of them being used on racehorses I find to be both surprising and shocking.

I had a google and it turns out this appalling tactic is neither new nor all that uncommon. 

In the days before proper stewardship and the associated scrutiny the devices were often actually utilised during the races.

When it became impossible to get away with this anymore a Pavlovian approach was adopted whereby the horses were (are?) shocked during training simultaneously with some other stimuli so that later, during the race, the horse, with the application of the stimuli alone would believe it was about to be shocked.

This is clearly unacceptable.

As an animal lover I confess to a certain uneasiness as to aspects of the sport, while at the same time acknowledging that there's nothing like a 'day at the races,' and I have enjoyed plenty of them.

I have been extremely happy at the incremental removing of the use of the whip, but this progress seems small to the point of irrelevance in light of the allegations against Weir. 

I can't help but wonder what else may be going on.

Is Weir the only one? 

You'd hope so, but I have my doubts. Is this, perhaps, the tip of a larger scandal - the greyhounds all over again but on an even larger scale?

I received a lot of great responses to last week's 'Maitland's Greatest Sportsperson' column.

A veritable Pandora's Box was opened. My three offerings of Darcy, Barton and Panno have been widely debated, with opinions, often quite vigorous, varying from general agreement to outright challenge. 

I received quite a few other suggestions, including a fairly ambitious self-nomination from an under thirteens cricketer from Thornton and also quite a few less serious offerings describing, in the larger scheme of things, quite ordinary accomplishments in the lower grades. 

So far, though, there have been, as far as I can tell, no serious alternatives offered to my three, but keep them coming. I'm sure there must be possibilities I've overlooked.

The 2019 Australian Open Tennis ended last week witnessed by massive audiences both at the event and on television and for record prize-money: $62.5 million. 

What I find both interesting and concerning about this is the discrepancy between such a flamboyant appearance of a thriving sport and the statistics which show that Australian tennis, in the last two decades, has demonstrated a decline in its participation rate of 35 per cent. 

As I noted a couple of weeks back Australian participation rates in competitive sports have been, with a couple of notable exceptions, in steady decline virtually across the board.

People are still exercising - numbers for walking, jogging and gym based activities are all on the rise - but competitive sports such as tennis, squash, golf, hockey, the various football codes (with the exception of soccer), netball etc. are all going substantially down.

Many of these once flourished in our school sports systems and inter-school competitions, the loss of which, I feel, must be a significant contributing factor in the downward trajectory of our competitive sports rates.

Also, with so many of these sports now existing predominantly in private spheres the expenses for families have become prohibitive. 

By the time you pay the various fees plus equipment and uniform costs you can easily be looking at upwards of $500 for a kid to play a season.  And that's just one kid. I don't see how larger families can manage it.

(Your thoughts? Email brian-burke7@outlook.com)