5th June 2006, 12:10 PM
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Member
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Join Date: Jan 1970
Posts: 4,426
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TAB Dinosaur
I have not been into a TAB for sometime, but on the weekend I went in to see a horse go around as I was out and about.
It struck me immediately that the environment is pretty desperate and not conducive to an informed punter, rather quite full of people "trying their luck again this week".
The rushing around, the intelligence level of the conversations (myths and urban legends and conspiracy theories), the chatter during races and of course the poor odds, is it any wonder that serious punters would not set foot in there.
I had an mild disagreement with a patron, as I was trying to watch the race and he was rambling utter crap about who he knew and how a certain horse was going to win.
I asked him nicely "mate, would you mind if I can watch the race please, there's only a minute left of it."
This was not unreasonable as he was big noting as loud as he could during the entire race...and had a few suckers huddled around him.
His reply was "xxxx off"
Real nice, I said it in a friendly manner too.
Now I couldn't help hear the name of the horse he was talking about, (neither could anyone else), so I stayed to watch the race. It ran midfield.
As I left the TAB he was screaming at the T.V. about the jockey being dodgy.
It was obvious that the horse got a good run, but wasn't up to it.
As I left the TAB, a guy having a smoke out the front stopped me and said, "Don't worry about it, that guy is here every day, and every day he has a "special" that gets beaten easily and he's an obnoxious xxxx. In two hours he'll be asking for petrol money."
It all came rushing back to me like a bad nightmare, I'll never go in again.
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