COMMITTEE stalwarts Frances Knaap and Ron Carroll are hanging up the field glasses after almost five decades of combined service to the Pakenham Racing Club.
Saturday’s big Guineas Day meeting, the Spring Racing Carnival opener, heralded their last official day of duty to the club.
They both leave knowing the club is in a great position – given the much vaunted most to a world class track at Tynong – and are now happy to leave the responsibility in younger hands.
“It was inevitable,” Ron said. “We weren’t going to be there forever.”
Chairman Don Duffy paid tribute to their long and loyal service, particularly in more recent times which were pivotal to the future of the club.
Three new committee people have been appointed (also filling the vacancy left by the recently retired George Dore) – local trainer and businessman Michael Phillips, real estate agent and horse owner Evan Broadbent and his cousin Michelle Webster, a noted local sportsperson and racing fan.
Ron Carroll’s passion for racing came as a child, having grown up in the Western District, the son of Koroit onion farmers.
The family moved to Melbourne when Ron was six, but they would regularly pop young Ron on the train to return home to the Western District to stay with relatives, who were right into their racing.
Ron found his way to Pakenham in 1956 to take up a teaching position at the new consolidated school.
He recalls that on the very first day of school that year, principal Charlie Hicks enacted an amended timetable, usually employed for the safety of children during times of fire and flood. However, this amendment was due to the Pakenham Cup being run that day, which back then was held on the first Wednesday in February.
Ron says he came to Pakenham for a couple of years, but ended up staying 60. He met his wife Val, a fellow teacher, and they have made it their home.
He has seen all but one Pakenham Cup since that first one back in 1956 – and that was only because he and the family spent a year in Christchurch on a teaching exchange.
“I’m happy they are having two cups this year, because now I can say I’ve seen 60 cups in 60 years,” he laughed.
Ron’s first official involvement with racing came through the annual St Patrick’s picnic races on New Year’s Day.
In 1989 he was invited to join the committee, filling the huge vacancy created by the sudden death of chairman Peter Ronald, whom Ron credits as being instrumental in the club’s survival, even to this day.
He says it was Mr Ronald who held out when racing chiefs insisted clubs who owned their own land hand it over to the industry. Pakenham held out, which years down the track allowed it to sell up and find a better venue.
On the committee, Ron developed an interest in the welfare of trainers, who with the odd exception were “battlers from the bush”. He devoted a lot of his time on the committee to championing their cause.
He took great pleasure in their successes and says he was thrilled a few years back when Joy Bourke, who started as a picnic trainer, saddled up the favourite in the sprint at Flemington on Melbourne Cup Day.
He has dabbled a bit in horse ownership himself over the years.
Frances Knaap didn’t have the same grounding in racing, but soon acquired a love for the caper.
Her involvement started back in 1972, when then club secretary David Bourke asked her to do a bit of typing. That soon evolved into part-time work (school hours) and then a permanent role in the 1980s.
She served as assistant secretary to David Bourke, then his brother Gavan in 1983 when David joined the VRC committee.
Frances became secretary in her own right in 2001.
In 1993 she broke ground by being elected to the club committee – the first female in country Victoria to hold that position.
Frances said the club was fortunate to have had a well-functioning committee, particularly in more recent years, and that they all got on well.
“The racing industry has been good to me,” she said. “I have made a lot of friends over the years.
Most notable would be her friend of 40 years Yvonne Blackwood, a Pakenham committee colleague who held the secretary’s position at Cranbourne Turf Club for many years.
Frances’s husband Hank and two of their children Michael and Jenni share her love of racing.
Jenni (Stewart) worked for a while in the industry, including a 12 month stint at the British Jockey Club, and Hank and Michael have owned a few horses over the years. They have a share in recent city winner Black Tomahawk.
Both Ron and Frances agree that the move to Racing.com Park has secured racing for Pakenham for the next 100 years.
“We could have been like Kooweerup and Nar Nar Goon, who ‘once had a racetrack’,” Ron said. “We are needed by the industry now.”
Frances said there was no real sense of sadness having to leave to old Pakenham track behind.
“If we didn’t come out here (to Tynong) we wouldn’t be racing, so we were going to lose that old track anyway,” she said.
Ron has a couple of parting wishes for the new committee.
He would like to see the wetlands developed and promoted as a world class environmental area and the Pakenham name retained at the new track.
He was horrified to see the Herald-Sun race guide refer to the venue as only Racing.com Park.
“We have to have Pakenham in there as well,” he insists.
