Keith Ballard helped save racing in Mount Isa: bookmaker

Former president and bookie Denis Comerford has praised the retiring jockey for his service.

By Matt Nicholls

The Mount Isa Race Club probably wouldn’t exist today if not for the likes of Keith Ballard, says bookmaker and former club president Denis Comerford, who says Keith and wife Denise stepped up to lead a recovery plan about 25 years ago.

Bookmaker Denis Comerford is a walking encyclopaedia when it comes to horse racing, but he spent little time talking about Keith Ballard’s long list of achievements in the saddle.

Instead, he wanted to steer the conversation in the direction of the retiring jockey’s achievements as a Mount Isa Race Club stalwart.

Around the turn of the century, the club found itself in big trouble as it struggled with the transition into the new age of racing.

A club that was once the envy of virtually every peer in the state was now haemorrhaging money.

“Back in the early days here in the 1960s, they used to get 400 or 500 blokes at the races every Saturday,” Mr Comerford said.

“There were 20 bookies at least, and the club was just thriving.

“It financed its own prizemoney and everything.

“Bookies paid $250 fielding fees back then, which is probably about $2000 in today’s money, and those bookies held a bit of money and it was a thriving sort of place.

“They raced every Saturday and every public holiday. Then the TABs came along and took some of the customers away and then the corporate bookies came along.

“That sort of crippled the club – back then they had a manager and a secretary – but the jobs that they did were taken away by the internet. Now, trainers do all of their nominations through Racing Australia but back then you would do it through your local club.

“So what happened is that the club just kept going but kept losing money because it was racing too often and on some of those meetings they were losing money.

“Even though they reduced the number of meetings to about 38, they were broke.”

Mr Comerford said it was Keith and Denise Ballard who led the charge to save the club.

Keith and Denise Ballard helped lead the charge to save the Mount Isa Race Club, says Denis Comerford.

“The club hadn’t paid their rates for two years; they hadn’t paid any BAS for four years and they were in real trouble,” he recalled.

“Keith and Denise sort of rallied the crowds and got Linda Huddy on board and they asked various people to try and form an emergency committee to solve the problem.

“They asked me to chair the emergency committee.

“We used to have a little list of things that had to be done before the next meeting.

“It was called an action item list where people would commit to doing something and when we might have it done by.

“We numbered them all and after 18 months we had more than 600 items, but they had all been done.”

MAILMAIN IS BORN

FINDING a new way to create new revenue for the club was the key to success, Mr Comerford said.

“We worked out we were losing $4000 a meeting because we were racing so often, so we had to reduce the number of meetings and trim down on the expenses,” he told North West Weekly.

“We did a deal with the tax department to pay our BAS off over a number of years. We knew we had to cut the number of meetings, so we had to have a new big day.

“It was the big days that could get you out of trouble. So we started off the Mailman Express as a big day in rodeo week.

“That was one of the things that sort of saved our arse.

“And Keith and Denise were vitally important in that process.

“All that work was just volunteer work. If Keith saw something that had to be done he’d get it done. He was brilliant in that way.”

Mr Comerford admitted that his family lent the Mount Isa Race Club $25,000, which was paid back in full, but said the loan itself wouldn’t have been enough.

“It took a lot of people a lot of work and Keith and Denise both played a big role in the recovery of the club,” he said.

Fast forward to 2024 and the Mount Isa Race Club races about a dozen times per year, although it still relies on the “big days” to get by, including the Mailman Express on the Thursday of rodeo week.

Mr Comerford said he would remember Keith Ballard as a very good and a very honest rider.

“Back in the day he was one of the top riders who would have won just about every feature race in the district,” he said.

“My best memory is probably a bad one because I think back to when he had a fall at McKinlay and all I remember is Denise running at the fence and clearing it by a foot.

“She went straight over the top to get out to him.”