Brian Fletcher finishes with Hawkesbury Race Club

The long time chief executive officer was handed the reins of the Panthers Group earlier this year, and was staying on at Hawkesbury Race Club to make the job easier for his replacement.

Fletcher spoke to the Gazette ahead of his impending departure, and spoke with great fondness of his 26 years at the club.

Stand Alone Saturday is the club’s biggest event of the year, and it is one of Fletcher’s two big legacy items he will leave behind.

The other, the motel business, which started in 2006, a year after the first Stand Alone Saturday, is the other achievement he is most proud of.

Fletcher, who started with the club in 1989 after 10 years at Coonamble Shire Council, said it was not easy to get a stand alone meeting, and he fought a four year battle to wrest a race weekend away from Randwick or Rosehill Gardens.

“Back in those days it was the Sydney Turf Club and the Australian Jockey Club. Neither of them wanted to give them a date up to Hawkesbury and I don't blame them either,” he said.

“There was a body called the Australian thoroughbred Racing Board and we applied for it through them a couple of times. They actually told me never to apply again and I thought well bugger them.

“So I went to Peter V’Landys, who had just come onto the scene, and he was receptive to it and he listened to what I had to say and he eventually gave us one.”

Fletcher said it was a unique thing at the time, although the concept had spread across Australia.

“I was the first one in Australia, and now they're in Queensland, Victoria, and they will be more in NSW,” he said.

“It is the way to go in the future. You have a carnival in town but then you come back to the ordinary race meetings. Why not have a big day in the Hawkesbury after the carnival?”

Fletcher also diversified the business of the race club and added a motel on the property, as well as the Ted McCabe Function Centre.

The motel is a rainy day insurance, literally, for the club. Last year’s Stand Alone Saturday, a meeting which raises more for the club in one day than the rest of the ordinary meetings combined, was rained out.

“It has been a great business and it secures the future of the club,” he said.

“No other race club has a business like it. If you have a few washed out meetings you still have an income.”

Fletcher said the idea came to him in a dream one night, and he rapidly set about establishing the motel, which now brings in $600,000 to $700,000 a year.

The motel side of the business is debt free, and Fletcher will leave the club knowing he was able to deliver profits every year he was at the top.

There have been many other improvements to race club business under Fletcher’s administration as well.

Recently, the club had the track significantly upgraded with new drainage systems and extended the home straight by 400-metres.

Fletcher said he was pleased he was able to host a charity race day for people who have cancer from Coonamble, his home town, over the past three years at the club.

Moving to his new job, Fletcher said he would take three basic business principles with him, which had served him well over the years at the race club.

“There is only one boss: the customer. He can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money elsewhere,” he said.

“Beware of little expenses, a small leak will sink a great ship.

“The quickest and easiest way to screw up your life is to take on too much debt.”

Before being appointed CEO of the Panthers Group, Fletcher had served on the board of directors for five years.

While many might consider managing a business as big as the Panthers a huge undertaking, Fletcher was at ease when asked about what was ahead.

He said he would be surrounded by talented people, in both the commercial arm of the operation and the football side.

“I've been at the Panthers since the March 1 running both places,” he said.

“I thought it would be daunting. It is such a big place. We have a big leagues club and football organisation and another five clubs as well.

“I seem to have fitted in well. I understand the business and the side of things and we have a new CEO of football [Corey Payne] so I am looking forward to it.”

Fletcher said while Panthers group was big now, it was going to be even bigger in the next few years.

“Financially we're in a terrific situation. We're about to build 869 units on the land and we're starting an aged care business in the future so it will be a very big precinct,” he said.

And to top it all off, in Fletcher’s opinion, the football team is in good hands and has a very bright future.

“We have a young football side who is very competitive at the moment. They’ll be there at the end of the year and going forward they only average 23 years of age so the future is good,” he said.

While excited to head up the Panthers, Fletcher is adamant he will miss the race club after so many years.

He said he was particularly sad to leave behind a lot of excellent and loyal staff, who had worked with him for a long time.

“I am looking forward to it. I am sad to be leaving. I feel I have achieved a lot since I've been here and I've got some very long term staff who have been very loyal to me,” he said.

Fletcher said he was thankful to have had such loyalty from his staff, and he took it as a sign he was doing right not just by his customers, but his employees as well.