Thanks Wayne however the bird has flown. Leroy is walking away from the sport for the time being. In his words "its just too hard". Maybe why I am a little emotional about the industry and the way it is heading. I gave my license up for the same reason, however will need to look at getting it back to sort the paddock full of horses out before retiring altogether. Leroy has had a good introduction into the sport working with leading stables. Due to not being a big name in the industry he was not given the driving opportunities he thoroughly deserved in my biased opinion. This led to him not believing in himself as a driver and employing others to complete this chore on many occassions. As for training he trained 13 individual winners last year including the Ararat trotters cup, the home bred Vicbred final for 2 year old fillies and the ladyship in Adelaide. The stable earned over $100000 last year in stakemoney,with bonuse's included. He was over the moon to train his first metropolitan winner, which he also drove, only to have his winners interview cut short by the commentator announcing a protest. One of the stables who like winning everything, (including trials if the recent report regarding Josh Aitken is correct) protested. Thats his right to protest and the stewards right to give Aitken a warning for wasting their time. Little things like this get to me. The stable was not getting a fair go as far as i was concerned so I wrote to the minister of sport, the chairman of stewards and the CEO. In hindsight a silly idea. As far as exposure, we work horse for a little more then what it costs us. All the horses given to the stable to train have had their issues or are poorly bred. We introduce many owners to this sport. The owners are then poached by leading stables and the owners drift away. We purchased a horse at the Shepparton sale intending to sell shares. We avertised the horses shares on facebook only to receive a phone call from a HRV representative telling Leroy to take down the post as he does not have a license to syndicate horses. We were not syndicating as such, just looking for partners. As I said; "its just too hard". - anyone want to buy a horse.