The science of the clock

If you really want to know how your dog is doing in Clonmel there’s one guy you have to see – the clockman.

You’re up in the one of the two covered stands, or you’re one of those hardier souls lining the rails, and you see buckle after buckle, two hounds in magnificent pursuit of the hare, and some of those buckles are superb – Aghadown Martin and Derby Pines in the last course of the Derby yesterday, lead swapped several times, Aghadown just up at the finish. But, just how fast are those dogs? That’s where the clockman comes in.

Patsy Lynch, from Tralee, has been going to Clonmel since 1945 and has been on the stopwatch for more decades than he cares to remember – those are his ‘clocks’ that appear in this page. He gives us an insight into the science, because science it is.

“Many many years ago, when I was a youngster, there was one man here, a fella called Banna Jack McCarthy, from Ardfert but living in Dublin; he used to stand just below the stand, up on a tea-chest. I was only a youngfella catching dogs for my father, Dan Lynch; my father would go over to Banna Jack, and Banna Jack would say to him – ‘Dan, you have two lengths on the next fella,’ and he was nearly always right. I was wondering how he was able to tell that – it was all down to the watch.”

It was enough to inspire young Patsy to follow suit; these days he’s one of the veterans of Clonmel, has his own designated ‘box’ (and it is just that, a timber box) just beside the pier of the wall in front of the self-same stand where Banna Jack used to stand. From there, Patsy has a clear and unobstructed view of the whole field, bottom to top – crucial, for any clockman. “In the matter of clocking, you must have a genuine flagman at the bottom of the hill, he’s 50% of the operation – my man is Tom Tanner from Clonakilty. He stands down near the start, across from the slips, he has a mark in the field beyond where the dogs come out and when they get to that mark, he drops the flag – I’m watching for that, and instantly start the stop-watch. I have a mark here on the field then — a dark patch out there on the run-up, and when the lead dog passes that, I hit the stopwatch again. I’ll keep it going then ‘til the hare makes the escape – that gives me the total time for the course. You need good reflexes for it all – I’m 78 years of age, but I reckon I still have it!”

The information that Patsy gathers, then, is crucial in deciding how all the individual dogs are going. And it’s not just about the straight time, though that is indeed hugely important; there’s also the total time of the hunt, and other little notations he has such as whether the winner came from behind to win, and the winning distance. If you like to take a punt, how valuable is all this information? How much more valuable, then, to the bookies themselves, the oddsmakers? “Every bookie has their own clockman,” says Patsy, “Especially the fellas that are really into it — some might have two or three clockmen, maybe four or five at this meeting, placed at different locations up along the field, so they’d have a short clock, a medium clock and a long clock. They have to – look at the money that’s being gambled! If they don’t get it right, they won’t be here for long! From that information they can then tell the form dogs. What you’re looking for is consistency, the dog that will come up the first day and do, say, 12.50 (seconds), then come up again and again — six times if they get to the final — and do around that 12.50 every time. Master Myles did that in the Derby of 1978, the fastest dog that ever came up the field in Clonmel. But, if he comes up the first time and does that 12.50, then comes up again and does 12.90 or so – even if he wins, that dog isn’t going to win the Derby.