Well folks, we’ve come to an end of an era. The Grassroots Gazette magazine as we know it is about to be no more after this edition. But the Grassroots Media Brand is only just beginning.

I was in between two minds on how I could really land a proper article to say goodbye to the old, and hello to the new. I was tempted to tackle the serious side of racing. The Pony Racing Industry is one at the forefront of my plans for such articles. The excessive amount of racing is another. While I have my thoughts on the Racing League and how it could be altered to help smaller and restricted trainers in both Ireland and England, I have decided to park these for now. They will be covered as soon as we go to our new platform, but for now, I think it’s the time of reflection and not one where I go for blood.

I think it’s safe to say my time writing for The Grassroots Gazette so far has been eventful. I’ve not been the most liked writer on the team after a few of my articles were published, and I’ll hold my hands up and say I got a few things wrong, but I am glad that some of these “questionably written” articles I produced sparked some of the most debate. From the moment I started writing on The Peaky Blogger over two years ago, If I didn’t get people talking I was doing a bad job. So, although I may have gotten a few things wrong, I’m glad I’ve started some fantastic debates as a result of it all.

I was delighted to have been asked to join The Grassroots Gazette, God only knows how long ago it was now! I never thought it would grow as rapidly as it has though. Massive thanks has to go to Shane and Mike especially but also to all the writers who have contributed, the guests who were on live streams and the people reading this. It’s down to your support that we as Grassroots writers have been granted such a massive platform to write.

God only knows where we will go after this. Getting to where we are now in what was essentially a restricted platform just shows how well we are going to do once this turns unrestricted. It’s genuinely unreal to think of how well we’ve done on this platform speaks volumes of how powerful the Grassroots Gazette really was.

I am genuinely looking forward to the future, I’ll have my qualifications by this time next year, I’ll hopefully have a quality thoroughbred foal at foot (touch wood says he as he taps his skull twice) and I’ll hopefully have made the step, or not far off making the step in setting up my own equine business. But with this, who’s to say we won’t be able to focus on a racing brand and possibly even a racing podcast?

I’m a man mad for dreaming, but you have to be mad enough to think the dream can turn into reality to actually make it happen. Either way, there’s not much stopping us from making a massive push at a worldwide takeover. Imagine that! You’d be booking me into the local mental asylum before you could even think it if I said the above quote 6 or 8 months ago.

For now, I say “Au Revoir” to The Grassroots Gazette that we all know for what it was, but it won’t be l