On Friday, his new club stages a TAB meeting highlighted by a Country Championships Preview Class 4 Handicap to kick off his reign at one of country NSW’s best and flourishing organisations.

Operations manager at Toowoomba Turf Club, he came to Scone with some big ideas designed to take the SRC to a new level.

That’s Courtney’s challenge, to implement those ideas and help the club build and grow in a number of areas.

That he came from a huge club on the Darling Downs which had 500 horses in work and in a period of growth and financial success was a big plus on his CV.

It was something the SRC and former club president Noel Leckie liked.

Unfortunately, Leckie passed away late last month. 

Courtney was looking forward to working with Leckie, who was instrumental in enticing him to Scone.

“With his passing we’ve lost a lot of knowledge and skill, the committee and I have to dig deep,” he said.

The club will honour Leckie’s monumental input over more than two decades at the Scone Cup meeting in May when the $60,000 1400m Country Cup will be renamed in his honour.

Honouring his memory by growing racing in Scone would be the ideal way for Courtney to repay the trust and respect Leckie showed in employing him.

And, he will be calling on his business and racing acumen gained over more than 20 years in the workforce for a man born and raised in Gladstone, who represented Queensland as a junior cricketer and volleyballer.

He also played rugby league, basketball and AFL in a busy youth before starting work at the Boyne Aluminium Smelter in Gladstone.

He had worked his way up the management rung when he realised he wanted to work in something different and took the plunge to become a mature age apprentice carpenter.

He “knocked that on the head” quickly but remained in the building industry where he gained his builders licence and then opened his own business, Courtney Homes Gladstone.

It’s then racing, or rather racing a horse in the Tony Gollan stable, reared up.

He and wife Amy visited Toowoomba and fell in love with the Darling Downs city.

“We loved it and uprooted to Toowoomba,” Courtney said.

“We spent the next 12 months winding our business down in Gladstone.

“I was going to get into the building game there but got a bit of work doing up the offices at the jockey club.”

From there he continued working with the club and became a consultant on projects and working on stabling and “other maintenance stuff”.

“From there I took over the racing operations,” he said of what was the operations manager position.

And, when the Scone position came up it became a natural progression for him.

He believes the experience he has had in running his own business, the business skills he’s attained as well as the racing knowledge he has earned working with Blair Odgers at Toowoomba has provided him with the perfect base to improve and grow Scone Race Club.

“The work ethic too,” he said of big hours worked to engender pride in his efforts and a Toowoomba club now flourishing.

“They’ve really turned it around the last three years,” he said.

“It’s now a profitable club and has a standalone Brisbane meeting as well.”

So, what does he think of Scone.

One thing, maybe the main thing, is that he believes Scone can become as big a training centre as Toowoomba.

“No reason why we can’t have 500 horses in work here,” he said.

“Toowoomba does race 46 times a year though. 

“We have a fantastic facility here at Scone and have room to grow.”

He’s certain the club must increase its racing, from the current 15 times a year, to at least 18 or 19.

The potential for tourism growth runs hand in glove with that as well and he will be meeting with the local council and tourism to begin planning for building the SRC as a racing and tourism centre.

That will mean increasing on-course crowds and trying to develop the on and off-course wagering.

“We have to grow and improve as a training and racing centre,” Courtney said.

“We’ve got to move forward.”

Coming from a building background, and running his own business in Gladstone, gives him the confidence and knowledge to work as hard as he can to produce the results he is aiming at with training and racing priorities.

It’s also about running a tighter budget and maybe changing the culture in the club.

That change is about rewarding passion and hard work and turning the SRC into an edifice where the rank and file can mix with the elite of the racing file in pleasant and invigorating surroundings.