Almanac Horseracing – Confessions of a teenage racegoer Part IV: the 1980 Golden Slipper Stakes and other Yobbo headline grabbers

 

Prologue: The remarkable win of my favourite jockey, Kevin Moses, on Dark Eclipse in the 1980 Golden Slipper Stakes kicked off what proved to be a great year in sport, capped by the win of Canterbury Bankstown in the last-ever NSWRL Grand Final played on a Saturday. Here in the final excerpt from Sydney Racing in the 1970s is a ‘history from below’ account of that day at Rosehill, together with a few tales of the one-and-only ‘Newman’, one of the greatest desperates ever to sneak onto a racecourse. Finally, there is a recollection of a joyous visit to the defunct Richmond trotting track at Londonderry, west of Sydney.

 

The lead up to, and running of, the 1980 Golden Slipper Stakes, was a fairytale-come-true story with several happy endings.

The human hero of the story, or at least the main one, was the journeyman jockey Kevin Moses. Moses had been the champion Sydney apprentice of the 1972/73 season, but in recent years had fallen on relatively hard times and slipped off the premiership table. He rather lived in the shadow of the number one rider for the Neville Begg stable, Ron Quinton. Moses was nominally number two rider for Begg, but often, especially at carnival time,  was shuffled even further down the totem pole to make way for the likes of Peter Cook, or visiting ‘big name’ interstate riders.

In 1980, Moses became associated with a Neville-Begg-trained filly named Dark Eclipse. He rode her in her first start at Canterbury, where she finished ninth — hardly the customary premiere of a Golden Slipper winner. She was turned out immediately, and the spell must have done her good, as she won first up for Ron Quinton, when well supported. Barring injuries and suspensions, this would have been the last Moses would have seen of her on race-days, as Quinton remained the entrenched stable jockey. But Begg also had the star two-year-old of the previous spring, the Tait family’s Fiancée. Fiancée had been winning by margins more often associated with yacht racing and had been dominant ante-post favourite for the Slipper since the Gimcrack Stakes.

On the Saturday before the Slipper, Dark Eclipse, ridden by Moses, scored an emphatic win in the Magic Night Quality. Meanwhile, Fiancée had been thrashed by the diminutive flyer Shaybisc, and her superiority over her stablemate now seemed less clear cut than hitherto. The press speculated that Quinton might gazump Moses and claim the ride on Dark Eclipse in the Slipper. Trainer Begg indicated that as stable rider, Quinton would have the choice. Some journalists respectfully expressed the hope that underdog Moses would keep the ride. Quinton later said he could have switched to Dark Eclipse if he had ‘forced the issue’, but it would have been an unpopular move. Fiancée drew the car park, but for whatever reason — probably loyalty to the Taits — Quinton decided to stick with her. On the Friday before the race, she was favoured slightly over Dark Eclipse in the markets, but by Saturday morning that situation was reversed.

I watched the Slipper from the lawn in front of the Paddock Grandstand, with about twenty of the Yobboes. We had arrived minutes after the track opened and had formed up a redoubt of eskies, like one of the squares of British infantry at Waterloo (in 1980 you could still take beer into the races). Though none of the others were Moses fans to the extent I was, they knew I was his principal campaign director, even though I had only five dollars of my modest teacher’s scholarship stipend invested on Dark Eclipse (and a brave single dollar on the Dark Eclipse-Joy quinella). I was wearing a hat to which I had pinned a likeness of Moses I had drawn. It was noted by a few of the bookies’ clerks in the main betting ring, and they had a bit of a chuckle over it.

 

 

Race clubs took a comparatively easy-going approach to crowd behaviour in the 1970s and early eighties. Although my lot were not troublemakers, they were keen on a cold beer on a balmy day, and that Slipper day was very balmy. One of them immediately got stuck into cans of Tooheys and the prawn rolls the STC sold in those days and regurgitated the combination into the nearest garbage bin, shortly after race one. The incident went unobserved by race-club staff, but not by a nearby racegoer, who in the police ‘Crimestoppers’ language of the time might have been described as of Mediterranean appearance. He walked over to the garbage bin, shoved his head into the opening to confirm its contents, then turned, and, addressing us corporately, pronounced, ‘You bloody Aussie — all you do is drinka da piss — and spew!’ (with a strong emphasis on the last verb, accompanied by a vivid hand gesture suggestive of vomit erupting from his mouth). It was such a profound and emphatic summation and delivery that after a few seconds consideration, all we could do in response was laugh in agreement.

In the Slipper, Dark Eclipse missed the start slightly and then received a sharp check mid-race, which forced her into the second half of the field. Then, with about 250 metres to the post Moses, in Dark Eclipse’s tartan and white jacket, pull to the outside.  He had abandoned his usual conservative whip style and was flailing away like a windmill. Fifty metres from the post the race was won. Moses eased the filly down, gave her a pat, and beamed an ecstatic grin.

The reaction to their victory in the Paddock was like a Hollywood feel-good film. As the winners came back down the ‘race’ to the Saddling Paddock, my mates and I pressed forward towards the rail. We formed what Bert Lillye writing next day in the Sun Herald described as a ‘Special cheer squad.’ Someone started to chant ‘Kev-in Mo-ses! Kev-in Mo-ses!’ followed by syncopated clapping—like British football fans. We all took it up, and we were joined by a few unaffiliated racegoers around us; Dark Eclipse had been very well supported at nine-to-two. It sounded (a little) like Wembley Stadium. Unsurprisingly, Moses revealed later he had no idea who the young blokes that had cheered him so enthusiastically were. Nevertheless, as he drew near to the entrance to the birdcage, he had touched his whip to his cap to us and smiled even more broadly.

During his excited victory speech Moses boyishly admitted he wished that Dark Eclipse was a human filly so he that he could take her out on the town that evening. The remark went down well with the large crowd. Everyone seemed pleased that Moses had won, even (some of) those who had not backed him. He was a bit like the Western Suburbs rugby league team in that era; everyone’s second favourite barrack. He seemed a very likeable ‘battler’, and as noted, much had been made of the danger of his losing the ride to Quinton.

After the last race on that memorable Slipper Day, a provocateur among my colleagues suggested we race a full lap of Rosehill, starting from the 100 metres—or right in front of the Paddock Grandstand. I calculated the proposed ‘trip’ was about 1950 metres beyond my effective range, and so silently decided to sprint to the lead then pull up at the post the first time. But I was saved the trouble. As I approached the line an anarchist in the crowd leapt the fence and dropped me with a copybook cover-tackle. It was like the gridiron-match scene in Horsefeathers wherein Professor Wagstaff (Groucho Marx) brings down the opposition’s running back from the coach’s bench. I don’t think it had anything to do with me failing to doff my cap to the anarchist’s girlfriend, though.

 

 

Doing your shirt

I was at Rosehill one day in the late 1970s with a fellow named Greg, who was the captain of the Local C grade cricket club for which I filled the specialist fielding position of deep fine leg/back stop. Greg was the skipper and keeper. He was also a good rugby league player and some years later played for Canterbury-Bankstown. On this day, he was punting like he played cricket—always down the pitch trying to launch the opposition over the ropes—and was having a shocker. Finally, he had exhausted all his own bank and most of those who had subbed him when that had run out mid-afternoon. Suddenly he jumped up and ran to the interstate ring and confronted the line of bookmakers and their clerks. ‘Alright, you bastards,’ he cried, loud enough, and with enough ferocity to attract the attention of several of the bookies, ‘you can have this too!’ Whereupon with a single motion he ripped his shirt from his back and threw it at the feet of the nearest fielder. ‘You’ve already got the rest!’ He turned on his heel and headed for the exit.

 

Newman’s inhumanity to Newman

One of the more desperate of the racecourse regulars of the 1970s and 80s we encountered was a bloke known to us as ‘Newman’, for reasons that will become obvious in a vignette or two. Newman funded his racecourse activities operating as a scalper (or more accurately, a scalper’s stooge) selling cheap sunglasses and other trinkets at venues like the Sydney Cricket Ground. He had a speech impediment caused I think by a cleft tongue and was perennially broke despite his scalping activities. He had a Gothic sort of head, like one of the minor bad-guys in Dick Tracey comics.

This Newman infested almost every race meeting run in and around Sydney, including the Harold Park trots on Friday evenings, despite a firm conviction that all trotting drivers were crooks. He had a particular distaste for the premier driver, Kevin Newman, but nevertheless backed him whenever he was on a favourite. One Monday night Newman drove the long-priced feature-race winner at Fairfield, a horse called Shy Castle, which had been an abject failure, as favourite, three nights earlier at Harold Park. Ensuing events indicated that Newman (that is to say, he of the cleft tongue Newman—not the driver), had been on Shy Castle at HP, but had not followed up on Monday at Fairfield.

Anyway, there was a presentation following the Fairfield race, and the winning driver was invited to the microphone. He of the purple-and-white-checked-silks strode forward. But before he could get past ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ our Newman’s light tenor’s voice projected from several rows back in the crowd.

‘Get knucked, Newman!’ (this was the speech impediment kicking in).

This profane interjection naturally caused a stir among the gathering. Kevin Newman shook his head rather sadly, for he was no stranger to abuse from the public, then said, ‘I think I’ll start again—’

‘Well, get knucked, again!’ suggested the same voice. Then followed an ‘alarum within,’ as Shakespeare would have described it in a stage direction, as the police pounced on the heckler Newman and escorted him far away from the presentation.

Newman also had trouble pronouncing ‘two bob’, the vernacular for twenty cents. His interpretation of it was ‘new bob’, and he was often overheard asking his associates if they could spare him one. One night he was on the same bus as us returning to Railway Square from the Harold Park trots. He was doing his best to hide down the back, but the conductor finally cornered him and asked to see his ticket.

‘Ain’t got one,’ Newman informed him frankly. ‘Ain’t got no money.’

The conductor told him he could not ride the bus without a ticket.

‘Well, lend us new bob and I’ll buy one,’ responded Newman, seizing on a simple solution.

*             *             *             *             *

This character Newman went to Melbourne for The Cup one year. We ran into him in the Young and Jackson Hotel on the Monday before the race, a couple of hours before the parade of past Cup winners down Swanston Street. He was more excited than usual about something.

‘What’s on the go?’ we asked.

‘Going to Cup,’ he responded.

‘Well, so is everybody else in Melbourne.’

‘Not Melbourne Cup, dickhead—Maryborough Cup.’

Newman had learnt from one of his shady associates that the annual feature harness-racing event of the goldfields town of Maryborough, about three hours by train north-west of Melbourne, was to be run that afternoon. As we have seen, Newman fancied the trots. He slammed down his pot of Carlton, privileged us with the valediction ‘See you later, losers! Train pulling in.’ and bolted for the Flinders Street station.

Newman passed completely out of our thoughts until we ran into him again in the betting ring at the Kyneton races the day after the Melbourne Cup. He was looking up at a bookmaker rather wistfully.

‘How’d you go at the Cup?’ we asked him.

‘Did dough on that prick Demmler. Never drove a winner!’

‘Not the Maryborough Cup – the Melbourne Cup, cockhead.’

‘Didn’t make it. Still in Maryborough. Forgot buy return ticket. No dough left. You hot new bob?’ The penniless Newman, we learnt, had hitchhiked from Maryborough to Kyneton that morning and jumped the back-straight fence onto the course.

The next time we encountered Newman was one day in Kelly’s Bar under the old Rosehill Paddock Grandstand, after the fifth race. He and his mate were breasting the counter when several members of the police made directly for them. We were out of hearing but immediately after the police addressed Newman’s associate, an altercation occurred and seconds later he was hustled out of the bar; appropriately enough, in a policeman’s hold. He didn’t go quietly; he was kicking out and mouthing off all the way to the exit. Newman, we noticed, slunk off to the side, giving his cobber the same cold-shoulder the apostle Peter gave Jesus on the evening of the Last Supper. Our curiosity was boundless, so we sidled over to where Newman was cowering at the far end of the bar.

‘What happened, Newman?’ the Preacher asked him.

‘Why you blokes always call me Newman, Preaka?’ responded his interlocutor. ‘That not me name.’

‘Never mind. What did the coppers arrest your mate for?’

‘Called ‘em dogs and dropkicks.’

‘What? Why would he do that?’

‘Fine him for scalping.’

‘Well, at least they left you alone.’

‘Yeah, but I wanna bite him,’ Newman admitted.

‘You’re still holding though,’ Preacher observed, looking down. Newman was in the habit of stashing his bank roll in his sock. There was a modest swelling above his ankle.

‘That me Wenty Park doggie money. Can’t touch that. You hot new bob?’

 

Tuesday I’ll have Richmond on my mind

During my three undergraduate years at the University of Sydney, I never managed to arrange my timetable to allow even one day a week when I wasn’t required on campus. The closest I got was year one, when I had a single one-hour tutorial scheduled for three o’clock on Tuesday afternoons. It was a particularly unattractive demand on my time, as it took me twice that long to get to it and back.

At 1.30pm one Tuesday in mid-autumn, with a sigh I picked up my bag and prepared to depart for the university. Mum had asked me to post a letter for her, so I detoured to the mailbox at the corner of our street. As I was dropping the envelope in, a dilapidated old Holden came screeching around the corner, the rear-passenger-door flying open as the vehicle shuddered to a halt. It was like a scene in The Untouchables.

‘Get in,’ ordered a gruff voice from the car’s interior.

Seated in the front were Gut, driving, and his brother, Dobber Des, in the ‘death seat.’ In the back were JJ Ryan (who had once distinguished himself returning from the Wyong races by consuming a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken between Pennant Hills and the East Hills Hotel) and Bouncer Farrelli. It was the latter who had issued the curt command for me to embark.

‘Can’t. Gotta go to uni. Where are you blokes off to, anyway?’

‘Richmond trots. JJ’s horse Fleet Hanaway is in the second last.’

This was a crisis point. I had seconds to weigh up the pros and cons of the tute I was supposed to be attending, which was for the subject ‘Poverty, Protest and Crime in seventeenth-century Languedoc’. As usual, I had not done my ‘prep’ for the class. Up against this hardly alluring prospect was the option of a pastorale through Sydney’s market-garden fruit bowl, which I always relished, and an afternoon’s punting in sound company at the bucolic racecourse in Londonderry, where at this time of the year, the sunshine would be dripping down like honey.

‘Shove over,’ I instructed Bouncer, and climbed aboard.

We reached Richmond in time for the third race, after taking the wrong option along Blacktown Road and ending up near Hawkesbury racecourse. My spirits on that lovely March mid-afternoon as we tumbled out of Gut’s car and through the entrance gates of that track surrounded by blue gums, the cicadas chirruping loudly in their branches, were probably as high as I have ever carried onto a racecourse. This was despite my extremely limited bank and lack of knowledge of the intricacies of harness racing on a turf surface. Racing at Richmond was still conducted ‘right-handed’, or clockwise. The circumference was about 1400 metres, the layout roughly triangular. The back straight was downhill and the home straight uphill. It was almost the old Moorefield racecourse in reverse, and like Moorefield, decidedly a ‘horses for courses’ venue. Most races started in the back straight and passed the winning post twice. When the horses came up the home straight for the last time, despite being under extremely heavy driving they seemed to be in slow motion, and it was exceedingly difficult for those back in the field to make ground on the leaders. Unfortunately, I awoke to this but slowly, and all my fancies seemed to be backmarkers. Fleet Hanaway was certainly one and ran second-last in the second-last, but I had gone broke several times by then, so it mattered little to me financially. However, its failure cast a pall on the rest of the occupants of the car, JJ Ryan in particular. There was to be no stopping at KFC for a bucket that afternoon.

 

Copies of Sydney Racing in the 1970s: an Illustrated Companion are available via Wayne’s website

 

 

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