Almanac Racing: One Hundred Ways to Lose Your ‘Couta’ – A Broken Punter’s Lament
(To be sung to to the tune of ‘Fifty Ways to leave Your Lover’ by Paul Simon. Nota bene: ‘couta’ is a slang term used in certain parts of south-western Sydney for money or dollars. It has no plural form).
He came back to the pub that day no smile upon his face,
And told the boss and me straight ‘That Rosehill’s a curs-ed place’.
He said ‘I thought I knew of every way to do your dough,
But I learnt today that was not necessarily so.
There’s at least a hundred ways to lose your couta.’
He said ‘Bookies are not the work of kind Jehovahs,
Struth, they tempt a man to take what seems to be plain “overs”,
So he steps up and adds one more to all his blunders,
For soon he learns by Christ he’s taken five points “unders”.
There’s at least a hundred ways to lose your couta.
Hundred ways to lose your couta.
(Chorus): Just plunge on the fav, Dave,
Lay the red sauce, o’course,
Back the outside gate, mate,
And send yourself broke.
Pick a kid weight-for-age, Page,
Bet big a bog track, Jack,
Trust the form the Brisbane trots, lots,
And send yourself broke.’
I said to him, ‘Your tale of woe reduces me in truth to tears,
For I am like you a victim of the punt these many years,
I seek some comfort in these my final days,
So please explain to me once more the hundred ways,
The hundred ways to lose your couta.’
(Chorus reprise): ‘Just plunge on the fav, Dave,
Lay the red sauce, o’course,
Back the outside gate, mate,
And send yourself broke.
Pick a kid weight-for-age, Page,
Bet big a bog track, Jack,
Trust the form the Brisbane trots, lots,
And send yourself broke.’
To read more by Wayne Peake click here.
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Dr Wayne Peake was born in Sydney in 1960. He was educated at East Hills Boys High School, The University of Sydney and the University of Western Sydney. He began going to the Sydney races each Saturday in 1975, and on Wednesdays whenever he could sneak away from school sport. He was a successful punter (by his own estimation) until, co-incidentally, about the time he met his future wife, when his form began to taper off. He is still happily married to his ‘first selection’. He says: ‘there was never anywhere I would rather have been than at a racecourse, from Randwick to Murwillumbah and Broken Hill and anywhere in between. But I love a country race meeting best of all – the rougher the better. You can’t beat an Australian ‘picnic’ bush meeting, especially one that has a race ball before or after it.’
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