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Letter of the Week

Those were the days

 

Last month I wrote a letter in which I alluded to my "misspent" youth travelling around the bush in NSW and Queensland with George, a travelling salesman who also held a bookmaker’s licence. He taught me to pencil and gave me an education in punting and life in those "crafty" days well before we had ever heard of a TAB in this country, although it had been ensconced in New Zealand, I believe, for several years.

A couple of my punting mates who read the story were unaware of my youthful background, and suggested after hearing more of my experiences that it would be entertaining for today’s punters to hear a little more of what it was like in the rough-and-tumble days of the 1950s, particularly in the bush.

I was also inspired to write again by Richo’s nostalgic interview with a punter who related stories about the introduction of the TAB in Victoria in the ’60s. However, that punter’s experiences — factual, interesting, and nostalgic as they were — are much different to the ones I recall from a period some 10 to 15 years earlier.

There are so many weird and funny stories from those days, it is difficult to choose, but I guess a good starting point would be the difficulties experienced by bush bookies betting on city races in obtaining fluctuations in the city betting ring — an electronic service taken for granted these days.

There was an official system whereby the Betting Steward in town would phone the flucs through to a central agency. Race clubs from all over the country paid a fee to call into this agency to obtain the information, which in turn, for a daily fee from each bookmaker, was broadcast into the local betting ring.

To say the service at most bush tracks was poor is complimentary. The day usually started reasonably, with one, sometimes two, calls a race, but the service deteriorated as the day went on as the official responsible became more slack with each passing race, and after each visit to the local publican’s booth. By the last race he may not have returned. Now remember most technical facilities we take for granted these days were non existent, mobile phones and TV were only known in Buck Rogers Space Ship comics.

One of the first things George would do on arrival at a track for the first time was to check out any public phones near to the track, or any adjacent homes or premises that appeared to be connected to the telephone system.

In those days being connected to the telephone system was a real status symbol, and unaffordable for many. PMG (Post Master General) overhead phone lines leading to a premises was a giveaway. If there was no accessible public phone close to the track (public phones were not allowed on any racecourse), he would approach the residents of the home with the phone, and arrive at a financial arrangement with them to allow myself or himself access to the phone throughout the day.

On quiet days George or myself would create a beaten track backwards and forwards to the phone. On busier days we employed a third or even fourth person to do that job. However we had no authority to contact the official market centre set up by the city race clubs. Our only contact availability was to a major SP operation, for which we again had to pay.

In the 1950s the race clubs went to extremes to keep as much information as possible "on course", and were paranoid about anything they perceived as contributing to on-course information going off course. They had perfected their telephone market service through the central agency pretty well, and it was well nigh impossible to break into that.

As an example of their paranoia,for many years Ken Howard, the doyen of race callers, was not allowed on track, and would broadcast from vantage points outside the courses, and thus outside the jurisdiction of the club — from the top of a block of flats at Randwick, and on scaffolds, trees and even the top of a double-decker bus at other tracks.

Clubs even planted trees to obscure his view.

Riders were not finalised until half an hour before each race. The first most racegoers knew about who was officially riding their selection was when a semaphore board was raised for the next race, after the preceding race. Newspaper form guides listed "likely riders" in the guides, but this was subject to abuse, with frequent instances of little-known apprentices listed as likely but replaced by a strong senior on the semaphore board. Racebooks did not carry riders’ names, but rather the word "Rider" followed by a dotted line on which you would write the jockey’s name from the semaphore board.

With such an attitude, it is little wonder club committees were very cautious about on-course market information getting off course into the wrong (SP) hands. So SPs developed the same type of system as did George, but in reverse, with runners telephoning from public phones or employed residences to their SP bosses. In most of these instances the runners had to pay re-admission to the course every time they left, but this cost could be reduced by bribing gatekeepers and anyway it was petty cash to the SP network.

Then there were the tic-tac men. These used a system of exaggerated hand, arm and body signals devised in England (and still in use in that country and Ireland on my last visit about four years ago) and imported to this country.

These men were and are very talented, both the signaller and the man receiving the signals with possibly hundreds of variants as to market moves in the ring. Of course, the big disadvantage was that to be seen by his pal off course, the on-course signaller had to be in a highly visible position, usually on a high grandstand using binoculars to note the prices on bookmakers’ boards below, or even to see another signaller actually in the ring.

However, although their service was much cheaper, they were frequently apprehended by police and removed from the course, making their service unreliable. The telephone runners (as they were called) were preferred.

In England and Ireland the tic-tac men are quite legal as they are only relaying the prices from one end of the ring to the other. Of course sadly their expertise and character, which to me and many others adds colour to the racecourse, is rapidly being replaced by cell phones, and possibly as it is now four years since I was there they may no longer exist.

Either way the betting rings are so large on some tracks in the UK and Ireland it is possible to have a completely different market, even a different favourite, from one end of the ring to the other .

Yes, it is interesting to be an "old fart" who has lived and operated through different eras of rules, regulations and technology. 60 years ago the only place to obtain last-minute information was on course. These days it is the last.

There are many more yarns and situations I recall from those years, some of them quite funny, which involved colourful mischievous characters, who sadly have now passed into time and fading memories.

P Connors
Brighton (Qld)
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