The last bastion of on-course bookmaking

For the first time in his 45 years of bookmaking, Anthony Doughty drove to Warrnambool this week with a sense of dread.

The May jumps carnival is famous for history and solidarity. Everything stays the same; grown men behave like teenagers and stagger home alone, no one finds the $81 leg of that $100,000 quaddie and days begin with a “hair of the dog” and a nostalgic wander into the betting ring.

Driving through Geelong, Colac, Camperdown and Terang, Doughty hoped that these expected things would still be there. The betting ring, mostly. The way it’s always been.

The art of on-course bookmaking is in its death throes (as Doughty described) yet Warrnambool has been the stoic aberration.

Not even death could kill it.

After a spate of fatalities 15 years ago, Racing Victoria declared jumps racing deceased. Rob Hines, who then held the seat on the spinning RV CEO carousel, commandeered the stewards’ room at the Bool after three horses perished during the 2009 carnival.

Shortly after, the sport was suspended. This would rip the heart out of The Bool.

Protests and new safety measures were drawn up by the jumps’ fraternity and the jumps “did a Galleywood” and rose from the dead (as the famous horse appeared to do in the 1984 Grand Annual).

Could the betting ring, that other last bastion, keep doing a Galleywood? To Doughty’s relief, it did.

“There was lots of cash. You don’t see that any more. Lots going on. What a relief,” Doughty said of this week’s festival.

The casino started it, then the internet, then the corporates, Doughty says of the demise of the bookies ring, which had always been the star act of a day at the races, with all-or-nothing plonks cloaked in often hilarious exchanges between the bagmen and punters with comic nicknames like The Babe, the Hong Kong Tiger, the Fireman, Eyes, Ears, the Lady In Black and the Goanna.

Warrnambool had a rich history of betting ring plunges and not all from the “good old days”. Harbour Views had the bagmen on their knees in 2019.

Throughout our history of horse racing, the racetrack is where it happened, the betting ring where it mattered. It heaved with dreams and dread.

Doughty was musing about all of this when he arrived for what he guessed might have been his 46th May carnival.

“I came here a bit negative,” Doughty said. “Everywhere else the on-course bookie industry is in its death throes.

“Off course everyone’s got their phones and their corporate.

“On course suffers, we’ve definitely seen the best of it. The younger generation, they either don’t have cash or they’re not smart shoppers.

“In the olden days you’d come on course and go up and down the ring looking for 13-2 when everyone had 6-1. Now all they’re interested in is multis, free bets and sports. It’s a whole different world.”

For now, one little pocket of the world has remained untouched.

“Like I said I arrived at Warrnambool pessimistic but there was demand all day, lots of cash. They were backing six or seven horses in each race,” Doughty said.

“It was great. It’s the last surviving carnival in that sense.

“You’ve got to get off your arse to experience the bookies at the track and thankfully Warrnambool is a place where they get off their arse.”

Doughty counted 25 bagmen in the main ring on Tuesday. Most were getting on a bit.

Others were dotted around the track. It was a week of jumping and nostalgia. Only a big day at the picnics, like Balnarring on Australia Day, can boast a betting ring vibe like The Bool.

“As good as it was it was nothing like the betting rings of 20 years ago. The demand from members and the public before the corporates came in … it (on-course bookmaking) was the biggest game in town,” Doughty said.

Wagering through the ring was in fact down but that was solely attributed to extreme track bias for most of the carnival and lack of punter confidence in the track.

Crown Casino first opened across the river at the World Trade Centre in 1994. Before then Victorians, mostly retirees, would hop on buses to the other side of the Murray for their pokies hit at RSL’s and golf clubs. The mobile phone hadn’t yet been invented when Mavis and Graham were heading to the river.

The corporates and their now reined-in enticements began to take hold. Punters hopped on their phones, not the race-day tram or train.

The betting ring, the engine room of the racetrack, was being dismantled.

Bookies were treated as cute relics.

Flemington built a new member’s grandstand and literally left the bagmen out in the cold.

“Flemington is the only racetrack where you’re working in the elements. You’re exposed to strong winds, glare and rain. It’s an unhealthy environment. Try sitting in your backyard watching monitors in the glare of the sun,” Doughty said.

Doughty has been a leading rails bookmaker for longer than almost anyone when the VRC drew up their lavish plans. “I don’t know if anyone was consulted. I certainly wasn’t,” he said.

Another rails bookie has described Flemington as “Siberia”.

“The other tracks, at least you’re indoors. I haven’t seen the new Caulfield plans but I believe we will at least be indoors,” Doughty said.

There is no clear link but it’s interesting that the creation of casinos in Singapore contributed to the death of its racing, just as Crown and the explosion of suburban poker machines sapped the racetrack of traditional customers.

“The Casino was the beginning of the end. Before that (on-course betting) was 90 per cent of our turnover. Now it’s less than one per cent,” Doughty said.

“You’ve got to get off your arse to experience the bookies at the track and thankfully Warrnambool is a place where they get off their arse” – bookmaker Anthony Doughty

Bookies regard cashless or tap-and-go betting as a helpful on-track innovation, but while some bookies use it, others have had their modems shut down by the tap-and-go providers.

It seems they don’t want to be linked to gambling.

Doughty believes there will always be an element of on-course bookmaking but says it will morph into a pursuit for hobbyists.

“To my knowledge there have been no applications for (on-course) bookie licenses for four or five years,” he said.

“Some bookies are only working 10 times a year, mostly as a hobby. There are only about 20 of us (traditionalists) left.

“As a profession, it’s just about finished. Do you want your kids doing this? Of course not, there’s no future in it.”

It’s such a shame, the death of the traditional bookie.

Punters used to flock to racetracks because there was really no stay-at-home alternative to betting. Besides, the racetrack heaved, and the betting ring was intoxicating. It was a magnet. The phone or TV screen couldn’t get near it.

The closest thing to it is The Bool.

Doughty will always be nervous making his way to the famous May jumps carnival. There are no certainties in horse racing and new bookies aren’t replacing old.

Phones are glued to hands like extra appendages. You sense change, even where very little has changed, like Warrnambool in May.

The Galleywoods of horse racing don’t always keep rising to their feet.

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