A WEEKLY REVIEW

The Good 

Benny Scarf, racing’s boom colt on social media, encompasses the good, the bad and the ugly. 

Any influence that gets 206K Instagram followers, obviously a younger audience, with a turf twist is exceptional regardless of the reason. 

Scarf, 23, is described as “watching some sort of punting trainwreck” by Warwick Barr under the headline of “Era Of The Influencer” on “Straight Up”, the internet must read on the industry. 

No doubt it’s new age, more Elon Musk than the staid traditionalism that made racing great.  

Scarf has put Sportsbet, a worldwide bookmaking conglomerate, with 107,000 into the shade. Consider the promotional budget of Sportsbet. 

“If you haven’t encountered Scarf’s betting habits, his starting point is staking 5c for every follower of his Instagram page,” Barr disclosed. 

“It’s a model ‘borrowed’ from another social media sensation in the black jack world, Tim Naki. 

“That means Scarf is wagering more than $10,000 in a single bet.” 

Peddling the tip, then the inside mail from those who knew, has always intrigued me. Scarf, though, is selling his enthusiasm.  

According to Barr, he “is sharing his wins and losses and developing an online camaraderie that wagering companies have pushed heavily via in-house platforms encouraging customers to bet with their friends or engage with fellow punters.” 

Betting with friends is bunkum. Back a winner one-out and buy them a drink. 

“It often doesn’t end well,” Barr conceded. “Maybe that’s the attraction. Perhaps that’s why Scarf’s social media profile resonates with everyday punters.” 

Getting a collect, the joy of handover from bookmaker or tote clerk, diminishes when just going into a computer bank account. Winning at the punt produces a surge like few others: as good as sex has been opined, possibly being not as accessible. That’s Presnell not Scarf, touted as university educated. 

With Scarf a graduate, the halls of learning these days must do a course in profanities. Scarf mastered. In one blog he topped the “f” word eight times. It grated. 

Yes, in the past my dialogue was lose, even vulgar, until corrected by A.J. “Tony” Bellanto, QC, “Bull Ant” to his rivals. Following him into a court room was like trailing Mohammed Ali to the ring. “Max, bad language is the product of an ignorant or depraved mind,” he submitted. I lapse but the advice still resonates. 

On the tip Bellanto decreed: ‘I am a logical man and the favourite is the logical winner” to which this then young mug countered: “But Tony it’s also the logical dead-un.”  

University education has its place but Tommy Smith, the racehorse trainer with few equals, and “Melbourne Mick” Bartley, a genius with form figures and those that made them, were street kids but ended up driving Rollers and residing in Harbour front mansions. 

Like Scarf but vastly different in delivery, neither was averse to promoting an opinion for financial gain but bookmaker Andy Kerr, “the Coogee Bunyip”, was more young Benny. Entrepreneurial.  

Back in the day a turf writer Harry Frank, who was very old when I was very young, worked for Kerr, a memory he valued. 

“Andy was selling a special, saved for Christmas, for 10 bob, a pretty penny in those days,” Frank recalled to me of an era when a bob (shilling) would buy a haircut. “I had to take out adds on radio and in the newspapers. 

“Hundreds put it. For 10 bob they got a telegram before the Villiers with the selection. When the time came, I asked Andy for the horse. ‘You put one in,’ he said. I did and it won”. 

Kerr would have appreciated Scarf’s style: more Barnum and Bailey or Worth’s if you want to be parochial: followers get a kick out of his performance.  

Barr reckons some “question exactly who is funding Scarf’s punting exploits” which adds to the intrigue, always a factor when bartering with the punt. 

Alas, watching him win, the choreography and dialogue, brings a shudder to consider the impact of when he backs a loser. 

The Bad  

(Sure had I been at home and viewing Cigar Flink go down at Eagle Farm, and not Randwick, a bottle could have gone through the screen. Cigar Flick’s previous defeat was described on “Best Bets” as a “train wreck”, favoured also in Barr’s vocabulary, but last Saturday Cigar Flick was an absolute Titanic. Bad, Bad, Bad. But I digress.) 

The Ugly  

I referred the Scarf video to Dr Clive Allcott, honorary shrink for the Punt Drunk’s Protective Association. Dr Clive refused to give an opinion without consultation but his mind, which I can read, went along the lines of lines: straight jacket or shock treatment. Ugly.