The mention of Athol Mulley last weekend overshadowed the Royal Randwick action where a chalk jockey, those who usually ply their trade out of town and get few opportunities in the city, figured prominently when Andrew Atkins triumphed with a successful double.
Yes, Jason Collett, justifiably regarded as one of the best, also notched two on Oh Diamond Lil and Getafix, but had a demerit going down by a short half head on Crossbow, the best of good things beaten. Stewards reported Crossbow was held up for clear running from the 400 metres to the 250 metres.
While the modern-day hoops hold their own with the old-time greats, Mulley was special, in the saddle and on ground level.
Had Mulley been riding Crossbow the howls of woe, emanating from racegoers, would have been heard at Taylor Square.
Punters just didn’t cop losing sweet when Mulley and arch rival, the champion George Moore, were at loggerheads. Can you imagine Collett and James McDonald bobbing and weaving around the jockey’s room, doing an Ali shuffle, more avoiding, than punching, between races?
Mulley was a superb jockey and other were as good, but none better. Moore gets greater kudos because he was more focussed, had the eye of the tiger. Mulley, though, had his measure on foot, epitomised in “The Needy And The Greedy”, a book of anecdotes he wrote with Frank Hardy, author of “Power Without Glory”, the outstanding Australian novel.
“There are a lot of yarns about the feud between me and Moore,” Mulley wrote. “Some of them are even true.
“We got on each other’s nerves. We even had a few punch ups. (Hurt feelings more than physical damage, my assessment, not Mulley’s).
“After a rough race at Canterbury we had words on the way back to scale and a “round or two” in the jockey’s room.
“We were fined 200 quid for the bout. The following Saturday at Rosehill there was a demonstration against Moore when he was beaten on a (Tommy) Smith favourite.
“A fight broke out in the member’s stand. I poked my head into the steward’s room and said: “Here’s a chance for you to get another 400 quid.”
Later, after both had retired, Moore was having a heart operation and answered a telephone call in hospital. “Congratulations to the doctor,” the voice chanted. “He must be a genius. I never figured you had a heart.
To which Moore replied: “That’s you Geoge Mulley”.
Mulley campaigned abroad. “In 1965 I rode for Madam Mereoti in France. Arriving in Sydney I was interviewed by (radio commentator) Des Hoysted.
“How did you get on with the snails George,” he asked.
“I didn’t eat any but rode quite a few,” the jockey replied.
“Once a trainer asked Huck to use a battery on a horse at the track when a DC3 flew overhead,” Mulley recalled.
“No use hitting a horse with a jigger,” Huck told the trainer. “He couldn’t win a race with the assistance of what is powering that bloody aeroplane.”
I saw Huck Finlay in the saddle and can report Andrew Atkins is a far superior chalk jockey.
No doubt when Mulley and Moore made the headlines campaigning for the Australian Jockey Club was vigorous but with a much stronger field than the current Australian Turf Club situation following the resignation of chairman Peter McGauran.
Vice chairman, the legal hawk, Tim Hale, SC, is an ideal candidate who, at least, is a regular presence, unlike others on the committee, at the Saturday race meetings. With Gai Waterhouse, Hale was a playmaker against the sale of Rosehill Gardens which the directors supported. Many figure Waterhouse paid a price by being denied stables on Randwick.
So factions are at play which is BAD but not as UGLY as New South Wales in the State Of Origin.
Earlier I went for a quiet sojourn to the Fairmont Resort at Leura, and the Blues team had also checked in for their clash in the State Of Origin, hardly a spartan atmosphere.
It is a fine environment for dinosaurs and children, the log fires, very fine booze outlets, the Pale Ale isn’t Reschs but acceptable, and excellent menus. But for athletes, showing signs of lameness and burnout, being conditioned for a vital blood and guts final?
Anyway, they conducted themselves like gentlemen. I can recall Rugby League teams in the 1960’s that would have wrought havoc at the Fairmont. But they would have beaten Queensland last Wednesday night.
For mine Valentine Holmes was the player of the series winning the second clash in Perth with his dead-eye gaol kicking for the Maroons that continued in Sydney plus his robust involvement particularly the hit on Angus Crighton in the third clash.
