Connolly and Robertson

 

(Sporting Globe)

 "I should be a wealthy man but like the vast majority of heavy bettors, I gave most of it back.” Lou Robertson 1951

In the past, what made Lou Robertson and Eric Connolly such a potent threat to the bookies was that Robertson could say with some certainty a horse he was privately training would win. However, that was not always sufficient to run a successful betting plunge. This is where Connolly was so important in their partnership. He understood better the other horses in the race. Being a weights and measures expert, Connolly could tell his partner if the plunge was likely to succeed. He could say if a weight was too much or a distance too long for any other horse in the field. Robertson by himself could not do this as effectively nor would Connolly be as successful without Lou Robertson conditioning a particular horse for a specific race. It is also to be remembered Lou Robertson trained his horses in private. So not only were his horses shielded from bookies, touts and the press, Robertson was blind to horses being trained elsewhere. 

Eric Connolly (The Australasian)

Many people knew Lou Robertson organised plunges in conjunction with Connolly but most assumed he was not gambling to the same level as his partner. Eric Connolly often placed Robertson’s money through his commissioned agents as he did his own. When asked some years later, “Whose money was invested on these betting plunges?” Robertson candidly replied, “Most of it was mine!”  Connolly was seen as one of Australia’s greatest punters, yet in reality, the very guarded Lou Robertson was not too distant from the same title. Andrew Robertson would say privately to his sons, his brother had won and lost fortunes, many, many times over during a lifetime’s addiction to gambling.* His close association with Connolly was just as much a business association as it was a friendship. As Lou stated later in a rare interview he gave in 1951 to the “Sporting Globe”, 

“I backed my horses heavily when I thought they could win and I’ve had some big wins and some big losses. I should be a wealthy man but like the vast majority of heavy bettors, I gave most of it back.”

 * Andrew Robertson son, Wally Robertson 2013

When Connolly won the £6,000 Metropolitan in 1927 with Murillo, he took £45,000 off the bookies in the process. It was an easy victory but watching Connolly see his horse sail past the post by three lengths caused zero reaction. Standing next to Lou Robertson while he had thousands riding on a result gave a similar straight-faced look regardless of the outcome. Yet Lou Robertson was very different from his debonair partner in plunges. Connolly lived in a massive estate "Colona" St. Ninians Road, Brighton with his wife Ada and two socialite daughters Iris and Freda. He loved sitting in the Melbourne members stand at the M.C.G. watching Test cricket, going to the theatre, operettas or endless charity functions and balls. All the time entertaining a large and very diverse circle of influential friends asking him who he thought they should be backing on Saturday? Away from his training and racing (and betting), Robertson became almost a recluse. Connolly had widely publicised gambling successes, ran a nationwide tipping subscription, wrote essays and even went as far as giving lectures on how best to punt.* Lou Robertson went home and shut that tumultuous world out behind him. There was no talk of racing inside Robertson’s Ormond Street home. 

* Barrier Miner 26 June 1926 & “How Eric Connolly Bets and Wins” Eric Connolly

Lou Robertson's home (google earth)

The only exception to this “No race talk in the house” rule would be the occasional call or visit from one of his owners, racing writer Bert Wolfe (Cardigan) and a regular as Big Ben call from Eric Connolly. For thirty years, first to Allendale, then to the Hampton Hotel and finally to 16 Ormond Street Mordialloc, Eric Connolly would phone Lou Robertson at 6:45 most nights during the racing season. Robertson's anti-racing wife Gertrude and their sons hated it. They would be listening to “Dad and Dave”, or another radio serial when the phone started ringing. The asthmatic trainer pulled himself out of his chair, coughing and wheezing his way over to the radio, turned it down to answer the call, “Eric...yes... yes... really... right... yes... you don’t say... maybe... no, don't think so, not that one either... maybe... yes... okay... really… no… no… yes…you don’t say…  yes… yes, that’s the one. Okay, let’s go with that.. bye, Eric.”* Almost to the day Connolly died in 1944, for nearly forty years the two spoke, quickly ran down the form until they identified a possible horse, Connolly ran it against what he knew of the other horses and they worked out the plunge. Then came 1930. 

* Retold by Lou Robertson's sons: John, Bruce and Ross

In a perfect storm of dreadful betting circumstances, Connolly did not have the strength to collect all the information he required on the other horses to properly assess the situation. Lou Robertson had no consistent horses he could rely on to win.  His 1928-29 Trainer’s Premiership fast became a distant memory with Sol Green's sudden departure from racing for three years. Green's petulant actions left him high and dry and he now faced hefty expenses to build up his stable without winners. Robertson's financial problems exacerbated by men knocking on his door for work. The unemployed, without government assistance, pleaded for help and rarely would he turn them away. Likewise, despite his ill health, Connolly too was a very generous man and continued assisting many families struggling through these tough times. The pair were still betting heavily and for the most part, unsuccessfully. This further drained their finances. 

Running the stable did not simply mean looking after the horses, it meant looking after everybody including the apprenticed jockeys and stable hands. One of the secrets of Lou Robertson's success, and the success of Frank McGrath and Jack Holt, when they won, so too did their staff. One of the best examples of how these betting wins were distributed is told by Hall of Fame jockey Edgar Britt. 

Champion jockey Edgar Britt (ARM)

Similar to his friends Lou Robertson and Eric Connolly, Darcy Eccles was always quick to ensure all those responsible for a win shared in his good fortune. In 1932, Eccles owned the winner of both the Moonee Valley and Williamstown Cup, Yarramba ridden to victory by Edgar Britt. After the Moonee Valley win, Eccles came into the jockey’s room and gave Britt a £100 note. 

“It was a big blue note with sheep all on it and I’m looking at this note thinking, that is pretty good and my boss came along and took it out of my hand and said you’re too young to handle that money. I said, well boss, I’ve rode the winner of the cup and I want to go to the pictures tonight and take my mates out and I’m expected to shout them. So he gave me five bob (shillings – about a dollar). I said this will only pay for my fare so after a bit of pressuring I got a quid (one pound or two dollars) out of him. So I was able to take the boys out and shout them a milkshake.” 

"Darcy" Eccles (ARM)

Eccles reacted to betting losses in the same stoic and philosophical manner as his close friends Robertson and Connolly. He was sitting with Lou Robertson when his horse Cypher was just beaten by Adelaide horse, Comedy King sired King Ingoda in the 1922 Melbourne Cup. In a nail biter, both horses tore away from the field and battled it out until they hit the post almost in a dead heat.  “I think the outside horse (King Ingoda) won?” said Eccles turning to Robertson. It was the same way as the judges saw it and gave King Ingoda the Cup. “Bad luck,” said Lou, asking, “It meant a bit to you?” “Just a bare £75,000.” replied Darcy Eccles quietly. It does not sound like much but Darcy Eccles just missed out collecting, in today’s value, around $12,000,000. It transpired, Eccles would become another gambling casualty who died impoverished.

In 1930, Lou Robertson had very few “possibles” in his stable after Sol Green's sudden exit. The cupboard may not have been entirely bare with Paddy Wade’s, Stephen and Barbette along with Alexander Creswick’s Cimbrian, but neither was it a surfeit of riches.  One of the other maybes in his stable was the Queensland horse given to him by Eric Connolly: Harry Winten’s, Soulton.  Too bad it was not a decade later, Winten could have given Lou Robertson, Bernborough before he died. Everybody knew that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Amounis was a certain winner over Soulton. Any noodle would have quickly figured backing Amounis early in a Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double would reap huge dividends if only Nightmarch and Phar Lap were not running at Caulfield. Yet it is obvious both Robertson and Connolly were far from dismissing Soulton. The longer Lou Robertson worked him, the more confusing the betting situation was becoming. 

The Amounis camp figured this double with Phar Lap to be cut and dry. For McGrath and co, it was either Amounis-Phar Lap or a very heavy gambling loss. No plan B, no savers and no other scenario except winning. This was not so for Connolly. Already sowing seeds of doubt with Cragford hitting form. To then bring in a third possibility, he watched with mixed feelings Lou Robertson applying his training magic to Soulton. In their nightly conversation, Connolly and Robertson decided Winten's horse had to be worth backing. Far from the accepted story of Eric Connolly approaching David Davis to set up the double with just Phar Lap and Amounis, months before the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups, Cragford and Soulton were being coupled with Phar Lap as well. What is more, Connolly and the connections of these horses were doing so at far longer odds. Robertson and Connolly lay their Soulton doubles at 125-1.* It meant for every ten pounds invested in Amounis-Phar Lap, he only needs to invest a couple of pounds in the other doubles for the same result. Eric Connolly knew early in the spring carnival he was setting himself up to make another fortune He just wasn't 100% certain as to exactly where that fortune would be coming from.  

*Brisbane Courier 17 July 1930 

Toowoomba Chronicle and Dowling Down Gazette 16 July 1930