Caption: NRL star James Tedesco was among the crowd at the recent Casino Cup meeting and was happy to pose for this photo with leading Casino trainer Brad Northfield and his two grandchildren

By Daryl ‘Albert’ Gleeson

HELLO to everyone in our wonderful sport as we kick off a new year.

Firstly, as we went to print last month the  Casino Cup was run on November 27 and was taken out by the Mal Ross-trained bitch Phantom Bonnie.

She led all the way in the Group Three event, pocketing the lovely 25 ‘gorillas’ first prizemoney. I could not get to Casino for the Final but, geez, I wish I’d been there.

NRL star James Tedesco, the best fullback in the game and the captain of the mighty Blues, just happened to turn up at the Casino Cup meeting on a buck’s day with his mates from Camden.

Teddy obviously likes a ‘Rex Hunt’ like the rest of us and my mail is he was on Phantom Bonnie in the Cup final at the juicy odds of $8.00.

Geez, Herdy I bet the bar takings were way up on Cup day.

The next meeting I got to last month was the Thursday Albion Park meeting on December 10 for the finals of the Group Two Qld Futurity and Qld Derby.

After a sensational meal upstairs at the Pacers And Chasers Bistro it was time to back a winner .

I said to my good mate Brad Ellis, who drove me up: “Old mate, I’ll tell you an easy way to win $350. Let’s have a two-bet all-up on the two best bets of the night – Simon Told Helen is a living certainty in the Megastar at Dapto and Farmor Beach will win the Derby Final at Albion. It’s $2.75 the double x $200. That will do us.”

Yes, you guessed it, both dogs got beat. I’m tipping there were many more punters then Brad and me on Simon Told Helen at Albion because when the Kristy Sultana-trained Flying Ricciardo sailed past him at the top turn to take the $75,000 to the winner you could have heard a pin drop.

My mate from the ‘table of knowledge’, Lemonade Tommy, said: “Albert, can you believe that got run down?”

“Geez, we can stop ‘em, Tom,” I replied.

Then came the next ‘good thing’ in Farmor Beach in the Derby Final and, would you believe it, he got run down as well.

Tony Brett, that genius in Group finals at Albion Park, produced a young dog at just his eighth start in Sentenced to take out the $40,000 prizemoney. By the upcoming future star sire in Jury, Sentenced gave the very promising Farmor Beach a start and a beating, running away in the quick time of 29.85. TB, as I’ve said numerous times in my diary, you are a freak at getting these dogs to win Group finals.

I had a couple of small bets throughout the night but losing the ‘stone plonk’ all-up (or so I thought) was too hard to drag in.

My brother ‘Questions’ and I decided to go over to Capalaba on December 13 to catch up with Johnny Catton and all his crew at the club.

At 8am on that Sunday morning it was pouring rain at Capalaba so I rang Catto who assured me the Stewards had walked the track and they definitely would race. “Beauty,” I said and we arrived about  15 minutes before the first.

All the Capalaba regulars where there. First, I spotted ‘The Prince’ Tommy  Tzouvelis and the legend Paul Cauchi sitting at their table.

Ray Plimmer, now a Capalaba local after moving up from Sydney, was also there.

That mad Queenslander and regular visitor to the Grafton carnival Cynthia Suttle made a bee line for me. Yes, I copped  it over the State Of Origin result and I deserved it.

Like most people, I’m still scratching my head as to how NSW got beat. but Qld just love being the underdogs and got us once again.

What about the day at Capalaba? We got to race four and I was just about to start betting when the power went off. It was a blackout but not from the punt. The whole of Capalaba near the dog track had no power.

So we waited nearly an hour before ‘Questions’ said, “Come on, we are out of here.”

My mate Pepe Leonard always reckons I could stop a train and now I’ve stopped the Capalaba greyhounds.

Pleeeeeeeease, what will happen next?

As I go back to Grafton for Christmas, my next meeting will be Wauchope on Boxing Day for the Butch Monkley Maiden Heats. I hope to see you all at Wauchope.

Cheers for now and a very Merry Christmas to everyone.