Whenever I read about a criminal trial I am always intrigued by the subject of motive. The defense in most trials will often ask the judge and jury, “whatever motive could my client have had to done this  deed . There is no evidence that he/she would  gain from the crime and so therefore I submit that there is no crime to answer for.

Yes we’ve all heard it before and have often argued over a beer whenever a fellow drinker may have raised the subject. “Well tell me this, why in hell would he have done it. What was in it for him?”
Yes, I’ve been guilty of taking one side or the other but something happened during my time as a racing journalist that I have always remembered. Don’t ever get married to the idea that there has to be a motive. The lesson was delivered to me by one of the biggest forces in horse racing circles today and it was over a friendly drink that I learned a very good lesson.

Ray Murrihy is known to racing people throughout Australia. He is the chief steward of Racing NSW. Chief steward is what I refer to him as, but I guess nowadays that if you were to look through a list of authorities his title may well be “Head of integrity services.” Such is the language of the day.

I first met Ray in Perth in 1982 at the Interdominion championship series when he had recently been appointed chief steward of harness racing in West Australia. I was the harness racing writer for the Melbourne Age and like other eastern state journalists we were facing a tough task because the Interdominion heats were run on Friday night and with the time difference we were all severely handicapped  getting our copy into our newspapers before deadline, so over a friendly ale when Ray Murrihy asked me if there was anything he could do for us, I suggested that he could ensure that the boom horse of Australian harness racing, Popular Alm run the in the first heat of the night which would give us eastern state writers something to write about and get it through on time.

He readily agreed and we were all very grateful.

I didn’t come across Ray again until I was at the Melbourne Herald, this time as the racing editor several years later. Ray had gone from being chief steward of harness racing in Perth to chief steward of racing in Queensland. We had a drink and became involved in “stewards talk” about how they handles the subject of motive.

Ray took a deep breath, then said to me in a deliberate penetrating voice, “Hucka don’t ever take too much notice of motive.” He then explained  exactly what he meant.
Before going to Perth, Ray had been chief steward on Tasmanian harness racing. “That’s where I leaned never to worry about motive, he began.

“One of my junior stewards was getting married on a Saturday and he had been rostered to cover a small meeting at Carrick. We had to find a replacement and I was happy to fill in, so for the first time in my life I traveled down to Carrick on that Saturday morning and did all the usual stuff when I arrived.
“Everything was going all smoothly then halfway through the meeting a trainer-driver who was not unknown to me had a horse running and I made a mental note of how well it was traveling in the run and how it looked as though it would easily beat the opposition whenever the driver let it go.

“To my astonishment he never let it go. It was bolting and he just wouldn’t let it go. I couldn’t believe it and naturally had him in the room immediately after the race.

“My line of questioning was, (No name attached) why did you stop the horse from winning. You are well known for setting up many a betting coup. Here the horse you were driving was 16/1 – you could have made a killing but you never let it go. Why???”
The trainer-driver wasn’t saying much. He acted like a guilty man. “I for the life of me couldn’t understand why. Here was the chance to make a killing and he missed out. He was too smart not to know that the horse was flying but he let it go at 16/1. It worried me but in the end I gave him 12 months for pulling the horse up and he looked like a man who expected the penalty and didn’t really complain.

Murrihy couldn’t get the case out of his mind. “What was the motive?” but he let it slide.

Then one day, shortly after he had been appointed chief steward in Perth, the Tasmanian authorities organized a farewell for him and among the many who came to the function  was the trainer-driver that Ray had given the 12 months to a year or more ago.

“We had a drink and he said he had no hard feelings about it all, then we had another and I asked him the burning question: WHY?

“Well he said that as long as we were talking out of school he would tell me.

“Mr Murrihy, he began, we haven’t had swabbing equipment at Carrick in the 20 years I’ve been driving there, so on the way to the track I stopped and gave my horse a huge dose of caffeine and was set to unleash a big plunge on him at big odds.
“Imagine my feeling when I arrived at the track and the first bloke I see is you, not the usual steward, and you were getting all your swabbing material out of your boot, something we had never seen at Carrick. I almost fainted.

“Now my feeling was that If I backed the horse and it won you were a certainty to swab it and I would get five years for doping the horse, so I decided to pull it up and I figured I might get away with a year because you would never understand why I had pulled it up.

It worked! Ray Murrihy told me that night that he would never again try and figure out a motive again. Sheer plain evidence and your own judgment was enough.

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