Big day for young Matamata apprentice

Press, 7 November 1978, Page 23

Big day for young Matamata apprentice

From ALLAN BROWN Melbourne Only two jockeys with engagements in the Meh bourne Cup this afternoon, Roy Higgins and Harry White, have wan the race twice, Higgins in 1965 and 1976 and White in 1975 and 1974. Three at least will be riding in the Cup for the first time, the baby of them all, the Matamata 16-j’ear-old, Toby Autridge, on Dandaleith. Mark Broadfoot, an apprentice from Flemington, is on Decelea, and Gary Murphy, formerly of Ballarat, and now indentured to a Caulfield trainer, Brian Ralph, on Massuk.

Broadfoot, whose career closely matches that of young Autridge — both began riding just about as soon as they could walk, then did well on ponies within the show ring — is 18, a year and a bit older than Autridge and Murphy is just 20. Success would put anyone of the three young riders into exclusive company because no apprentice has won the Cup since 1948 when Ray Neville, the day before his sixteenth birthday, scored on the outsider, Rimfire. In spite of the calls made on them by radio and television and their riding for stakes and the landing erf bets that involve huge

amounts of money by New Zealand standards, Broadfoot and Murphy remain youthful and modest. Certainly neither seems overawed by the responsibilities being set them today, and on that score the New Zealand lad suffers nothing by comparison. “Not yet,” Autridge replied, when asked yesterday whether he was beginning to feel nervous at the prospect of riding in the Cup. “I might be tomorrow but I don’t usually have any worries before I ride.” Perhaps he is content to leave that to his mother and father, both at Melbourne and hoping more than anyone that young Toby does well in the Cup.