Rugby league great Andrew Johns was terrified he would be fired by the Nine Network after he “embellished” what he’d been told by bookie Tom Waterhouse about the racehorse More Joyous.
Businessman and horse owner John Singleton told Racing NSW’s inquiry into the matter that Johns had been drinking the night before the Group One All Aged Stakes on April 27 and may have been “big-noting” information he’d received about the thoroughbred’s condition.
“You don’t want an `Immortal’ to be sacked by Channel 9 because of Tom Waterhouse,” Singleton told the inquiry on Monday.
“He said, ‘mate, I’ll be collateral damage’ and left me with that very negative image.”
Johns allegedly believed he would be fired instead of Waterhouse, who spends millions of dollars in an endorsement deal with the network.
“He admitted he’d probably embellished, and he felt he let Tom down, let me down and let (trainer) Gai (Waterhouse) down,” Singleton said.
Johns did not attend the inquiry but supplied a written statement saying he had been agitated, jumbled his words and now looked “like a goose”.
The inquiry also heard that Waterhouse spoke to Johns about 4pm on Anzac Day, two days before the All Aged Stakes.
“I said I wouldn’t be surprised if all three favourites got beaten,” he said.
He told Johns he didn’t like It’s A Dundeel, More Joyous or All Too Hard.
Waterhouse said: “I said It’s A Dundeel was under the odds and I gave a few reasons why, and that was it.”
He denied ever saying anything to Johns about More Joyous’s health, and never using the word “off” when referring to her form.
“The first I ever heard of it was when John Singleton had three beers and told everyone on live TV … that ‘More Joyous has problems and Gai’s son is telling everyone’, that was five minutes before the race,” he said.
The strain of the inquiry began to show late on Monday when Gai Waterhouse accused Singleton of being a drunk.
Singleton admits the conversation he had with Gai Waterhouse in the mounting yard before the race was heated. “You might have gathered I wasn’t happy,” he said as the inquiry heard of expletive-laced shouts between the two.
“I was what Andrew Johns would call ‘agitated’.”
“I would say drunk,” Gai Waterhouse interjected.
She said she had been brought before the inquiry by dubious people.
“The people involved are a beat-up jockey, a brothel owner and a footballer, and that’s what’s got us sitting here today.
“It’s an absolute disgrace – you’re an absolute sham, John, you really are,” she told Singleton.
“They are the people who are discrediting my son, my husband and me, and they won’t show their faces here today.”
Gai Waterhouse said Singleton was her most valued owner.
“Why wouldn’t we give him the information (on More Joyous)?”
Jockey Nash Rawiller told the inquiry his mind was focused on the race with More Joyous, but was interrupted when Gai Waterhouse accused Singleton of using a profanity.
She said this proved Rawiller was not in a composed state before the race.
Chief Steward Ray Murrihy said Rawiller’s riding was not being criticised.
“If he’d gotten off and run alongside it he couldn’t have done worse,” he said.
The inquiry has been adjourned while the stewards consider all of the evidence.
“We’re mindful of the harmful impact this inquiry has had on racing,” Murrihy said and did not rule out criminal charges being laid.
