JUST when everything was going so well for the Brisbane Racing Club’s ‘man for all seasons’, like the three-peat of his beloved Brisbane Lions, he hit an unexpected hurdle at Doomben on Wednesday.
‘Manuel’ reportedly forgot his ‘admit all sections’ pass to the track and after bluffing his way past the car park attendant was halted by an Asian security guard at the bottom of the escalator to the grandstand.
‘Don’t you know who I am?’ Manuel squelled at the feisty guard who was simply doing his job but some suspect has been consigned to cleaning the toilets after Wednesday’s faux pas.
As one cynic suggested: ‘He either didn’t recognise the BRC ‘man for all seasons’ or had just finished reading an unabridged version of The Gambling Man or Peter Bredhauer’s infamous speech about Manuel to a National Clubs Conference way back when.
He most certainly would not have suspected that this shuffling little chap getting in his face was the same one who once burnt rubber running messages from the jockeys’ room to the bookies’ ring right under the noses of supposedly unsuspecting stewards. At least that was the message given to one of those Commission of Inquiries into Queensland Racing that went nowhere.
