Cover image courtesy of Bronwen Healy
Horse trainer Andrew Bobbin isn’t the first man of rugby league in racing. There’s Billy Slater, legend of the game turned hobby breeder, and John O’Shea, self-confessed “bad-tempered bugger” who played rep country football in North Queensland.
In Bobbin’s case, he was a one-time first grade player for St. George Illawarra, with a resumé of over 100 reserve-grade games for the Dragons.
“I wasn’t quite good enough to be a first-grader,” Bobbin said. “But it was a great part of my life and something that I always aspired to do. The thing that I liked the most about it, and what I missed most when I wasn’t playing, was having something to look forward to every weekend. You’d have this game plan, and when it would all come off there were these unreal highs.”
Bobbin departed rugby league in 2001 and, some 20 years later, he’s training racehorses.
“Racing gives me the same thing. It’s very much programming and planning, and when you start from scratch with a horse, get it to the races and actually win a race, it’s a huge thrill.” - Andrew Bobbin
“Racing gives me the same thing,” he said. “It’s very much programming and planning, and when you start from scratch with a horse, get it to the races and actually win a race, it’s a huge thrill.”
Grampians Racing
Bobbin is set up at 1554 Pomonal Road, Lake Fyans, a pretty hamlet at the foot of Grampians National Park in western Victoria. He is a short chug from Stawell Racecourse, and operates as Grampians Racing.
His base is Tra Intire Stables, pronounced traw in-teera, which is a Gaelic translation of ‘inland beach’. The property is 100 acres of yards, grass gallops and heavy, naturally occurring sand.
“Out the back, it’s like the Wanda sand dunes in Cronulla,” Bobbin said. “It’s an up and down, undulating sand bank. Back in the day, be it a million, five million or 10 million years ago, there was a seabed here at some point. So it’s the sort of sand you’d have at the beach, and it’s ideal for training racehorses.”
A lone horse works along the grass track at Grampians Racing | Image courtesy of Grampians Racing
Grampians Racing was established in 2020 when Bobbin set out to be a solo trainer. Before that, he had spent a year with Gai Waterhouse in Sydney and five years as assistant trainer to Matt Cumani in Ballarat.
“I was in the position with Matt where I thought I knew better too often, and when that happens it’s time to go out and do your own thing,” Bobbin said. “While I was with Matt, a fellow called Rohan McDonald had shares in horses, and he had bought the farm that we now train from about five years ago. He was forever telling me that it would be a great place to train racehorses.”
“I was in the position with Matt (Cumani) where I thought I knew better too often, and when that happens it’s time to go out and do your own thing.” - Andrew Bobbin
McDonald was a prominent local businessman, the owner of caravan parks at nearby Halls Gap. He was a racing boffin, but he was also pretty handy with machinery.
“Rohan is a real go-getter, and he took it upon himself to set up the facility,” Bobbin said. “He harrowed the tracks and built the yards, and once I saw what he’d done, I thought it was perfect.”
Bobbin knew that he’d need investors. He thought it would be a very quick road to broke if he did it alone, so he fished around for business partners.
“I was fortunate to get the backing of four other guys, all professionals at the top of their games in various industries, and we set up a company under the name of Grampians Racing,” the trainer said. “We all contributed some cash to get things rolling, and that’s how it worked.”
Grampians Racing hosting an owners' day at the facilities | Image courtesy of Grampians Racing
There are five directors of Grampians Racing, and they include Bobbin and McDonald, plus Dom Kerr, Lloyd Lazara and Jeff Lovell. The latter owned The Grampians Motel at Halls Gap.
“These boys are at the top of their games and fairly well-established in life,” Bobbin said. “They’re all Victorians, and they all like a day at the races and love a good time, and they specifically love a Country Cup. Any day at the races with these boys is always a good day, and I’ll be forever grateful to them for giving me a leg-up.”
Scottish headcase
Bobbin has 30-odd horses in work at Tra Intire, with a handful in pre-training and 23 yearlings coming through. It’s not a bad effort for a new trainer.
His first runner was Jane’s Angel (Smart Missile) in late November last year, and she was also his first winner, saluting at Nhill a month later. Last weekend, Bobbin hogged the headlines when he trained his first Victorian metropolitan winner in Scottish Dancer (Dream Ahead {USA}). The 4-year-old gelding won at Caulfield, his third win on the bounce, and the trainer admitted post-race that the horse was “an absolute weapon at home”, albeit "a headcase".
“He certainly has some talent, and I don’t think we’ve been to the bottom of him yet,” Bobbin said. “But he loves to do plenty wrong. He’s very unpredictable. At home, his regular rider Taylah Markham calls him Mr Whippy, because he can be out exercising, going three-quarter pace, and all of a sudden he’ll just jam the brakes on and spin around for no apparent reason.”
Scottish Dancer | Image courtesy of Bronwen Healy
Bobbin and his team have worked out how best to handle Scottish Dancer.
They mix up the routine, going left on the sand one morning, then right the next. They use the bush trails and grass gallops in turn, or the treadmill. It keeps the horse guessing. They also rarely, if ever, exercise him alone.
“If you have a horse either side, you’re half a chance,” Bobbin said. “Otherwise you just won’t get there.”
Like all of the trainer’s horses currently in work, Scottish Dancer is a hand-me-down. He came to Tra Intire from the Mick Price-Michael Kent Jnr yard, a three-time winner for his previous trainers.
As a youngster, the horse cost $60,000 at the Magic Millions Adelaide Yearling Sale in 2018, sold by Stockwell Thoroughbreds to Woodpark Stud, and then on-sold at the Magic Millions 2YOs In Training Sale that October for $75,000. He went to Roll The Dice Racing, in whose colours he still competes.
Scottish Dancer as a 2-year-old
He is the fourth foal from the mare Strathspey (Bryce Canyon {USA}), who is a half-sister to the Redoute’s Choice mare Alzora.
Alzora, owned by prominent breeder Robert Crabtree, won the G3 The Vanity S. in 2013, as well as the Listed Ethereal S. the year before, and she produced Sacramento (Pierro) in 2016. That horse won two Listed features for co-trainers Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott, including the VRC St Leger S. last year.
Life in television
In an everyday sense, Bobbin is well-natured and patient. He presents well at the races, square-cut and deftly dressed, with a six-foot frame a relic of his days on the footy field. He has few blow-ups at the stables, and said there’s no place he’d rather be than training on the fringes of Lake Fyans right now.
It’s a very different life to the one he enjoyed playing league, but then he’s had a few career incarnations.
When Bobbin left the Dragons in 2001, he went into television, in which he had worked at Wollongong during his early league life. He was a cameraman, and a year-long stint in London turned into a decade-long adventure travelling the world with CNN.
“I worked in, I’d say, 50 countries around the world as a cameraman and editor,” Bobbin said. “I did two months in Iraq covering the war, and then I’d be in Russia doing a documentary on a Bolshoi ballerina. Because a lot of the content on CNN was sponsored, I got to sit up the nice end of the plane and stay in good hotels, so it was a good job for a young fella living in a big city.”
"I worked in, I’d say, 50 countries around the world as a cameraman and editor. I did two months in Iraq covering the war, and then I’d be in Russia doing a documentary on a Bolshoi ballerina." - Andrew Bobbin
In 2010, Longines began sponsoring racing heavily around the world, and CNN began a monthly racing show, fronted by Francesca Cumani. Bobbin jumped in, and for three years the pair travelled the racing globe. It was the rarest of opportunities, because Bobbin had spent his whole life forecasting his future as a horse trainer.
“I was like a kid at Christmas,” he said. “I was forever taking notes and seeing how things were done, and Francesca was the one who gave me the push I needed. She said I was in the wrong game, and I thought she was right.”
It was 2013 when Bobbin left behind the glamour of television for Tulloch Lodge. Thereafter, he was in Ballarat with Matt Cumani. He doesn’t regret his departure from the heights of CNN, because his whole life has been geared towards a training career.
As kids in Bega, in country New South Wales, he and his younger brother Grant watched the 1983 film Phar Lap, and brought the races to life aboard their horses out the back. Grant Bobbin is still in Bega, and a breaker and pre-trainer at Tarraganda Stables.
“Deep down, I’d always wanted to be a racehorse trainer,” Andrew Bobbin said. “That was always what I wanted to do as a kid, and we’re set up here now and getting results. I believe in what we’re doing, and we’ve got a great team around us. Grampians Racing at Lake Fyans, Stawell, that will do for now.”
