Tony Murphy (Niall Toibin), a millionaire builder from Cork in Ireland, has dreams of carrying out a betting coup with his syndicate of friends which could take the London Bookmakers for £250000. He meets up with top Irish racehorse trainer Donnelly (Pierce Brosnan) in a gentleman’s club to discuss his plans and it becomes apparent that a previous coup attempt failed and that he’s not worried about the money, he’s just doing it for the crack.

Donnelly is none to keen initially but Murphy’s persistence pays off and the Irish trainer purchases a decent racehorse for the syndicate called ‘Gay Future’ at a cost of £4000. Murphy explains to his syndicate that they will place trebles and doubles bets with the British bookmakers, scratch two of the horses, which will leave all the bets running onto the third (Gay Future) at a small course where the bookies can’t affect the on-course betting and therefore the starting price (SP). They plan to ship the three horses to a small British trainer 28 days prior to the race (the regulation period for a trainer to have a horse in his stables before it can run in his name) and they will also carry out the plan on a Bank Holiday Monday when there are plenty of race meetings and they are less likely to arouse suspicions. Murphy learns from one of his former workers that Cartmel racecourse in Cumbria doesn’t have a blower (phone line) to the bookies so they choose that as the preferred venue for the coup.

Donnelly meets up with Tony Collins, an ex-public schoolboy, retired stockbroker and part-time horse trainer based in Troon Ayrshire and gets him to agree to take on three of his horses. Meanwhile Murphy and his colleague Brian Darrer (Tony Doyle) meet up to express their concerns over Collins having Gay Future for 28 days and discuss the option of sending him an imposter instead, keeping the real Gay Future with Donnelly until the day of the race and then switch them at the last minute on the way to Cartmel so that the horse can be at a peak level of fitness. They also suggest that Collins should drive the other two horses south and then breakdown on the way before calling the courses to say his horses will now be non-runners. The plan is also to have Gay Future’s jockey switched just before the race with top Irish amateur jockey Timmy Jones (Jim Old) taking over from Donnelly’s own jockey at the last minute.

Murphy withdraws £30000 from his bank account which arouses the suspicions of the Bank manager and he contacts the local police to make them aware in case there are any links to IRA. The syndicate are then tracked by the police all the way to London where the members are seen entering multiple bookmakers on the morning of the big race to place their doubles and trebles bets on the three Collin’s runners. The police soon realise that there is no IRA involvement and stop their surveillance. Meanwhile Collins has loaded Gay Future onto the horse transporter and sent him on his way to Cartmel, advising his house keeper to have a couple of quid on the horse but crucially he has left the other two ‘coup’ horses in the field rather than transport them towards their intended destinations of Southwell and Plumpton.

Collins arrives at Plumpton and lets the declaration clerk know that his intended runner at the meeting has been withdrawn due to the horse transporter breaking down and that his intended runner at Southwell was in the same box, thus just leaving Gay Future as a declared runner on the day. Darrer picks up jockey Timmy Jones from Manchester airport and drives him to Cartmel racecourse for the ride on Gay Future and when he weighs out the Clerk of the Scales questions why a top Irish amateur jockey has just been switched for the intended jockey at the last minute.

One large bookmaker firm soon discover that multiple doubles and trebles bets have been placed on the same three horses and that two of them are now non-runners. The manager demands that a bookie’s runner is sent up to Cartmel from Manchester with £2000 to keep the SP of Gay Future low and limit their losses but he gets caught up in Bank Holiday traffic and never makes the meeting. At this point the syndicate are unable to place any more bets in the London shops as their plan has been discovered.

As a final act of deception, the head lad covers Gay Future’s coat in soap suds before the race to make it appear the horse has sweated away it’s chance in the paddock and Darrer also places some hefty bets on the race favourite Crocodillo to push out the SP on their horse to 10/1. The race goes to plan with Timmy Jones steering Gay Future to a comfortable all-the-way 15 length victory against inferior rivals to leave the bookies shocked and the syndicate celebrating their small fortune back in a hotel in London.              
 
However, a Daily Mail reporter contacts the Collin’s stables to enquire about the day’s events and learns from the housekeeper that the two declared non-runners never left the stables. The scandal makes the headlines on the back page of the following day’s paper and Collins visits the syndicate to let them know the bad news. By this time the bookmakers have also called in Scotland Yard’s serious crime squad as they suspect they have been the victim of mass fraud.

The case is eventually heard 18 months later at Preston Crown Court where Donnelly is cleared of all wrong doing which just leaves Collins and Murphy to face the charges. Murphy states that the coup was an act of genius and not illegal, he further questions whether the bookies would have been in the wrong if they had lowered the price on Gay Future? The judge sums up by telling the jury to consider whether this was an attempt to defraud the bookmakers via criminal conspiracy or to just deceive them. “The question to ask yourself is would the bookies have returned all the monies had Gay Future lost the race?”  

The jury return a verdict of guilty for Collins and Murphy but the judge decides that a jail sentence would be too harsh so just fines them £1500 each. Outside the court house Murphy tells a reporter that the coup wasn’t about the money it was just for the crack!
 

Murphy’s Stroke was based on a true story which actually took place on Bank Holiday Monday August 26th 1974 although some of the events and character names were changed, primarily that of Irish racehorse trainer Edward O’Grady who was called Donnelly in the dramatisation. The TV movie was directed by Frank Cvitanovich (married to Janet Street-Porter at the time) for Thames Television and the storyline was written by Brian Phelan.

The film featured a stellar cast with James Bond hero Pierce Brosnan taking the role of Donnelly, Niall Toibin (Stay Lucky & Ballykissangel) playing Murphy as well as cameo roles for Patrick Malahide (D.S. Chisholm in Minder) and John Bardon (Jim Branning in Eastenders). Horse racing personalities Brough Scott, John Oaksey and Jonathan Powell were also credited as consultants on the making of the film.

Jim Old, a former amateur rider and at the time of filming in 1979 an established trainer, was hired by Cvitanovich as a technical advisor on the film but the director, upon hearing Old’s fake Irish accent, decided to use him in the role of jockey Timmy Jones. Jim Old is not credited in the film as he was not a member of Equity but he is still seen somewhat as a film star in Ireland where Murphy’s Stroke is often repeated on television and he has been quoted as saying: “It was one of the most fun times I've ever had. Frank Cvitanovich and his team were terrific. I probably earned more money making that film than I have in 30 years' training horses.” Old also supplied the horse Joint Venture who played the role of Gay Future and all of the training scenes were filmed at his stables in Wiltshire. The other nine horses which appeared in the film were supplied by the legendary Sir Gordon Richards although he insisted that his own stable jockeys including Ron Barry, Jonjo O'Neill, David Goulding and Neale Doughty would take the mounts rather than stunt riders. Ironically Ron Barry and Jonjo O'Neill actually rode in the same Gay Future race at Cartmel five years earlier.

The bookmaker and crowd scenes were filmed at Ludlow but the race itself was rightfully shot at Cartmel. We only catch a few glimpses of Cartmel and its scenic beauty set against the backdrop of the Lakeland Fells but it was enough to make me want to visit the course one day, even if it is just to taste the famous sticky toffee pudding.  

It would be impossible to pull off a similar coup in today’s interconnected digital world, especially with the advent of betting exchanges as every single market move can be scrutinised and countered. However, I suspect the legendary gambler Barney Curley got his inspiration from the Gay Future affair for his own betting coup which took place at Bellewstown racecourse just ten months later in June 1975. His horse Yellow Sam was heavily backed off-course to win a race and once again they made sure the SP of the horse was kept high by making sure the only phone at the course was occupied – one of Curley’s associates pretending he was talking to a dying Aunt and thus preventing the bookmakers from contacting the course to back down the price of Yellow Sam. The horse won at odds of 20/1 and netted Curley close to £300000 (£1.4 million in today’s money) which the bookmakers begrudgingly paid out – if only Murphy had got away with it too!