VALE SHANE WARNE
FAREWELL TO THE KING OF SPIN BY ANDREW HAWKINS
On Super Saturday Race Day last year, Shane Warne was among those trackside at Flemington to cheer home the Lloyd Williams- owned Homesman in the Group 1 TAB Australian Cup (2000m). Just days earlier, music promoter Michael Gudinski – a close mate of bothWarne andWilliams and a part-owner in Homesman – died unexpectedly. While Homesman may have been something of an outsider at 25/1, racing has a habit of satisfying the sentimentalist in us all. So it was that the Irish import stuck his head out with – as described so eloquently by Matt Hill – “the music man cheering above”. As Super Saturday dawns a year on, this time it is Warne for whom the public is mourning following his sudden death last weekend. A profound sense of shock prevailed on Australian Guineas Day – the most commonly asked question, before the obvious racing banter, was simply: “What about Warnie?” It was simply impossible that such an exuberant figure could be gone. Any list of Melbourne icons would have Warne right up there in the upper echelon. The mercurial kid from Upper Ferntree Gully who would develop into the greatest spin bowler of them all transcended cricket to become perhaps Australia’s most beloved sporting figure since the days of the Great Depression, when Don Bradman and Phar Lap lifted spirits right across the country. Warne’s list of cricketing feats – for instance, the ball of the century to Mike Gatting, his career-best figures of 8-71 during the 1994- 95 Ashes and his hat-trick at the MCG that same series, the first
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