BOOM TIMES
Former NRL stars ready to cash in at Millions
THEY are the Queensland rugby league players who tried their luck in Sydney but instead ended up sparking a thoroughbred boom.
Andrew Dunemann and Jeremy Schloss didn’t know Tony Gollan before they met at the South Sydney Rabbitohs in 1999.
Dunemann and Schloss had briefly crossed paths at the Gold Coast Seagulls earlier in their career before winding up at Souths, while Gollan was a Queensland junior representative looking for a trial.
Their time at the Bunnies didn’t extend beyond that year but they’ve been carrying a lucky rabbit’s foot since.
The trio hope the luck continues at the Magic Millions sales and racing carnival on the Gold Coast next week.
Gollan, the Toowoomba boy who has gone on to become Queensland’s premier racehorse trainer, will start the unbeaten Ef Troop in the $2 million Magic Millions 2YO Classic next Saturday.
Dunemann, 41, and Schloss, 44, now Tweed Coast residents, will be cheering for an Ef Troop win and with good reason.
They part-own the twoyear-old’s dam Limealicious and sire Spirit Of Boom and will offer his younger full brother at the yearling sales a day after the big race.
Experts tip he will be sold for a considerable six-figure price. A win by Ef Troop on Saturday will bump up the price even more.
“I don’t think we would ever dream of what we might get at this sale,” said Dunemann, whose two-decade career as a rugby league player, coach and referees consultant taught him not to get ahead of himself.
These are, well, boom times for Dunemann and Schloss, now successful horse owners, breeders and syndicators.
Schloss played State of Origin for Queensland and Dunemann won a World Club Challenge with Leeds but that success is nothing compared with their wins in racing.
And it has all grown from that chance meeting with Gollan 18 years ago.
“We always said we would want to get a horse with him,” said Dunemann of Gollan, who followed the path of his father Darryl into the horse training business in Toowoomba.
“In 2006 I was playing over in England and Jeremy rang me and said, ‘we’re going into this thing’.”
That “thing” was Temple Of Boom, a racehorse who had his first start in January 2009 and won the Magic Millions Prelude at the Gold Coast.
He retired as a Queensland cult hero in 2016 after winning 11 of his 64 starts and amassing almost $2 million in prizemoney. His resumé included Group 1 glory at Randwick and Group 2 success at Flemington and Eagle Farm.
Temple Of Boom had given Dunemann and Schloss a taste of success and they wanted more.
They bought into the ownership of Temple Of Boom’s younger brother Spirit Of Boom, who in 2010 would also win the Millions Prelude.
He retired in 2014 with a record of nine wins and earnings of $2.4 million.
Spirit Of Boom famously edged out his older brother to claim the Group 1 Doomben
10,000 in 2014 and give Dunemann and Schloss first and second in the historic race.
It was party time but for one of them the celebration was short-lived.
“As soon as the race finished I had to sprint to my car because I had to be at the Titans game at the Gold Coast in an hour’s time,” said Dunemann, who was working as an NRL consultant and video referee at the time.
“I didn’t get to celebrate that one until afterwards.”
While Temple Of Boom was a gelding, Spirit Of Boom was a stallion and Dunemann and Schloss retained shares in him when he retired to Eureka Stud on the Darling Downs.
Ef Troop was one of the first of Spirit Of Boom’s progeny to hit the track this season and has won twice at Doomben.
“We always knew Ef Troop was going to be a good horse right from the start,” Dunemann said. “When Ef Troop had been in the paddock for nine months, (Eureka studmaster) Scott McAlpine said to us he was the best mover he had ever had on the farm.”
Although Dunemann and Schloss don’t own Ef Troop, they are members of his fan club.
“At his first start, it was like I owned 100 per cent of the horse,” Dunemann said.
“I was carrying on that much, you would have thought I was one of the owners in the horse.
“Obviously it was Spirit’s first winner. We are so connected to that horse. The emotions were pretty high.”
Ef Troop will line up in the $2 million race next Saturday alongside at least two other of Spirit Of Boom’s progeny – Newcastle colt Jonker, who has won two from two, and Outback Barbie, a Gollantrained filly who won on debut at Doomben last month.
As part-owners of his dam, yearling full brother and four-month-old full sister, Dunemann and Schloss hope Ef Troop can extend the boom times next Saturday.
“We’re riding the crest of the wave with him,” Dunemann said. “Hopefully he can go well in the Magic Millions. If not him, Jonker and if not Jonker, Outback Barbie.”