83-Year-Old Former SP Bookie With Visible Bullet Scars Says This Online Sportsbetting Is A Bit Crook

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A veteran old boy from Sydney's once working class suburb of Balmain says even he reckons this new online sportsbetting mob is a little how ya going.

Former SP bookmaker Kev Donnelly (83) , spent three decades taking illegal bets from behind a milk bar, surviving police raids, standover men from Southern Italy, two attempted robberies and what he describes as "a misunderstanding involving a shotgun."

Despite carrying bullet wounds and having his nose broken so many times it permanently points toward the right, Kev insists there was still a code.

"If a bloke looked like he'd had enough, you'd tell him to bugger off and come back next week" he explained.

"I wasn't about to off to lend him money or knock on his door everyday to see if he wanted to have a punt"

Kev admits SP bookies were hardly saints.

"We were illegal, but at least we had the decency to look like criminals"

"This bloke bloke bloke shit they do on the telly is pure evil. We only got away with it because people had to come find us... We weren't in the business of hounding degenerate gamblers until they did their arse"

The retired bookmaker says he nearly fell off his chair after hearing what the current mob of bookies have been getting up to.

Donnelly says if modern betting companies had turned up in Balmain during the 60s, even the local underworld would've thought they were pushing things a bit far.

"We were civilised. We weren't in the business of destroying families for sport" he said.

"Those kind of predators used to find themselves at the bottom of the harbour when Lenny was still around"