I think it is a big deterrent for MattyB or any of his crew if they were to be in such a position in the future. They made a big mistake racing 6 days or even 2 weeks before the event with that level of improvement and paid 5k of their hard earned as a penalty for it.
It is likely that MattyB’s crew, who openly support ‘pro’ running will be very heavily scrutinised by the handicapping officials in the future. It will be tough to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes like that again.
Incidentally, Burbidge had only 0.25m less in handicap a few months prior, so running a week before Stawell was fruitless in that regard. If anything it sucked the bookies into believing he couldn’t do it and gave them better odds to punt on. As a result the 5k could have been easily generated with less than a $100 outlay with one of the corporate betting agencies.