After showing him the ropes and watching him cut his teeth with the great, but demanding and sometimes cranky grandfather, Bart Cummings, James was an emerging talent.

However, just a month ago Cummings jnr sought his father's counsel. The young horseman needed a listener and someone who knew the business as he

agonised over an offer to train hundreds of horses for Godolphin, one of the world's largest training stables, as head trainer in Australia.

"He came to me and we talked a lot about what the offer meant," Anthony said. "I put some questions to him that I thought should be, in turn, answered by them, and they all came back positive."

Anthony knew from his decades in racing, and being around a father who rewrote the history of the sport, that such a flattering invite could often be a distraction from asking important questions about the demands of the position.

He knew that the once-in-a-lifetime offer from Sheikh Mohammed would not only be a career-changing opportunity, but done correctly it could be a life-altering one.

"I was a sort of devil's advocate," Anthony said. "Asking and posing questions that I thought were so important about James taking the job. In the back of my mind, though, I knew James had done some hard yards that would now stand him in good stead."

Cummings snr was referring to a series of stories published five years ago, fuelled by two aggrieved members of Bart Cummings' stable in Melbourne, and critical of James.

Reports declared James an "unqualified pretty boy" and that "if it wasn't for the silver spoon he would never make it in racing", but James pushed on.

"I stood back and didn't get involved when the writer and the two employees were hell bent on unseating James from his partnership with Dad and while James was confused why such a torrent of abuse had been thrown at him, he never let them win," Anthony said.

"He stood strong and took it and I am so proud of him for that. And, look, if he can cope with that campaign and come out the other side, James can get through anything."

James, 30, joins Godolphin after almost a decade at Leilani Lodge at Randwick as foreman, co-trainer with Bart, and ultimately as head trainer.

"It is truly an honour to be asked to join the Godolphin team as the head trainer in Australia and I am very grateful to His Highness Sheikh Mohammed for the opportunity," James said.

Anthony added: "We all train the Cummings way and that's our training style, it's just a matter of adapting those ways to the modern times."

And how would Bart be feeling about James' appointment? "Dad was pretty much a grizzly bear with the grandchildren, but if you looked hard enough, that glint of pride in his eyes was hard to miss," Anthony said.