Both a mother and stepfather say they were not the last person to check on a 17-month-old in her cot before she was found fatally injured.

Sadie-Leigh Gardner died on 29 March 2019 from blunt force head injuries.

The Tauranga toddler's stepfather Adrian Clancy was charged with murder and found guilty, but was then acquitted by the Court of Appeal and found not-guilty in a retrial.

The Tauranga toddler's mother says it was stepdad Adrian Clancy who last went in, but Clancy says it was the mother.

This is despite him initially telling police Sadie-Leigh had a coughing fit after the mother left for an appointment and he went in to check on her.

Now, he has told an inquest it happened earlier and it was Sadie-Leigh's mother who went in.

He claims she was the last person to see the toddler before he found her struggling to breathe.

Counsel for the police Richard Jenson put to Clancy that he caused the fatal injury, left the room and went back to the lounge to continue gambling on the tennis.

"It's only after a few minutes and hearing nothing from that room, that you've gone back in and seen the devastating effects of what you did?"

"No," Clancy said.

Jenson said Clancy told the first police officer he spoke to, just hours after the injury happened, that the girl's mother left and then there was a 30 second long coughing fit about 10 minutes later.

Another five minutes after that, he initially said, was when he went in to find Sadie-Leigh struggling to breathe.

"I got it wrong," Clancy said. "So the first time you spoke about it, you got it wrong," Jenson countered.

"Yes," Clancy said.

Now he said the girl's mother left a short time after the coughing fit, and there was silence until he got up on a rain delay in the tennis and found her struggling to breathe.

He said he was so engrossed in betting on the tennis that he did not hear the fatal injury happening.

"I was busy with my bets, you could have driven a bus through there and I wouldn't have seen or heard it."

Clancy was asked point blank if he assaulted Sadie-Leigh and he said no.