We have Ballydoyle Honey contesting the Mulvaney Memorial at Shelbourne this weekend and I am hoping she can win her third big competition of the year.
We decided to seed her wide when she is drawn against the top middle distance runners and she has trap six on Saturday.
I thought luck went her way a little bit in the semis with the gaps opening up when she needed them.
On the other hand, Laughil Duke, who is drawn in trap five and looks her biggest danger, had very little go his way and he ran very well to qualify.
I think he is probably quicker over 550 yards than Honey but think she can reel him in over 600 yards if she gets a clear run.
Duke is a definite railer so we should get a run behind him as he heads for the inside.
We also have four running at Limerick in the St.Leger. We only lost one from the first round and hope they can all make it through.
Our first runner is Going To Work in the first heat. He is a litter brother to Diego Flight and has been in the kennel for a while but was lame and this is the first real chance to see what he can do.
I was very pleased with him in the first round, he showed a lot more early pace than I was expecting but couldn’t get across his field. He knows the track well and I would expect him to improve from the first round.
Rural Hawaii runs against one of the fastest dogs in the competition in heat four. We know Offshore Bound from Shelbourne Park and he must be a big danger. Hawaii had never run from the 550 boxes before and didn’t trap as well as he can in the heats.
In fact, he was possibly a bit lucky to qualify. He needs to trap on Saturday and at this stage of the event, I would be more than satisfied with qualification.
Sidarian Vega snd Coonough Master are drawn in the same heat. Vega didn’t break and was badly hampered in his heat or would have gone a lot closer in my opinion.
Master was drawn on the opposite side of Black Tom last week compared to this Saturday and I thought he might have won had they been drawn differently then. I would be very disappointed if he isn’t still in it on Sunday morning.
I truly wasn’t aware that I was leading in this year’s trainers table until it was pointed out to me for this column.
That isn’t being flash, or blasé, it simply doesn’t interest me. I don’t even know how many times we have won the trainers title.
That doesn’t mean that I am indifferent to winning races, I love it, but I am the sort of person who concentrates on his next winner, not the last.
Apart from handling top class dogs, I also get satisfaction from the little things. For example, my daughter Rachel has a nice little bitch who I didn’t think was really concentrating on the game.
We took her along to a coursing meeting, with one of Timmy’s coursing runners, just to see what it was all about. The bottom line is she came out and won well at Shelbourne on Wednesday. To see Rachel’s face was like winning a classic.
Apart from being lucky in having some decent dogs, I suppose the secret to our success is how we run the kennel.
I like to have decent young dogs and bring them on after qualifying. Because of the way the Irish system works, you need to get a win early on and if they aren’t going to be open class, I usually suggest that the owners then sell them on to England where they can get more prolonged success coming through the grading system.
But it doesn’t always go to plan. The other night we had a bitch who had qualified in 29.87 beaten for the fourth time by a dog who did 28.46.
But that’s all part of the game. No complaints.
