We are still there in the Irish St.Leger with five runners in the two semi finals. If you think you needed luck before, you certainly need it now.

In the first semi final we have Totos Park in two and Clonbrien Hero in four. They both ran pretty much as I expected in the third round. Totos Park ran from trap two then and once again showed why he isn’t a pure railer. The idea to seed him as a railer was his owner’s idea and this is where luck and judgement come into play. The dog really wants a middle draw, but if you are seeded middle there is every chance you will get five or six at Limerick. That can be a huge disadvantage for certain dogs at Limerick.

Clonbrien Hero is a middle seed along the straights and railer at the bends as he once again showed in the third round from trap five. So what will happen on Saturday? My guess is that if they both run to form, they will cross the split roughly level but Hero continues to show great pace from there to the bend and nobody runs a better bend than Hero. Fingers crossed they can avoid ruining each others chances but it really is down to luck.

In the second semi final we have the three, four and five in Nice Charmer, Clonbrien Prince and Lenson Blinder. The bookies have Blinder as the Leger favourite and it is easy to see why. He has really taken to the track as he showed, also from trap five in the third round. He has great early pace and comfortably sees out the 550 yards. At Shelbourne you would have him as a rails/middle runner. At Limerick he is going well from middle/wide draws.

I was happy to see Prince ease through the last couple of rounds but we are at the business stage now and I really need him to step up and start coming away a bit quicker. He can’t afford to trap as slowly as he did when he beat Totos Park last time out. Nice Charmer ran on for second (from trap three) in the last round. He really needs to bring his ‘A’ game to the track on Saturday to get through to the final, though he is well capable of doing that.

We have three runners in the Gain Nutrition Select Stakes at Waterford. Newinn Lester won there last Saturday and really impressed me on the video – I wasn’t at the track.

He didn’t break anywhere near as well as he can and came from behind showing great ability to win well. Clona Blaze, who was having his first outing since the Derby final trialled well as did Blue East.

We also have runners at Shelbourne on Saturday. The racing manager was able to give Macaroon Cruz a first attempt at 750 yards. He has drawn trap six but should hopefully get a clear run against slightly slower breakers. I’d hoped they might be able to duplicated so I could also give Drive On Tipp a run over the distance. That wasn’t possible but he needed the outing and goes in a 550. With any luck I may be able to give him a 600 yard race at Limerick on Leger final night.

Looking further ahead, we have the Munster Puppy Cup/Juvenile. It was put back a week due to the shortage of runners but I hope to have around 10 in it. Because of the age leniency, Blueberry Diva should get her chance, along with Riverside Larry who recently won an unraced stake there. He is owned by Larry O’Rourke who also has a new pup who I really like the look of, Murts Boher.

Len Ponder bought Lenson Blinder himself which is much the way I prefer to have new dogs in the kennel. Len phoned to say he had been offered the dog and asked for an opinion. I had seem him run at Clonmel under his old name, Noholdsbarred, and I liked him. I recommended he go ahead, though it was his decision.

I always have a group of owners asking me to source good dogs but it is not easy to find them and there is extra pressure when you are spending someone else’s money.

Many of the expensive dogs have their prices inflated by people looking to take a cut for themselves. That snowballs because an owner says ‘that dog sold for €X, mine must be worth the same as that’. The reality is, neither are worth the money.

Once you get into €20-€30,000 dogs it becomes a nightmare and the vast majority don’t work out. Given the level of prize money in the big competitions, €10-€15,000 would be more than enough for the vast majority of dogs in my opinion.