Nicky’s birthday treat – an overnight trip on a ferry

As birthdays go, I don’t suppose I will be accused over spoiling my wife Nicky on Tuesday.

At 8pm, when many couples are dressed up for a night out, I was letting out our greyhounds for the last time before we locked up and Nicky was sat on a ferry with four trial runners for Wimbledon.

She set off at 6 o’clock will travel overnight for a trial on Wednesday morning.

She is due back on the ferry which will dock at 11pm on Wednesday night and it will be 1am on Thursday morning before she gets home.

Nicky is great, and enjoys being involved but coming to the Derby is a huge commitment.

Life would be so much easier if Wimbledon staged Saturday trials. Also, they could help with the arrangement of those trials.

For example, gets the sprints on early and allow the Irish runners to be trialled and on their way home.

If the situation was reversed, Declan Carey at Shelbourne would do everything to help the English runners and as an Irish based trainer, if we had to give precedence to them, I would be delighted to do so.

It is only common sense and the decent thing to do.

 

Nicky is bringing over four runners: Sidarian Blaze, Hooverville, Millbank Stevie and Riverside Pat.

Hopefully they all take to the track though we are still quite flexible on who we are bringing.

My two Laurels dog, Gaytime Hawk and Coran Sky are possibles, and I also have Clares Wonder.

He retrialled back at Shelbourne in 18.64 for the sprint after injuring a TFL muscle in the Tote Gold Cup. I think the world of the dog, but this week was too soon for Wimbledon.

Sidarian Vegas won’t be coming after picking up a stress fracture of the fibia in a trial last week.

I am not too concerned about the injury, 99.9% of them come back unaffected, but he is a fantastic young dog and we wouldn’t want to take any chances with him.

I have also had other owners, who train themselves, who have asked if I will bring their dogs over though nothing has been decided.

If all goes to plan, we have taken up Eric Cantillon’s offer to stay at his place near Bury St.Edmunds.

In my opinion, the travelling backwards and forwards to Ireland takes too much out of the dogs, so it is great to have a good base.

 

We had seven winners at Shelbourne a couple of weekends ago which is the most we have had since I’ve been in Ireland.

But when Poole first opened, we had eight winners on the same card, followed by six open winners on their big gala night.

I enjoyed Poole, but life got very difficult because I ended up with so many runners at the top end of the scale.

I would often end up with three runners in top heat which was a disaster.

No matter which dog won the race, there would be someone in the ear of one of the owners suggesting I had backed the winner and put his dog out of the way. It was ridiculous.

I eventually moved to Oxford which was the biggest mistake of my career.

The racing manager and I didn’t get on and I didn’t like the way he did things.

I remember once asking if certain dogs could be on the card on Saturday, and he was furious telling me ‘I do not grade my card around your owners’.

On another occasion I had a cracking pup called Cardigan who he put straight into top heat on his debut.

He was beaten by his inexperience so I entered him for a puppy open and another dog, in opens at Swindon.

The racing manager was furious and said ‘You have a contract here. I expect to have first choice of your runners. He put Cardigan in an A2, based on him being beaten last time out, and the other dog in an A1.

I think they both won by about nine lengths and he gave me a stewards inquiry.

I’d had enough and switched to Hove. I didn’t like BAGS racing much, but I liked the staff and had a great deal of respect for racing manager Peter Miller.

In the end though, I realised we were too far away. I had become a van driver, not a greyhound trainer, and it was shortly after that when we decided to come to Ireland.

 

I have no complaints about being beaten in the Kirby Memorial Final at Limerick.

Although Rural Hawaii was favourite, he was beaten by a better dog on the night in Cable Bay.

Brendan Matthews is a top top trainer as he has shown over many years on the coursing fields.

I had a few people in my ear saying ‘look how much time he has found’ but that is irrelevant. He is a dog who comes from the back and it was the first time he had found a clear run.

I knew he was capable and we might still have won it if Cable Bay had been held up at the third bend, but he wasn’t. That’s dog racing.

I am not bitter in any way. The disappointment comes when your dog doesn’t perform. Hawaii ran his race and did his time.

We picked up €20,000 for running second. How can you say that was a bad night’s racing?