It's Martin's Birthday!

Today there are five meetings taking place, three on the flat at Nottingham, Beverley and Kempton as well as two jumps cards at Fontwell and Cartmel.  The two runners from the stable yesterday ran below expectations with Keep The Cash appearing to resent being held up, while Palace Jester finished fourth but was beaten quite a long way so it is back to the drawing board.  The ground was given as good/firm but the times for each race were slow which would indicate that the ground was either softer than given or there were some pretty moderate horses on display.

Today there are five meetings taking place, three on the flat at Nottingham, Beverley and Kempton as well as two jumps cards at Fontwell and Cartmel.  The two runners from the stable yesterday ran below expectations with Keep The Cash appearing to resent being held up, while Palace Jester finished fourth but was beaten quite a long way so it is back to the drawing board.  The ground was given as good/firm but the times for each race were slow which would indicate that the ground was either softer than given or there were some pretty moderate horses on display.

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It's Martin's birthday today and I won't tell you how old he is, suffice to say that although I am in my 67th year I will never be as old as him!  Anyway happy birthday old boy!

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Although Ruby Walsh has decided to call time on his career as number one jockey to Paul Nicholls, I see that Barry Geraghty has no plans to sever his partnership with champion trainer Nicky Henderson.  Although Geraghty is only a year younger than Walsh, I don't suppose he has a similar sort of gig to return to Ireland for (Ruby is number one to Willie Mullins powerful yard).

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I will be watching the England versus Ireland football friendly this evening on ITV.  Surely England must be up to winning this and could be worth a bet at 1/2 with most firms.  Kick-off is at 8pm.

While we are on the subject of football, how on earth can Stoke get rid of their manager Tony Pulis and think of having Mark Hughes as manager?!  Hughes was a great footballer but is a terrible manager - if I were a Stoke fan I wouldn't be at all happy.

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I hope that a few of you were able to alleviate the bookies of some of the 4/5 about England in the test cricket against New Zealand yesterday.  I managed to get someone to lay me that price about England, although he was having a right good whinge when he woke up properly!

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The Amanda Perrett stable are in great form and recorded their eleventh winner in May and tenth success from their last eighteen runners.  It seems that when a stable hits form everything either wins or runs very well.  It should certainly pay to continue to follow her fortunes until her good run continues.