Quiet Start To The Week

It is a quiet start to the day with just two meetings taking place - a National Hunt fixture from Plumpton and an all-weather flat meeting from Wolverhampton.  Ayr has already been abandoned due to storm damage caused by unseasonably high winds.  The stable has no runners this afternoon, although stable jockey Tom Scudamore heads to Plumpton for a couple of rides for David Bridgwater.  Scu may even have had a spot of Sunday lunch yesterday as one of his mounts, Bravo Piquet carries the welter burden of 12-5 - it looks to have a decent chance to boot.

Our only runner yesterday, Sefton Chase winner Poole Master looked as though he found the 3m2f trip at Kelso stretching his stamina, particularly given the testing nature of the ground.  I am sure we will be seeing him returned to shorter trips in the future.

For those of you who like to keep up to date with all the latest news in my daily column, I hope you had an investment on A P McCoy yesterday at Fairyhouse.  I did say that the champ was over there for a nice book of rides, the pick of which appeared to be Florishes d'Ete.  She duly won by six lengths at an s.p. of 2/1 - I hope you were on!

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I was watching the football yesterday between Southampton and Manchester United and it occurred to me that United have the wrong Dutchman in charge.  Ronald Koeman has done a remarkable job with Southampton - remember, he lost plenty of his best players at the beginning of the season yet they are currently third in the Premier League.  Furthermore, there does not appear to be any semblance of fluke about it.  United also look to have a problem with Falcao who didn't even appear on the bench.  When you cost £46million and you cannot even make it into a team like this, something is clearly amiss.

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Dairy farmer Scott Mitchell was the winner of the Lakeside World Darts tournament over the weekend and he has already spent a large portion of his winnings buying a new tractor for his dad Jeff.  While this is a nice story, I still cannot consider this to be a bona fide world championship event.  He would certainly struggle against the likes of Phil Taylor & co.

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Former world number one tennis player Roger Federer joined an exclusive club at the weekend by becoming only the third player to reach 1,000 career wins with victory in the Brisbane International title.  Only Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl have reached that milestone previously and I would say that Federer has a few more in him yet.

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Golfer: I think I am going to drown myself in the lake.
Caddy: Do you think you can keep your head down that long?!
Have a nice day...