Plumpton, Catterick Runners

This afternoon there are three meetings taking place with jumps action from Plumpton and Catterick (who survived an 8am inspection) as well as an all-weather flat fixture from Wolverhampton.  David has a couple of runners at Catterick as he sends Miss Gotaway and Brook on the long journey north, while Bella runs at Plumpton.  Miss Gotaway is the winner of three point-to-points and i thought that she posted an encouraging first run for the stable when third at Taunton on her seasonal reappearance.  She can only improve for that and holds sound claims this afternoon.  Our other runner at the meeting is Brook who won a hurdle at Newbury last season on heavy ground but has been largely disappointing since.  Both are partnered by Tom Scudamore.

Over at Plumpton Bella (pictured above) is an odds-on favourite for the mares' novices' hurdle despite having to concede a double penalty.  She has proven a real money spinner this season, winning valuable contests at Warwick and Ludlow and this is yet another good bit of placement from the trainer.  Conditional jockey David Noonan is in the saddle and he takes a handy 5lbs off her back and she looks to be the one to beat.

I thought a couple of our weekend runners were a shade unlucky on Saturday.  Startchitect ran an absolutely blinder to finish runner-up in the Betfair Hurdle at Newbury at odds of 16/1.  This was his first start since joining the stable and I thought that if he had jumped the last cleanly he would have gone close.  Even so, he picked up a handy £33,000 for finishing second and this can only be considered an encouraging first effort.  Meanwhile Saint John Henry also filled the runner-up spot at Warwick, looking the winner everywhere but at the line - hopefully he will be going one better soon.

I am very surprised that racing went ahead at Exeter yesterday.  The ground was absolutely horrendous and there were plenty of horses that did not finish, in fact in the 3.40pm race there was only one finisher, while 1/8 shot Southfield Vic was beaten in a two runner race!

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I had a great day watching the football yesterday and there was a good win for Aresenal over ten man Leicester, while Spurs beat Manchester City 2-1 with birthday boy Christian Eriksen scoring the winner against the run of play (they also looked lucky to get a penalty - yet another case proving that we need touchline technology!).  Liverpool annihilated Aston Villa 6-0 and Villa are already relegated as far as I can see.  They must be one of the worst Premier League sides of all time.

England's cricketers managed to lose the one day international series 3-2 having led 2-0.  Fortunately I did not have a bet on the visitors this time having done my money on them the last twice so I finished up about level on the series.

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Liverpool is Britain's bingo capital with one in four women aged 25-55 playing.  I guess you could call it a 'full scouse!'

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