Congratulations!

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon with flat cards from Yarmouth, Redcar, Chepstow and Newcastle.  With the lack of jumps action, unsurprisingly there are no runners from the Pond House team today.  It is probably a good thing as I reckon there will be a few sore heads around the place this morning after David and Leanne announced their engagement yesterday.  I don't know whether to congratulate Leanne or commiserate with her!

I take my hat off to the organisers of the new veterans' chase series which kicks off at Huntingdon in November.  The qualifiers will be over 2m4f to 3m and are for ten year old's and older that are rated 0-125 with a final at Newbury in March.  There is already a very valuable 0-150 veteran's series that culminates at Sandown so this is another excellent opportunity for these old warriors to compete for a valuable pot without fear of bumping into a young improver at the bottom end of the weights.

I see that apprentice Aiden Smithies rode his first winner yesterday on Interrupted Dream and I have a feeling that is what he is going to be having over the next few nights.  It is always a huge milestone in any jockeys careert to get that illusive first success under your belt so well done to him.

Talking of young jockeys, I reckon that Jonjo O'Neill Jr will remember his day at Worcester yesterday for a long time.  It looked as though he was going to ride a treble having just returned from injury, only for his mount, Cary's Commodity to veer off a true line in the bumper whilst looking all over the winner, unshipping his rider.  It looked like he was heading to the paddock exit.

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There look to be some good football matches on tonight with Napoli versus Liverpool the pick.  Liverpool look worth an interest at odds of 13/10, whilst I will have a bit of the 5/6 about Chelsea to beat Valencia and Spurs at 5/6 to beat Olympiakos.

West Ham only managed a 0-0 draw last night with Aston Villa.  We also had a player sent off for two yellow cards so I guess I should be grateful for that result!  Mind you, we should have had a penalty in stoppage time but the referee missed it.

Andy Murray is due to play Roger Federer in the new ATP Cup.  Murray is yet to face a top class opponent since returning from injury in June and I reckon that Federer will make pretty short work of him.  Good luck Andy!

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Quote for the day: "Pickpockets who allow you to use your own hands"  W.C. Fields referring to bookmakers.

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