A Quiet Sunday!

There are no runners from the stable today but there are two jumps meetings at Carlisle and Southwell.  Thankfully the weather is a lot better for Carlisle today than it was for their last meeting as even though the meeting went ahead, there was a lot of travel disruption caused by snow and there were a lot of non-runners and therefore non exciting races on the day. There are no problems this time around however and they have some competitive races on their seven race card.

There are slightly smaller fields at Southwell but David Noonan goes there for one ride and I see Fergus Gillard is in action as well.  I wanted to mention Fergus and say many congratulations to him has he rode is 75^th career winner at Doncaster on Friday, therefore riding out his claim.  He partnered Innisfree Lad to victory in the conditional jockey handicap chase.  Fergus left us in the summer but he is a great rider and even better person and so we are all delighted he has reached this milestone.  He is very tall so his riding weight has always been a bit of an issue but he does very well and still rides out at Pond House regularly.  He of course partnered American Sniper to victory for us at Cheltenham last month so he is having a great winter and long may it continue for him.

In Ireland today there are two jumps meetings at Navan and Thurles while there is no flat racing either side of the Irish Sea.

I and several members of our team went to the Royal Oak pub in Hilcommon on Friday evening for it’s opening night.  The pub is the local of Tom Malone and it closed a few months ago and was put up for sale.  Tom purchased it and completely renovated the whole pub and it will now be run by a team who have a few local establishments.  It looked fantastic inside and was full of racing memorabilia and pictures.  Plenty of locals packed the pub with the drinks flowing and live music.  There were also plenty of patrons from further afield with lots of the Irish coming down after racing at the sales at Cheltenham.  Gordon Elliott, Eddie O’Leary and plenty of the Irish point to point fraternity all came down and it was a great night.  I enjoyed eating a lovely steak and look forward to returning there in the future and highly recommend a visit!  For those of you not so local it is not far out of Taunton in a good location.   

There are four Premiership football matches this afternoon, three of them kicking off at 2.00pm, Arsenal v Brighton, Brentford v Aston Villa and West Ham v Wolves.  Manchester United are in action away to Liverpool at 4.30pm.  The Reds are not in great form at the moment but did play a bit better mid-week against Bayern Munich.  They will need to raise their game even more if they want to come away from Anfield with any points this afternoon.

Why was E the only letter in the alphabet to get a Christmas present?

Because the rest of the letters were not-E!

Have a lovely Sunday!