Pub Crawl at Southwell!

 Shot Boii yesterday after his win!

It was great to get our first winner of 2024 yesterday with Shot Boii winning at Hereford for the first time over fences with Jack Tudor riding.  He wore the ‘famous Lough Derg’ red visor and he travelled and jumped really well at the head of affairs throughout and when asked for more approaching the last he duly obliged to score quite easily.  It was great to see him bounce back from a slightly below par effort last time and hopefully the handicapper won’t overreact to this win and he can build on this again next time.

Today we have one runner on the all-weather at Southwell, Pub Crawl.  He makes his stable debut in the lucky last, the 3.32pm handicap over 1m6f and Aidan Brookes rides.  It is fair to say his recent form has not been the best but he does have some good form in the book previously and he is now looking well handicapped having been placed off a ten pound higher mark in the past.  He is still a maiden and yet to win but Aiden also claims a handy five pounds off so fingers crossed he can put up a bold show.  He has settled into life at Pond House nicely and while we will learn a bit more about him today, he is a good each way price at 16/1.  We have already done some schooling with him and he jumps nicely so he will be over hurdles soon but it will be interesting to see how he gets on in this.  

There are due to be two jumps meetings today at Ludlow and Musselburgh and fingers crossed the weather does not cause any problems.  As well as the flat meeting at Southwell there is also another fixture on the all-weather at Wolverhampton.

It was a very wet afternoon (again) at Pond House yesterday as it was across a lot of the country and Sandown is inspecting at 8am on Friday morning ahead of their Saturday fixture.  Fingers crossed it passes the inspection as we are looking forward to running Ramses De Teillee in the Veterans chase final tomorrow!  Wincanton will inspect at 8am on Saturday morning ahead of their meeting.  I feel sorry for Stratford and Worcester racecourse as they are now both under water.  Stratford has suffered significant flood damage and I saw a photo yesterday where their fences which were submerged in water to nearly half way up the fence.  Their first fixture of 2024 is scheduled to be on 11^th March and they are now in a race against time to be able to hold racing on this date.  The water went into all the buildings and did quite a lot of damage outside as well.  Worcester is also submerged under water but they are a little more relaxed about the situation as they are not due to race at the track until May.  Fingers crossed we could all do with a few dry days now!

Last night in the football Crystal Palace and Everton played into the third round of the FA Cup but only managed a drawing result of 0-0. Everton are now without a win in five matches all in competitions are 17th respectively in the Premier League and Palace being 14th will be in the fourth round draw, which takes place 7:50pm on Monday before Wigan Athletic host Manchester United. 

Tonight there are three FA Cup third round matches, Brentford play Wolves at 7.15pm, Fulham are at home to Rotherham at 7.30pm while Spurs are at home to Burnley at 8pm.

In a job interview I filled my glass of water until it overflowed onto the table.

“Nervous?” asked the interviewer.  “No, I always give 110%!”  Have a great Friday!