Bits and Pieces

Today we have four meetings, flat cards at Newmarket and Kempton plus jumps cards at Worcester and Sedgefield.  Tom Scu is going all the way up to Sedgefield for four rides and Kalondra looks the best of them in the 3.45pm.  Yanworth made a good start to his chasing career at Exeter yesterday.  He jumped soundly and surely a couple more races and he will be Cheltenham Festival bound.  He is now 8/1 for the JLT novices chase a position he will share with Finian's Oscar. We have taken four horses out for hound exercise this morning, the horses and staff all seem to be enjoying it in the sunshine!

I see a group of female point to point jockey's are are doing a calendar for charity and they are going to strip down for it!  I once was going to do this with some of our old stable girls.  I had twelve ladies who all agreed to take part.  I also had 50 lads wanting to be my assitants but Mrs Pipe would not let me go ahead with it!  

I would like to wish Charlie Wallis a very happy birthday for today.  Charlie used to work at Pond House and is now making a good career of being a trainer himself.

It seems to me that the Carabao Cup is just a chance for managers to turn out their reserves and give them a bit of match practice.  Arsenal beat Norwich 2-1 and 18 year old Eddie Nketiah scored the winner 18 seconds after coming on.  Man City beat Wolves on penalties and Bristol City beat Crystal Palace 4-1.  I bet half of the managers would rather not be playing in the Cup.  Chelsea play Everton tonight and it will be interesting to see if the Everton players but in more effort.

Mark Williams has called for life bans on snooker stars caught betting.  Stuart Bingham was found guilty of placing wagers on his own matches.  He was banned for 6 months and fined £20,000 costs.  I wonder if he got the right result?  Mind you it has been going on in snooker for years.  I remember Stephen Lee getting banned for 13 years for match fixing in 2013.

Christmas shopping is a pain in the cash!  Have a good day.