Junior Just The Job!

There are three meetings taking place this afternoon - two on the all-weather at Wolverhampton and Kempton as well as a jumps card at Plumpton.  The stable has one runner, Kings Palace at Plumpton.  The four year old son of King's Theatre makes his racecourse debut in the concluding bumper and he will be partnered by champion jockey A P McCoy who makes a fair replacement(!) for Timmy Murphy and Tom Scudamore.

It was a good day on Saturday for the yard - in the big one, The Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury The Package ran a decent race to finish fourth and picked up nearly £8,000 in prize money.  While Bobs Worth was an impressive winner of Newbury's feature, I may be a little biased but the performance of the day for me came from Junior (pictured above) in the Rehearsal Chase at Newcastle.  Conor O'Farrell gave our exuberant nine year old a fine front-running ride and he jumped fantastically well to see off all challengers in the straight to win under topweight.  He really is an exceptional horse and the lucky owners, Middleham Park Racing looked to be enjoying their success up at the northern track.

Meanwhile, Weather Babe (pictured right) also produced a good performance to win on her debut for the yard.  It was her first start over hurdles and she looks sure to improve with experience - she battled on well up the steep Towcester home straight under Hadden Frost to score from the favourite with a bit in hand in the end.

Good news...Leicester were given the go-ahead yesterday even though they were 20 minutes late.  Unsurprisingly there were thirty withdrawals, so obviously a few of the trainers did not agree that racing should have taken place.  Either that or they didn't want to be messed around until the last possible moment as happened at Musselburgh last week.

*****

Arsenal were completely outplayed by Swansea on Saturday and their manager was certainly a little touchy after the match.  I think he could be approaching his sell-by date, while Chelsea are another side that look to be in a more than a little bit of trouble looking as though they are losing their fans in their droves.

There is a big match tonight as Newcastle are at home to Wigan.  If the Geordies lose, there will be increasing pressure on manager Pardew...having said that, he has just signed a seven year contract - just think of all that lovely compensation!