One Runner At Newbury

Today there are four meetings taking place with two fixtures over jumps at Newbury and Ludlow as well as a couple of all-weather flat cards Lingfield and Kempton.  It looks like a good quality competitive card at Newbury for this mid-week meeting and the stable is represented by one runner at the Berkshire track this afternoon, Leader Of The Gang who makes his debut for the yard in the maiden hurdle and will be partnered by Tom Scudamore.

Exeter are planning a precautionary inspection tomorrow morning ahead of their meeting on Thursday following torrential rain.  Hopefully there won't be any problem as the course at the top of Haldon Hill drains well.  I don't live that far away from the track though and I don't mind telling you, it has been more than a little bit wet!

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I love my pub quizzes and I try to make a note of questions that I feel might come up in the future.  One such question will surely be 'What was the name of the last winnner at Folkestone before the course shut down?' - for those of you who are anorak enough like me, the answer was Quartz du Montceau - it's not an easy one to remember, in fact I have forgotten it again already!

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Following the news that Big Buck's and Al Ferof are both out for the season, the betting for the trainers' championship has a slightly lop-sided look to it with bookmakers marking the contest up as 4/11 Henderson and 5/2 Nicholls.  Despite the loss of two of his biggest stars, I still feel that the 5/2 available about Nicholls is reasonable when you consider that he has nearly a £400,000 headstart!

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I watched a fascinating piece on television the other day which gave me an insight into the problems facing Manchester City manager Mancini.  It featured Carlos Tevez trying to teach striker Balotelli how to wrap a Christmas present.  Balotelli clearly found it very difficult so it is hardly surprising that his manager struggles to talk any sense into him!

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I see that Lionel Messi has a £210million get-out clause.  He must be very sure of his own ability to put that type of figure in contract agreements...I wonder if Chelsea would fancy a crack at him?  More to the point, I wonder if they fancy matching his wages of £102million?!