New Season

                      Junior

Today see's the start of the new jumps season.  It was only a few hours ago that the old one finished!  There are three jumps cards at Huntingdon, Ludlow and Wetherby and David has one runner at Ludlow, Midnight Tuesday and one runner at Huntingdon, Junior.  Midnight Tuesday has Kieron Edgar on board and runs in the 4.20pm race.  The better ground could help him but he needs to bounce back to form.  Junior runs in the 5.50pm race at Huntingdon with Conor O'Farrell in the saddle and he has to give over a stone to all of his rivals.  Ideally he may prefer the ground a bit softer but if returning to form he would have a big chance.

Champion jockey AP is still sidelined through injury at the moment so for a few days we will have a different name at the top of the leading jockeys.  Fingers crossed he will not be out of action for too long.  Talking of jockeys on the sidelines, our own Tom Scu has not ridden nopw for more than a week after being concussed from his fall on Problematic in the Scottish National last weekend.  The good news is that Tom Scu was back at the yard riding out yesterday and is hoping to be back in action very soon.

It is interesting to see that Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls have a few runners today so early in the season.  I would think Paul will have to recruit a few more new horses if he has aspirations to regain the trainers title.  As I have mentioned before you need the quality horses to win the big prize money races if you are to win the trainers championship as it is not decided on the number of winners.

Fancy going to a point to point and paying £25 a car to get in and then after just two races they run out of beer!  if that had happened down here in the West Country there would be a riot!  Mind you it would never happen really!  The place not to be last Saturday was in Kent at the Pershore point to point.  Today there is pointing acttion locally at the Axe Vale, near Seaton.  Head lad's son Kieren Buckley is having another outing on the former POnd House in mate Vertige Dore.  This will be his fourth ride and the pair were unlucky not to win last time when falling at the last fence when looking likely to win.  Best of luck to them and I will let you know how they get on tomorrow.

I cannot see why the BHA only banned Mahmood Al Zarooni for eight years.  Surely he will never get a job back in racing so they could have given hima lilfe ban and that would have let everyone know how serious it was.  

Arsenal take on the champions Man Utd today.  I wonder what sort of reception Van Persie will get.  He has been a great buy for United.  The bottom two clubs play on TV at 1.30pm, Reading and QPR.  This is a low time before the watershed!  Keep smiling!