Three At Haydock

It is a bumper day of action this afternoon with seven meetings to look forward to - there is a jumps fixture at Hexham and five flat cards from Ascot, Lingfield, Nottingham Thirsk and Warwick, not to forget the mixed meeting at Haydock.  The stable has three runners at Haydock this afternoon; Broadway Buffalo (pictured above), Swing Bowler and Shotavodka and I am expecting a big run from the former who goes in the Long Distance hurdle at 1.50pm.  The conditions should suit our six year old and he will be partnered by Tom Scudamore.  Mikey Ennis claims a valuable 7lbs off the back of Swing Bowler in the feature Swinton hurdle - she has run well in many of the top handicaps, but as you would expect for a £60,000 handicap it is a fiercely competitive affair and horses with light weights tend to do well here.

Before racing at Wincanton on Thursday there was an interesting nine hole Texas Scramble golf tournament.  There is a golf course in the middle of the track and our team was Eddie Buckley, Ashley Farrant, Martin Ayliffe and Leanne's father Pete Green.  These four could not hit their way out of a paper bag and might have done better if they had allowed David's four year old son Jack to play - he could probably hit the ball further!

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I was looking through the table for the flat trainers' championship yesterday and once again it appears to make no sense.  The championship is decided on prize money (as it is over jumps), but it still looks odd to me that Mark Johnston (who has trained 82 winners) is second in the table to Richard Hannon Jnr (who has only had 32)!  It looks odd to me, so goodness knows what an outsider must make of it.

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There are only two football matches that matter this weekend and they both take place tomorrow.  Manchester City take on the mighty West Ham, while Liverpool play Newcastle - they both look like home wins to me.  In order for the scousers to win the title, they need to beat Newcastle and hope that Manchester City lose.  Meanwhile City merely need only to draw to land the Premiership.  My other football bets are Arsenal at 10/11 and Sunderland at 6/5.

Could Spurs be employing the services of Southampton manager Mauricio Pochettino next season?  He is only a 2/1 chance with the bookmakers to be in charge next term. He is still learning English, mind you most of the Spurs players will probably understand what he is saying!  There might be a problem however if Tim Sherwood stays as his assistant.

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The United Kingdom are only 11/1 chances for this evening's Eurovision Song Contest.  It is covered live on BBC 1 at 8pm, so if you have a few hours to waste, you can be certain they will be well wasted watching this!  With all of the tactical voting that goes on, you can be sure that the UK has next to no chance of winning and just reaffirms how much our nation is actually disliked on the international stage.  It used to be a big event, but to be honest I couldn't even tell you who sings our entry this year...actually, Mrs Barnes has just shouted to me that she is called Molly and her song is called "Children Of The Universe" - I can't say I have ever heard of either of them!

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