Come On England!

I'm afraid that if you like your National Hunt action and you live anywhere other than the north of England you are out of luck today.  There are no fewer than eight meetings taking place this afternoon but only one of those is over the sticks at Hexham.  The flat cards come from York, Musselburgh, Sandown, Chester, Bath, Leicester and Lingfield.  I see the winner of the seller at York yesterday was bought back in by trainer Kevin Ryan for £11,000, while the runner-up was claimed for £12,000.  The good news is that the course made a few quid - they should have more sellers like these with a worthwhile prize up for grabs.

Congratulations to Megan Nicholls (daughter of trainer Paul) who I see rode her first winner on the flat yesterday afternoon at Musselburgh aboard Northside Prince.  She already looks more stylish than Paul ever did...I had better leave it at that!

What a summer of sport we have to look forward to - the World Cup has already started, along with the US Open, while Royal Ascot begins next week and then we have Wimbledon to look forward too as well as the cricket.  I am looking forward to seeing the action from Royal Ascot and I think that Richard Hannon's team could be among the winners next week.  He has plenty of horses entered and they all seem to be in good form.   Champion jockey Richard Hughes keeps banging on about Toronado in Tuesday's Queen Anne Stakes and he looks a worthy 5/4 favourite.  For me though, the race of the meeting has to be the St James' Palace Stakes where the English and Irish Guineas winners Night Of Thunder and Kingman meet for a third time.  The score is currently 1-1 between them although providing he is not inconvenienced by the faster ground, I will be very surprised if Kingman does not come out on top on this occasion.

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What an amazing football match last night between Spain and The Netherlands.  In a replay of the 2010 final, the Dutch came out on top on this occasion 5-1.  Holland looked very good, but how bad were Spain?!  The Spanish defence look like they have never seen each other before.

The big match tonight is between England and Italy although it doesn't kick off until 11pm - why is it on so late?  I am normally in bed by 9pm!  I guess I am going to have to make an exception tonight.  I think that both teams would be happy to settle for the draw - the first thought of the Italians is normally not to lose, so they are often very defensive.  The draw is a 2/1 chance so I might be tempted to have a bit of that, although I will be cheerinf for the Three Lions!

I think I will be having a treble on Uruquay at 1/2, Argentina (tomorrow) at 4/9 and France at 4/11 - you heard it here first.

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In the cricket there was a fantastic double century from Joe Root.  200 not out is a spectacular achivement, although the pitch does look like it has draw written all over it.  England finished on 575 and Sri Lanka are 140-1 in response - we need some quick wickets if this is going to finish in anything other than stalemate.

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