Entertainer At Stratford

There is a busy day of racing ahead with five meetings taking place this afternoon including jumps cards from Stratford and Uttoxeter and flat action from Doncaster, Chelmsford and Kempton.  Doncaster marks the start of the turf flat season and the highlight is the Lincoln handicap at 3.45pm.  If you are a regular reader of this column, hopefully you will have been on G M Hopkins at 8/1, all he has to do now is win!  The stable has one runner this afternoon, Street Entertainer (pictured above) who contests the competitive handicap hurdle at Stratford.  He is partnered by Conor O'Farrell and is a 14/1 chance - it is a tall order, but he did run a very good fourth from this mark at Cheltenham earlier in the season.

Tom Scudamore kept his good run of form going with victory aboard a good looking propect, Shantou Village for Neil Mulholland at Wetherby yesterday.  Already the winner of a point-to-point, he will clearly be one to look out for when sent jumping.  Meanwhile, this success takes Tom onto 140 for the season, so he still has a month to ride the ten winners he would like to achieve his goal.

Many happy returns to Luke Harvey who apparently is 49 today.  There is a picture of him in today's Racing Post that makes him look 69 - I wonder if anyone has ever seen his birth certificate?!  Happy birthday Luke, we hope you have a great day.

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Thank goodness England manager Roy Hodgson saw the light and decided to play Spurs striker Harry Kane last night against Lithuania, pocketing me a few quid in the process.  You may recall a while back that I suggested the youngster was a good bet to score for England in either of their friendlies against Lithuania or Italy.  I was a little concerned that he wasn't going to get to play last night but within 79 seconds of being on the pitch, he had put the ball in the back of the net...I hope a few of you took my advice.  It was a good job that he scored last night as I am not sure he will get so many chances against Italy.

The England performance as the beat Lithuania 4-0 was just okay - let's not forget, the opponents are ranked 94th in the world.  Italy will be a much sterner challenge and a better barometer of whether we have improved at all.  Apparently Wembley was supposed to be a sell-out but there looked to be plenty of empty seats to me...I cannot believe that people would buy tickets and then not turn up.

I will be having a cheeky little treble this weekend to put the bread on the Barnes table...for those of you interested my teams are Forfar at 4/9, Albion at 4/6 and East Fife at 4/7.

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There is an early start tomorrow for anybody wanting to tune into the Cricket World Cup Final between Australia and New Zealand.  It starts at 4.30am and the Aussies will be long odds-on favourites to win.  I won't be getting involved at stupid prices, so will just be an interested spectator.

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Nine rowers were rescued when their skiff capsized in the River Itchen near Southampton...I bet they were scared skiff!

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