Last Of The Season At Abbot

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon with flat action from Newmarket, York and Wolverhampton and a jumps card from Newton Abbot.  It is the last meeting of the season at Newton Abbot and they have done well to put up £94,000 in prize money.  David runs Gevrey Chambertin and Lady Of Longstone at our local track and if Gevrey can reproduce one of his better efforts he would go close in this handicap hurdle from the same mark that he won the Fixed Brush Hurdle at Haydock from in 2013.  He disappointed on his most recent start in France but that effort should have brought him on.  Lady Of Longstone drops back in trip a little and has Michael Heard taking a handy 7lbs off her back, although she is still 5lbs higher than her last winning mark.

I did say that it looked like a tough day's work at Exeter yesterday and so it proved with For 'N' Against our best result with second in the beginners' chase, although Prince Of Poets and Perspicace also performed creditably in third and fourth respectively.

Over at Worcester our young amateur jockey David Noonan rode a nice winner for Neil Mulholland when steering Ashcott Boy to victory.  David is now leading amateur jockey this season with eight winners from just 48 rides and is one ahead of Zac Baker (sounds more like a rock star!).

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Liverpool managed to get their man, although it cost them a cool £21 million.  Let's hope that he makes a good job of life on Merseyside - he will certainly find things a lot tougher in the Premier League.  Meanwhile it looks as though Sunderland have upped the ante and offered 'Big Sam' Allardyce more money as the bookies have him at 1/10 to be their new manager.

I had another winning wager last night when Northern Ireland beat Greece 3-1 - I hope a few of you followed me in!  I thought they were a knocking bet and I see that golfer Rory McIlroy was in the crowd to cheer his team on.  There was also a good result for Northern Ireland as they beat Germany 1-0, although it wasn't such a good evening for Scotland as they failed to qualify for the next stages after drawing 2-2 with Poland.

England take on Estonia tonight in their Euro qualifier in a match they should win comfortably.  Even so, they are far to short to back at odds of 3/20 - I may be mad, but I am not insane!

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Did you know that at dinner times in the Barnes household my wife doesn't bother calling me to the table.  Instead I just listen out for the sound of the smoke alarm!  I hope she doesn't read this, otherwise I could end up hungry this weekend!

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