Scu, Noonan Head North

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon with flat cards from Bath, Nottingham and Kempton as well as a jumps card from Wetherby.  It is a blank day for the yard with no runners today, although stable jockey Tom Scudamore heads north for a couple of outside rides at Wetherby while conditional jockey David Noonan has also picked up an outside ride on the card.  Let's hope it is worth their whiles, otherwise it could be a long journey back to the West Country.

There have been some strange betting patterns on the Irish trainers' championship with a couple of the firms suspending the betting, while others have trimmed Willie Mullins from 4/9 to 1/4 despite losing 60 horses from Gigginstown recently.  I thought this was a good opportunity for Elliot to secure a first championship, clearly there are some shrewdies who know differently.

I wonder how many horses have won for three different trainers during the course of a season?  Caspian Prince achieved just that with success at Musselburgh yesterday.  Not only that, he managed to give new trainer Roger Fell his first winner.  Roger has just started training at the age of 62...there is hope for all of us!

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This has to be the worst England football team of all time.  They only managed a 0-0 draw last night with Slovenia and the unlikely hero was goalkeeper Jo Hart.  I have no idea why Theo Walcott was even on the pitch.  You could get the best manager in the world and it would not make the blindest bit of difference to the eleven players.  Personally, I think we need to adopt the approach the Germans did a few years ago and play all the youngster in an attempt to build a better team for the future - the current Premiership players are overpaid and over-rated.  The under 21 side won 5-0 against Bosnia - perhaps that is the direction in which Gareth Southgate should be looking?

2,000 fans turned up to see Frenchman Alexander Levy compete in a par 3 shoot out under the floodlights ahead of tomorrow's British Masters.  Meanwhile Andrew 'Beef' Johnson looks a real character and is just what is needed in the sport.

I see that England's cricketers are 8/15 chances to beat Bangladesh, although I am not sure I would want to be backing England at that price.  Didn't they beat us in the last match?  I reckon tempers could boil over once again in the heat of Chittagone today.

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Thought for the day...the hardest thing about learning to ride a horse is the ground!  Trust me, I know...

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