Three Runners

There are four meetings on this afternoon with three on the flat from Lingfield, Brighton and Salisbury and a jumps card at Southwell.  We have one runner at Salisbury, Vergrigio who makes his debut for the stable in the 7f handicap at 4.35pm - he will now be partnered by Royston Ffrench who is deputising for the injured Neil Callan.  Meanwhile, back over jumps we have two runners at Southwell - Soulard ridden by Tom Scudamore and Water Garden who will be partnered by Timmy Murphy.  Water Garden (pictured above) has been running well all season in the handicaps but keeps creeping up the weights as a consequence.  It will be interesting to see what happens with the ground (currently good) as they have been watering - any significant rainfall on watered ground could make it very testing indeed.

I wonder what the ground will be like for the start of Royal Ascot next week?  I keep hearing ten day forecasts but as you know, ten days is a long time in weather forecasting so it could all change.

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Wayne Rooney may not be playing at this point during the Euro 2012 championships (he has another game to go before his ban is up), but at least his colt Pippy is in action.  The two year old finished runner-up at Folkestone yesterday in the maiden and even though he was beaten five lenghts it was still a significant step-up on his first two starts.  He will probably be seen to better effect in a nursery or maybe even a seller in order to get him to win...I wonder if they have the racing channels in Donetsk?

Talking of England footballers, I am sure you will have heard that England drew 1-1 with the French in their first game of the European Championship last night.  I thought that goalkeeper Joe Hart was our best player - he saved a header from point blank range and was probably unsighted when letting in France's only goal.  I see that the bookies reacted by cutting England to 12/1 - probably an overreaction if you ask me.  I don't think we will concede many goals, but I can't see us scoring too many either and therein lies the problem?

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If you have a copy of today's Racing Post, there is a great picture of teh Croatian football coach Slaven Blic.  He is getting a right smacker on the lips from one of Croatia's supporters - both of them have their eyes closed.  I think they need to be behind an iron curtain!

Looking ahead to today's matches, Russia look worth a wager at odds of around 11/8 to beat Poland.  The Russians looked very good in their first match.