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25th March 2017

BetKudos News:

Declan's Irish Focus - A Glorious Week For The Irish!

In the end it was a glorious week at Cheltenham for the Irish, and while there are many reasons for this, ownership plays a key role.

For sure having Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott and Ruby Walsh on your side helps, but Paul Nicholls, Nicky Henderson and Richard Johnson are pretty sharp operators too.

Now while Alan and Ann Potts and J P McManus have runners trained on both sides of the Irish Sea, Rich Ricci, Gigginstown and Graham Wylie deal almost exclusively in Ireland.

Better prize money plays a part, and, as Willie Mullins pointed out, Graded winners are handsomely rewarded in Ireland whereas in the UK, most of the big Saturday fuss and buzz seems to be all about handicaps.

Indeed to me it was one of the great frustrations about watching the old Morning Line programme on a Saturday, a huge chunk of it was devoted to trying to sort out some handicap race or other.

Now Betfan and BetKudos subscribers and members tend to know the time of day so most people reading this know all too well that concentrating on handicaps is, literally, a mugs game.