There appears to be disgruntlement within racing at how the industry's state allocation remains unchanged at €67.2 million after last week's 2020 budget. Given the fraught political context of Brexit it might be argued that no change was a good outcome but one thing Irish racing is rarely short of is entitlement. There's even a suggestion the government might have dropped the ball on not giving one of those five year strategic fund guarantees of old rather than maintaining an annual review. To which one can only say there's no harm in asking: all they can say is no.

It would have been hard to call the season disappointing after the amount of winners we had but there definitely would have been a tinge of disappointment had the boss, Jessie Harrington, and I not managed to round off all those two-year-old fillies’ winners especially with a Group 1.