Night comes alive when the going is good

In a packed room above a bar in Naas, MALACHY CLERKINfound the racing talk flowing freely ahead of the annual Cotswolds fiesta

MATT CHAPMAN is late. Going by the time printed on the poster hanging by the last thread of sellotape to the wall of the gents, he’ll soon be two and a half hours late. A mix-up in the flight bookings has left us without our MC for the start of this Cheltenham preview night so the man from Paddy Power is temporarily stepping in for everyone’s favourite At The Races blowhard. Just as much insight, 100 per cent less hair gel.

We’re upstairs in Kavanagh’s bar in Naas, about 150 people wedged elbow-to-ankle and straining to see the top table. The panel has Davy Russell, Paul Townend, Dessie Hughes and Gordon Elliott lined up, as well as event organiser and racing journalist Niall Cronin. Chapman’s tardiness isn’t a massive problem, due to the iron law of Cheltenham preview nights which states that under no circumstances should they begin on time. The tickets say 7.30, the barman says 8.30 and the committee are still finishing up dinner in a restaurant nearby at 8.45. Nobody minds though. The iron law is not a secret law and very few people are here for their first time.

The set-up is simple. Line up a few trainers, jockeys, pressmen and bookies, let them offer up thoughts and theories about the main races of the festival and the audience will try to pan the sediment for betting gold in a fortnight’s time. But once it begins in Kavanagh’s, the going is heavy enough through the first few races. None of the panel can find a horse to beat Cue Card in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, just as none of them can pin their colours to the mast with any certainty in the Arkle. Just short of 10pm, however, Chapman arrives.

“Sorry ladies and gentlemen,” he says as he grabs the microphone. “I heard there was going to be drug-testing at the venue tonight so I figured there was no need to get here on time as Davy Russell would more than likely disappear for two hours.”

Russell, who forgot to present himself for a dope test at Naas racecourse a fortnight ago (he later returned to provide his sample), rolls the punch and jabs back in the same move. “You mean to say you’re three hours late, with all that time to think of what you were going to say when you got here, and that’s the best you’ve been able to come up with?”

And they’re off. The night freewheels from there to the end, which turns out to be well past midnight. The barbs fly, mostly in Chapman’s direction. Even Hughes, the grand old man of the panel at 67, has his fun. When Chapman rounds off his thoughts on Hughes’s horse Magnanimity – currently a 20 to 1 chance in the RSA Chase – with a judgement that he’s “better than some but not good enough for this”, Hughes smiles and says quietly, “Well, it’s nice to have opinions, Matt.”

Cue a round of applause from the floor.

As interest in racing in general and Cheltenham in particular exploded during the boom, preview nights were the shrapnel that landed on every town in the country. Whereas a small list of them used to take up the bottom corner of a page in the Racing Postin the run-up to the festival, now there is a full spread of them each day. Same in The Irish Fieldon the weekend. Some are run for charity, some as fund-raisers for GAA clubs, some just to fill a country pub on a Monday evening. And although the rooms might be a bit smaller now than a few years back and the entry fee a little lower – it was a tenner on the door on Monday night – there's still an appetite for them.

Chapman has spent the whole of the past week driving from one preview night to the next all across the country, from Kildare to Killarney to Monaghan to Kilternan. He’s a born MC for this kind of event. His TV persona – shouty, louty and cheeky but with an obvious mania for the sport – makes him a willing focal point for what is essentially a series of mass pub arguments shot through a miasma of unprovable opinions.

“They’re a much different proposition in Ireland than in England,” Chapman says. “We do have them in England but over here, you have them in pubs and everybody’s relaxed and it’s all very easy-going. Because England is so much more spread out, the preview nights over there tend to be bigger affairs. They’re more formal and some of them are even black tie. Whereas in Ireland, they’re more about sitting down with a beer and having a chat about the racing and nobody taking themselves too seriously. You go out, you have a good time, you meet people and you chat about the thing you love. You slag people off and you get it back and we all enjoy it.

“It gives the public a chance to see the jockeys and trainers in an environment where they wouldn’t normally see them. You take the life of a jockey – they’re up at God knows what time every day, they ride work, they go racing and then they go home and go to bed. The public has no chance to see them or hear them talk or find out if they have any personality at all. Davy Russell could be the most boring man alive for all anybody knows because although the racing public sees him almost every day, they see him in one environment. They don’t see him relaxed, having a laugh, taking the piss. Any time they see him he has a skull cap on.”

For all Chapman’s joviality, jockeys generally find these nights a drag. They go on too long and too many people have too many opinions to share.

Go to enough of them and you run the risk of arriving down at the start of the first race thinking every last nag in the field can win because you’ve heard claims made for it at a preview night. Russell does the circuit every year purely because he’s asked and because he’s cursed by being both too nice to turn them down, and good value once he takes his seat. But would you say you enjoy them, Davy?

“Not particularly, no. The way most jockeys would see it is that we work hard enough during the day and are up early the next morning. You don’t like to be kept up all night and they tend to drag on fairly late. But then, I have a terrible problem saying no to people. It’s very hard when they’re for a charity or it’s a friend of yours asking you to do it. Like, we all think we have problems but I have no problems in my life compared to the people these charities raise money for.”

In Naas on Monday night, Russell and Chapman were the obvious star turns, with Townend, Hughes and Elliott supporting actors. When it came to the meaty business of tipping winners, Hurricane Fly’s claims in the Champion Hurdle were agreed across the board and Townend was about as bullish as his quiet nature would allow him to be about the chances of So Young in the Neptune Investments Novices’ Hurdle on the Wednesday.

Russell pointed out that the horse Paul Nicholls is running in the RSA Chase is called Aiteenthirtythree because his owner Paul Barber - owner of two Gold Cup winners in the past – wanted to wait until he found a special horse to name after the year his business was founded. For his part, Chapman told everyone to back Bygones Of Brid for the rest of the horse’s life, starting with the Champion Bumper, purely because its owner, Harry Redknapp, had told him so. But it all comes with terms and conditions.

“From a betting point of view,” says Chapman, “I don’t know if they’re actually worth very much at all. For one thing, most people sitting in the room will already have their opinions and will be very knowledgeable anyway. And for the others, they’ll go away with their head so jam-packed with information that they will think everything can win every race. I do laugh when I see people furiously scribbling down everything that’s said by the panel.

“Racing is about opinions and these nights are full of them. It’s up to you to use your own judgement and to see what you think of what the guys on the panel are saying. If Gordon Elliott says that Chicago Grey has been laid out for the four-miler, then you have to take notice of that. When Davy Russell says the trainer isn’t sure what race to run First Lieutenant in and he’s not doing much at home, you might want to stay away from it. But ultimately, these are only clues and angles. You have to pick and choose what you believe out of it all.”

MURRAY TO HOLD COURT AT LEOPARDSTOWN PREVIEW NIGHT

WHEN COLM Murray took his seat at

The Late Late Show

the week before Christmas, there followed one of those interviews that made the show famous down the decades.

Murray was so self-effacing and dignified as he talked through what he has had to deal with since being diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease that you couldn’t but tell people about it afterwards and ask had they seen it.

If they hadn’t, you sent them to the internet to find it.

The fight against the disease goes on and the RTÉ man will be the special guest at Leopardstown racecourse tomorrow evening for A Celebration Of Cheltenham preview night hosted by MC Des Cahill. The panel will include Ted Walsh, Willie Mullins, John Francome and Davy Russell, as well as Hayley O’Connor from Ladbrokes.

Jessica Harrington, Edward O’Grady, Joanna Morgan, James Nolan, Jim Bolger, John Hanlon, Katie Walsh and Davy Condon have pledged their support as well, with all proceeds going to Research Motor Neurone.

Tickets cost €10 and are available from www.irishracing.com.

AND THE VERDICT OF THE NAAS PANEL IS

THE PREVIEW night in Naas ended with each of the panellists taking their pins and sticking it into a charity bet and as organiser of the night, Niall Cronin got the leeway of being allowed the glamour choice of Hurricane Fly for the Champion Hurdle. It was one of three of the panel’s choices that bed down in Willie Mullins’s Closutton yard, the other two being So Young for Paul Townend in the Neptune Investments Novices’ Hurdle and Gagewell Flyer for Davy Russell in the longer-trip Albert Bartlett Hurdle.

Both trainers gamely plumped for one of their own. Dessie Hughes ignored the verdict of the night’s MC and stuck with Magnanimity in the RSA Chase and Gordon Elliott went for his smart young hurdler Plan A in Wednesday’s Fred Winter Juvenile Hurdle. Finally, Matt Chapman put up the Nigel Twiston-Davies horse Baby Run, a winner at the festival last year for the trainer’s son Sam in the Foxhunter’s Chase and looking to repeat the feat for Sam’s 16-year-old brother Willie this time around.