TV View: Gunners have no rascals, while the little rascals feed Mars bars to horses

Spirits were high at Leopardstown yesterday, not least after the BoyleSports Handicap Chase which was won by 6-1 chance Foxrock, almost making up for him losing on the same course at Christmas, the plum pudding leaving him sluggish.

"I'm delighted for Barry Connell! I'm absolutely over the moon for Adrian Heskin! But I'm over the moon altogether for Ted Walsh the trainer!"

So said Ted Walsh the trainer who was double-jobbing again, having to abandon Robert Hall’s side to go off and collect his prize, before legging it back to carry on the chat.

He had been in a right cranky mood too, something about the race his fella won being in the same week as the Thyestes, which presumably is a race too, and not just the son of Pelops and Hippodamia (thank you Wiki). “An absolute disgrace,” he said, but then Foxrock won and his mood lightened so much Robert almost had to pluck him out of the clouds.

Futher chuffed

“It’s a passion, it’s something you want to do ‘til you die,” he said, his anger about Pelops and Hippodamia’s lad abating, and he was further chuffed when Kevin Prendergast’s Katie T won the BoyleSports Hurdle.

“He’s a right auld fella, Kevin,” said Ted, “can be a grumpy auld sod now if you got on the wrong side of him.” (“Ha – pot, kettle, black,” Robert whispered to himself). “But I admire him . . . I met him one morning on the Curragh and he was running across the top of the Flat Rath, I said ‘take it easy there, you might drop dead’, he says ‘wouldn’t it be a wonderful place to die?’. And he’s right.”

A whole lot of death wishing going on here from the horsey people, but winning at Leopardstown seemed to bring it out in them, like they had seen paradise at the winning post.

Ted was almost as happy for Kevin as he was for himself, “he’s as good a judge of a racehorse as any man who ever pulled the trousers on himself.”

That being the case, you can be sure Kevin never fed Katie T chocolate bars, learning, as we did, from Tracy Piggott’s chat with Annie (13) and Kate (14) Madden – runners-up in the Intermediate Young Scientist of the Year – that chocolate bars do nothing for horses’ speediness.

“My project was: if you feed ponies a Mars bar, will they go faster – and we found they didn’t,” said Kate, so they might help two-legged creatures work, rest and play, but evidently don’t increase our four-legged pals’ velocity.

So, Kate and Annie have come up with a way of making horses eat their food, when they’re in that “if you think I’m going to eat those sprouts, you’ve another thing coming” mood, using flavours to make the nosh more appealing. And now half the horsie world has pricked their ears with interest, and before you know it, Kate and Annie will be earning more than your average Manchester City star.

Not that the loot counted for much yesterday when they lost to Arsenal, a result that put the va va voom in to Thierry Henry's Sky Sports' debut, but would have left Graeme Souness a bit red-faced if we could have seen his face, now shielded behind a Keane-esque beard.

Current crop

“Would you be disappointed with any of those players coming home with your daughter,” he asked of the current crop of Gooners. “They’re a team of son-in-laws. There are no rascals there. They’re all nice guys.”

Thierry chuckled, and chuckled some more when Graeme noted that he himself had daughters so might be confronted with prospective sons-in-law some day, perhaps testing their resilience with a sharp-ish tackle from behind in the living room.

That wasn’t the worst thing that was said about a Premier League team over the weekend. A slight majority insists that Louis van Gaal did indeed call Saturday’s opposition, in his post-match chat, “Queens Park Raisins”. The mood ‘Arry Redknapp’s in these days with his boys, partially dried grapes is probably the kindest thing he calls them.