Brits humbled on the track at Cheltenham, but the most embarrassing performance came from Dr Richard Newland

WILLIE MULLINS isn’t exactly short of a few bob, yet Dr Richard Newland allows him to live rent-free in his head.

The Grand National-winning trainer wrote an absolutely bonkers article this week, blaming the Irish for ‘killing’ British jumps racing.

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In a rambling column, he made a thinly-veiled suggestion that their runners have an unfair advantage over us Brits because of doping.

He also reckons the Irish authorities should contribute £10 million to our prize-money coffers, to cover the cost of the wedge they plunder.

And he channelled his inner Donald Trump by proposing a ban on ALL Irish jumps horses coming over and running in the UK during the winter.

I was half expecting a line somewhere saying: “We are going to build a wall in the Irish Sea, it’s going to be the best wall you’ve ever seen, an amazing wall, not even Willie will be able to get over this wall.”

You can see why he is so keen for us to cut ourselves off from the outside world, given the overwhelming amount of evidence proving isolationism always works. Oh, hang on a minute…

The good doctor, as he is playfully known in this great game, conceded that we would have to massively slash our racing fixture list to make up for the shortfall in runners. 

But he reckons short-term pain will lead to long-term gain and the top owners will soon begin flooding back to Blighty in their droves.

With respect, what has he been putting in his tea?

His suggestion that the only reason the Irish are regularly stuffing us is because they’re cheating has also, understandably, offended plenty of Irish racing fans and professionals.

Of course, it can’t possibly have anything to do with superior sourcing of the best equine talent, a better-funded and run industry and some of the best trainers we’ve ever seen. Can it?

It was good to see big Gordon Elliott put the good doctor in his place with a fiery statement of his own yesterday.

“He is a man I would always have looked up to when I started training over the past 10 or 15 years. But I am very disappointed with the way he is carrying on,” said big Gord. Good stuff.

Sure, we were humbled on the track at Cheltenham, but Newland’s performance was the most embarrassing of the last couple of weeks.

On the subject of absolute duds, Julie Harrington’s rallying cry after another bruising week for the home team at Cheltenham went down like a lead balloon.

I can appreciate her sentiment, she wanted to make it known the BHA aren’t sitting on their hands while the Brits get taken to the cleaners every March.

In truth, though, her 533-word statement was an absolute load of waffle. There was nothing of any real consequence or meaning and it lacked any sort of nitty-gritty detail.

She says the lack of competitiveness from British stables at Grade 1 level is ‘damaging’ to the sport on both sides of the Irish Sea.

From where I’m standing, the only thing damaging Willie and Co is the cost of the extensions they are having to build in order to house their haul of trophies.

If we are truly going to make British jumping great again we need to get serious, fast. And we need to keep the good doctor away from the keyboard.

Premier league, you’re having a laugh

WE are barely three months into ‘Premier Racing’ and I’m beginning to have a few doubts.

The supposed new dawn for British racing was ushered in in low-key style on New Year’s Day, but we were promised big things.

But has anyone noticed a difference? Apart from the odd bit of branding around racecourses and weird off-times on a Saturday, I mean.

One thing is for sure, a lot of owners and trainers have noticed a hit to their wallets.

In order to fund Premier Racing, racing chiefs took money away from grassroots, midweek racing to help boost prize-money at weekends. 

How is it a step forward if the bulk of people involved in this sport are racing for less money now than they were 10 years ago?

There are simply too many so-called ‘premier’ meetings at present – a whopping 170 to be exact.

Between now and Aintree, there are NINE meetings who carry that status when, in reality, there is nothing premier about them.

If we are going to make it work and stop the drain of good horses abroad, we need to streamline the whole project.

Let’s focus on making our top 30 or 40 racedays something truly extraordinary. You can’t shoehorn premier racing in where it ain’t.

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