Keefe calls on Giants to maintain winning feeling after Cup glory
the shin? Forget it. The ball’s over there, go for it. Don’t be looking for the ref to sort it out. I like my horses to run like that.
“And I like my riders to be like that. Get out, race-ride and if there’s something on, get over it. Because if you dwell on it, you’ll never win anything. Just go out there with more grit next time.
“Hasn’t worked for me in the Gold Cup yet mind!”
It is a mindset almost certainly inherited from his late father too. For theirs was never a silver-spoon existence, despite Paddy’s own father — William — owning a 300-acre farm at Doninga in Goresbridge, Co Kilkenny. When William Mullins passed away, the entire estate went — as was the tradition then — to his eldest son, Jim.
It meant that Paddy and his wife, Maureen, settled into the stewards’ house in Doninga, Paddy training his horses in what his former head lad and stable jockey Ferdie Murphy once described as “an old stubble field which had plenty of stones, the kind of place Vincent O’Brien would not walk his horses”.
Paddy also made clear a hope that his children might sidestep the scratch-card emotion of the racing industry for professions carrying promise of a robust pension.
Yet this was never likely, given the love of horses so palpable in their home, Maureen once joking that Paddy almost confused the creatures in his yard with household pets, even the ones inclined to run like Morris Minors wheezing on dirty petrol. “He’d always say something positive about them,” she once said. “Even if it was that they were good feeders!”
As it happens, each of the Mullins children still live within a 10-mile radius of Doninga Stables today — Willie, Tony and Tom having all trained Cheltenham Festival winners; Sandra being a successful breeder; and George now recognised as having the most successful equine transport business in Ireland.
In Closutton, Willie’s wife Jackie runs the business side of things as well as their breeding operation, while son Patrick is his assistant trainer as well as a multiple Irish champion amateur jockey.
Yet this has never been a story of entitlement or comfortable lineage.
When Willie Mullins first took out a training licence in January of ‘88, he got it only through an act of gentle subterfuge. The requirement for any aspiring trainer was to have a minimum of six horses in work but, an old mare having passed away not long before the Turf Club inspector came visiting, Mullins had only five. Indicating that the field where he kept the mare was “wet and mucky”, he persuaded the inspector to simply tick the box, recalling years later: “We had the passport alright, just hadn’t got the horse!”
Those circumstances seem unimaginable today, given the breadth and sophistication of the Closutton operation which, even with the disruptions brought about by recent snowfall, is still expected to direct a 50-plus string to the Cotswolds next week, Mullins attempting to close in on Henderson’s remarkable record.
And he will do so armed again with the talents of the man who has been leading rider at the Festival for nine of the last 10 years.
Walsh’s haul of 56 Festival winners may never be surpassed, given the man leading the chase, Barry Geraghty, is 22 behind. Indeed, a successful week for Ruby now could result in him doubling the Festival tally of AP McCoy (31), for whom a statue has already been erected at the racecourse.
Those figures would indemnify most against criticism or even direction and Walsh is seen as such a tough, self-sufficient competitor, it seems hard to imagine any trainer upbraiding him for the occasional lapse of judgment. Ostensibly, Mullins’ amiable courtesy also gives the impression of someone for whom conflict is not a natural setting.
Yet Walsh, contracted exclusively to Closutton for the last five years, leaves nobody in any doubt about who — ultimately — calls the shots in the yard.
“Me working for Willie Mullins is no different to anybody going in to work anywhere,” he explained last year. “Willie’s still my boss so, if I’m not in good form, I can’t bark at him. I don’t think anybody goes into work and barks at their boss.
“At the end of the day, Roy Keane didn’t get away with barking at Alex Ferguson, did he? You can’t do that. Your boss is still your boss, whoever you are. And maybe that’s what puts a bit of control, a bit of manners on you and gets you back to concentrating in a professional manner.”
For Mullins, authority has always been a gift communicated with dignity and composure and he never wavered from that path last year, even when Cheltenham began throwing the maths of panic in his direction.
In the end, he did what he always does. He worked through the storm. He held his nerve. And with Walsh’s matchless aid, they pulled a song from a horse so many others dismissed as a sociopath. ADAM Keefe believes Challenge Cup success has made his Belfast Giants players hungrier than ever to taste more trophy success.
The nature of the Elite League means that they can do just that in only four weeks time.
With the play-off title still there for the taking on the weekend after Easter, minds have already been turned towards the future rather than the past — after the players were handed an extra day off this week.
“We wanted the players to enjoy winning and to let it sink in, so we allowed them the extra time to do that,” said Keefe, ahead of this weekend’s home double-header against Braehead Clan tonight and the Nottingham Panthers tomorrow afternoon.
“It’s not an easy trophy to win — given that we have only won it once before in 18 years — so it should be enjoyed.
“The guys have had that feeling of winning and I think that they are now hungrier for it than they were before and they want that feeling again.
“This is a crazy league and you have multiple opportunities to win trophies, and with the playoffs still up for grabs we still have another opportunity to do that this season.
“That is where our focus has to be now because we want to IRELAND finally came good at the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia when they twice came from behind to beat World No.6 side India.
Goals from Shane O’Donoghue, Sean Murray and Lee Cole did the trick and the two teams will now meet again in the fifth/sixth play-off today.
It was a big blow to India, who were hoping to qualify for the gold medal playoff.
Instead it was England who finished second, following a 7-2 win over Malaysia during which Ulsterman Mark Gleghorne scored twice, and they will defend their trophy against Australia, who won their five games. be playing well when that comes around.”
While not resting on their laurels, Keefe wants the immediate future to be dictated by the past.
The nature of the Giants’ 6-3 win over the Cardiff Devils in last Sunday’s final is something that he wants the players to feed off, after coming from 1-0 down and 2-1 down before dominating the closing stages of the game.
“There are lessons that we want to take into the rest of the season,” said Keefe.
“We have learned how to win big games and what we need to do to win them. We want to play the same way we did in Cardiff for the rest of the season.
“We have eight league games to go and then a play-off quarter-final. No matter who we get matched up against in that it will be a tough game and we have to make sure we are playing well.”