Point-to-point starting Sunday
THE 2018-’19 point-to-point season kicks off this weekend with 27 fixtures in the autumn schedule to be completed before Christmas, including three within the county.
Jockey Barry O’Neill and trainer Colin Bowe will be bidding to defend their national titles, and the Wexford contingent generally will be out to maintain the county’s overall dominance of the sport.
Wexford has always had a strong pointing tradition, but the rise to unprecedented pre-eminence in the past five years has been remarkable.
A whole host of riders and handlers have wrested control of the sport from the Munster, Connacht and Ulster strongholds that held sway for so many years.
The top echelon have turned point-topointing from a part-time hobby into a multi-million Euro business where horses that are introduced to racing in Wexford are regularly sold on for hundreds of thousands of Euro.
At the same time the sport is still also open to the smaller and part-time handlers and dozens of them make it into the winners’ enclosure every year. In many ways these people, with just two or three horses, are still the backbone and the heart of the sport in Wexford and generally, and there will always be a role for them.
Colin Bowe clinched his sixth national trainers’ title last June and his fourth in a row. He will certainly be a leading contender once again having spent heavily at the sales to restock and start all over again.
The same can be said for his main rivals, within the county and nationally, with Donnacha Doyle and his brothers, Seán and Cormac, and the impressive Monbeg, Ballindaggin, operation pressing him hard in recent years.
Denis Murphy from The Ballagh is also a very serious operator who has had great sales success, and he was fourth in the handlers’ race last season.
Other trainers from all parts of the county will also be very competitive, people like Liam Kenny (Craanford), Pierce Power (The Hook), Michael Goff (Ferns), Richard Black (Bunclody), Vincent Devereux (Rostoonstown), Ashleigh Murphy (Duncormick), etc.
Barry O’Neill has been champion rider for the past two seasons. He edged Jamie Codd by a single winner two years ago to take his first title, and in June he took it again, beating the legendary eleven-times champion, Derek O’Connor, by 59 to 51.
Rob James from Killanne was third and Codd was next with 39 winners, despite missing the last couple of months of the season through injury.
O’Neill has been an integral part of the Bowe story for a few years, having been knocking around his yard since he was a child.
He rode 25 of his winners for him last season.
David Christie from Fermanagh has been another supplier of regular winners and helped O’Neill to win the Northern title for the first time last season, and he made it a treble by also winning the East region.
Rising young guns such as Luke Murphy (Inch), James Kenny, son of trainer Liam, Tiernan Power-Roche and Jamie ‘Paddy’ Scallan (both Tomhaggard), and more experienced men like Benny Walsh (nearly 20 years riding), Harley Dunne, Jimmy and Shane O’Rourke and others will surely make their mark again.
However, joint Novice champion, young Seán O’Keeffe (Taghmon), will be missing as he has turned professional on the track..
Good luck and a safe journey to one and all as the first flag of the new season falls on Saturday at the Mid Antrim Hunt meeting at Moneyglass, Toomebridge, followed on Sunday by the Westmeath Hunt meeting at Castletowngeoghegan.
Local fixtures for your diary before Christmas include Shillelagh and District at Tinahely on October 21; the Kilkenny Hunt at Grennan, near Thomastown (November 4), the Wexford Hunt at Moorfields, Ballinaboola (November 11), the Wicklow Hunt at Tinahely (November 18), the Killinick Harriers at Lingstown (November 25), and The Carlow Farmers at Borris on December 9, the final day before the Christmas break.