Game on for filly after slip
The Ciaron Maher and David Eustace-trained Away Game has been cleared to take her place in the Group 1 Surround Stakes at Randwick despite a minor setback on Wednesday.
Racing NSW stewards announced the Group 2 winner had undergone a veterinary examination on Thursday morning after slipping over when being loaded into a float on Wednesday.
Away Game suffered an abrasion to her off-side hip in the fall.
“Racing NSW General Manger Veterinary Services Dr Toby Koenig has examined Away Game following the Maher-Eustace stable reporting that the filly had sustained an abrasion to the off-side hip, after slipping when being unloaded from a horse float yesterday morning. Dr Koenig has determined the filly is suitable to race in Saturday’s Surround Stakes,” the stewards’ release said.
The classy daughter of Snitzel is poised to line up in the Surround Stakes on Saturday.
Glen Boss will resume his partnership with Away Game after last partnering the filly to third in the $2 million Magic Millions 3YO Guineas.
Away Game will jump from barrier 14 in the Surround Stakes, which has drawn a capacity field.
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TWO years ago Jackson Borg was being shuffled in and out of the Nutri-Grain Ironman Series as an alternate – now he’s one of the competition leaders tasked with running down the seemingly unbeatable Ali Day.
Bring it on, he says.
In his first full series last year Borg finished 11th; entering the restructured 2021 format the Newport SLSC ironman set himself a goal of a top-six finish, which he quickly had to re-evaluate.
“I was aiming for top six but once I got second on the first day I said I have to roll with this and see where it takes me,” the 22-year-old said.
“I’ve always known I could be up there, I just wasn’t getting the results. Now I have the results to show I deserve to be up there, and I want to keep going with it.
“It was all about experience really. Now I know what I need to do to be more consistent.”
Back-to-back fourth-place finishes in the ensuing two rounds positioned Borg in third overall heading into the week off, and it’s there he finds himself, seven points shy of Day in first, ahead of a return to action at Kingscliff on Friday.
“I’d definitely love to be the one to catch him,” Borg said of Day.
“He’s putting on a clinic at the moment but if I can reduce a few of the small errors and
not let him dictate the race like he did last weekend (I can do it).
“I don’t reckon he’ll get a clean sweep. I think some of us would take that quite personally. I’m sure someone will get him, and I want to be the one that does it.”
Borg finished runner-up to Day in Round 1 and the MShape EnduroSurf format makes a return for Round 4 on Friday.
Borg said he had learned from his failings in the first go around and was ready to make amends.
“I was close to Ali in the MShape last time and this time I want to be right there with him,” he said.
“I took a rest when I jumped on my ski in the first (leg) and that’s when he got away from me. I should have pushed up and not let him get comfortable.”
THE reigning premiers of the Sunshine Coast rugby competition have thrown down the gauntlet to the Gold Coast’s Griffith Uni Colleges Knights, issuing a challenge to determine which coast is king when it comes to rugby union.
The Noosa Dolphins were due to take on the Gold Coast premiers in a pre-season trial but have raised the stakes with the formation of a new trophy, the Coastal Cup, with the blessing of the two unions.
The champions of Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast rugby will play off twice a year, pre-season and post-season, for an annual trophy that Gold Coast chairman Dr Rod Thomson said would channel the spirits of both regions.
“It’s a wooden design to capture the spirit of the Sunny Coast and Gold Coast,” he said.
“I think it’s cementing the very good relationships that are already there between the coasts.”
Knights president Josh Scott said the club would send an armada up the M1 to support on March 24.
THE NRL is set to officially launch a tender process for expansion from April as ARL Commission boss Peter V’landys ramps up plans to introduce a second Brisbane team to rival the Broncos.
The NRL will seek formal bids from the Dolphins, Firehawks and Brisbane Jets within six weeks pending a final analysis from the governing body on whether the code can afford to expand to 17 teams.
V’landys is leading the charge for a fourth Queensland team in 2023 despite an ARL Commission board meeting on Friday expected to reveal the NRL lost $24.7m last year because of COVID.
It is a deficit sure to fuel an anti-expansion backlash from cash-strapped Sydney clubs.
V’landys will not jeopardise the financial health of the code’s 16 clubs, but internal NRL due diligence, being undertaken by strategic projects chief Lachlan Smith, suggests rugby league is ready for expansion. V’landys confirmed the expansion race was about to heat up with the governing body poised to accept bid documents from Queensland’s three prospective franchises.
“We are currently setting the criteria on the bids,” he said. “They will have to address the criteria and if the numbers stack up, we will look at a tender process around April or
May, absolutely. We may also look at a second round of interviews with the bid teams.
“We are on target for the ARL Commission to consider announcing a second Brisbane team in June or July.”
V’landys has met some opposition in his quest to grow the code for the first time in 16 years after the birth of the Gold Coast Titans in 2007, but he insists the NRL’s multimillion-dollar loss will not kill expansion.
“The loss is no impediment at all to expansion,” he said.
“Our actual loss was not as great as it seems. Because Origin was played in November, outside our usual financial period, the loss would have been $3.7m (not $24.7m) if we factored Origin into the equation.
“To make a $3.7m loss considering what has happened in the world with COVID, it’s a phenomenal effort. If anything, this enhances the expansion idea. There are some people who don’t want expansion to go ahead but that won’t stop me.”