Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
HARRY GAIN!
Redknapp shooting for the sky with Betfair Hurdle bid
HARRY REDKNAPP hopes his runner Shakem Up’arry can be like Harry Kane and hit the target in Saturday’s Betfair Hurdle at Newbury.
“I don’t know if he can be compared to Kane as Harry’s out of the top, top draw,” said the former football manager and player.
“But, like Harry, he gives his best when he runs.”
Shakem Up’arry has won just once in eight outings, but the Ben Paulingtrained gelding is the value for Britain’s richest handicap hurdle at a best-priced 16-1.
Pauling’s (right) sevenyear-old now meets Metier, the 6-1 favourite, on 13lb better terms after finishing second behind him, beaten 12 lengths, at Sandown last month.
“He’s come up against some good horses,” said Redknapp, in a zoom call hosted by Great British
Racing. “We went to Newbury (last season) and he ran a good race when second behind Shishkin.”
For Redknapp (top left), football is his life and racing a passion.
“It was my nan, Maggie Brown, who got me interested in racing when I was eight,” explained Redknapp. “She was the bookies runner in our street in East London and often was arrested by the police as betting was illegal back then.”
Redknapp has owned numerous money spinners on the turf and usually they have Harry in their name.
“Shakem Up’arry was named after this guy that stood behind me at West Ham, when I was the manager,” added Redknapp.
“For 90 minutes he’d be shouting Shakem Up’arry. When I got home after the match all I could hear was this guy’s voice.”
RONAN O’gara has compared Billy Burns’ Cardiff kicking howler to blowing Masters victory at Augusta by finding the water.
But the legendary No.10 insists Burns has to pick himself up now as new Six Nations favourites France roll into town this week.
Taking over from the injured Johnny Sexton on Sunday, Burns over-cooked his vital touch-finder on Sunday with the clock in the red.
Instead of setting up an Ireland throw within 10m of the Welsh tryline, the ball went dead and the visitors’ hopes died with it.
“He went for it, he failed,” said O’gara. “I’ve done that loads of times with pressure moments early in my career.
“S*** happens. You just have to get on with it.”
But O’gara is bemused as to why the Ulster out-half took on more than he could chew by aiming so closely for the corner with his kick, which he describes as
“irrelevant nowadays”.
O’gara says that for every kicker now, the corner flag is the five-metre line because no lineouts are given beyond that fivemetre boundary.
The reality, he adds, is that kickers have a “big” 10-metre target to hit into either side of that.
“So, for me, you have the massive margin of error for kickers from the 30-metre range to the corner flag,” he explained.
“You have four metres to miss – probably five.
“In Augusta, that’s the water. You know there that it’s competition over, tournament over.
“So you’ve got to be looking at five metres before the corner flag.
“You have, probably, a 10metre zone where irrespective of how it happens, ‘I’ve got to hit it there’. Ten metres from there is quite a big target for kickers.
“Even if the five metres is the new corner flag, it’s OK to get a strike you’re not happy with if the line-out is 10 metres out from the line.”
For O’gara, it’s the fascination of “risk-reward” in the game.
“For that kick, that’s the visualisation you have to work with your kickers on, in terms of understanding that actually, when the pressure comes on, you don’t want the target to feel small.
“It is a surprise? Not really, because he’s an inexperienced out-half looking to give his team a lineout close to the line.” Burns’ costly mistake underlines for O’gara the lack of a worthy successor making a strong claim to take Sexton’s place as he approaches his 36th birthday.
He believes Andy Farrell has to go with Burns or Ross Byrne as Sexton’s back-up on Sunday but mentions Leinster’s newest sensation Harry Byrne as a potential bolter for the Italy game the week after next.
The Corkman asked: “Who is pushing through?
“It’s hard to pluck someone from third-choice in your province to a national scenario.
“It depends on the vision of Andy Farrell. The criteria for selection for the Italy game is very different because everyone knows that the result isn’t at stake, but you want to set up your 10 to succeed and get a taste for it.
“That would be the ideal game for someone like Harry Byrne, but what does that say to Ross Byrne then?
“That’s the dilemma of managing your plans and knowing how to get the best out of them.”
Ronan O’gara was helping to launch the Aviva Mini Rugby Skills Hub yesterday. See