AS MIKEY CAHALANE drifted behind the Tipperary cover, collected the sliotar and drilled a low shot off his left into the far corner of the net beyond Darren Gleeson, my thoughts turned to Willie Browne.

While most observers were of the opinion that the All-Ireland champions would rediscover their mojo after a flat National League final performance against Galway and prove too strong for a developing Cork outfit in last Sunday’s Munster Championship encounter, Browne hadn’t been so sure.

“I hated what I saw against Galway,” said the shrewd breeze-up king from the office at the thriving Mocklershill operation just up the road from Moyglass National School, three days beforehand.

It is six since the 71-year-old pulled off one of the best pinhooking touches of all time at Arqana, along with Jim McCartan of Gaybrook Lodge, turning a $15,000 investment into a €1.4m bonanza in the space of eight months.

Of course Browne had established his reputation for talent spotting many years before and this wasn’t even his first million sale. His eye is legendary, which is why as Cahalane’s shot cemented a shock victory for Cork, I cursed myself for not following Browne’s nose and availing of the tasty odds about such an eventuality.

Judgement is judgement, and Willie Browne’s eye is better than most.

STEPS TO SUCCESS

There were no horses in the Browne family until Mickey and his brothers developed an interest. Mickey served his time with Percy Harris in Athassel House, where Paddy Twomey operates from now, before moving on to work for Tim Hyde, father of Camas Park boss Timmy. He became quite a successful jockey in the 1940s and ‘50s.

“We lived in a little placed called Ballagh, which is quite near to Longfield Stud,” regales Willie, who is Mickey’s son. “We moved to Mocklershill in ’51. I was five. There were four boys and a girl, my sister Mary was the youngest. I was the eldest. Like all things, I didn’t stay long enough in school – left before my Inter Certificate – because my father wanted me at home working.

“It was a mistake and I would regret that now. Apart from the education, in this day and age, it’s so important to go out in the world and see how other people do stuff. So I did the usual carry-on, rode ponies at shows, progressed to point-to-points and did well enough.”

Browne rode 120 point-to-point winners and was in the same ball park under National Hunt rules too. He enjoyed particular success at Galway, winning the Players’ Navy Cut Amateur Handicap (the marquee race for amateurs at the festival that subsequently became known as the GPT) on Malcolm Shillington’s Troubled Sole in 1965.

He enjoyed a couple of hurdle successes in subsequent years, with the success on Pearl Of Montreal, trained by his father in 1968 probably most memorable.

“I rode my first winner when I was 14, which was too young. I regret that now too. I got a lot of falls in my teens and it affected my nerve and I was finished at 23 or 24. Young lads getting hammered off the ground is not a good thing. I got loads of that and it affected me.”

HARD TIMES

Willie and his brother Michael stayed at home with their father, “barely scratching a living” breaking and training. Times were hard and Willie endured tragedy with the death, after a long illness, of his first wife Rita. He was 30 and in need of direction, and the business needed a turbo boost too.

He thinks Tony O’Callaghan might have been the first to spot the opportunity of buying yearlings and selling them as two-year-olds ready to race.

That was 1976 and the Brownes jumped in the following year. The first official breeze-up sale was held in 1978 and Mocklershill soon became synonymous with quality to such an extent that when Willie moved to Moyglass 20 years ago, he kept the name.

“We had to try something different. It was in its infancy and nobody was sure how it was gonna go. The training and pre-training was going alright but there was three of us at home trying to make a living.

“My father would have had a buying-and-selling culture anyway, buying a cheap horse and turning him into a bit of money.”

Training gave them a bit of an edge and there isn’t much difference between the disciplines.

“The proof of that is that these horses are running two and three weeks now after being sold. The only difference I suppose is that because we’re trying to protect the horse we probably don’t work them the full four or five furlongs. We tend to work them two-and-a-half, three at most.

“We’re a bit different in that when we buy them, we break them straight away. The real early ones, the August ones, we might let them out for a month but we go right through the winter riding them and muscling them up. It’s a seven-month process.”

ON THE CLOCK

The advent of the clock in the last decade hasn’t had a negative impact on his place among the premier consignors of two-year-olds in Europe but Browne isn’t a fan.

“It wasn’t a given that you were gonna make money on a nice horse with a good pedigree anymore once the time came into it. If he didn’t come up quick it didn’t matter if he was bred to go a mile and a half or five furlongs; it didn’t make any allowance for the horse that might want to go further. So we pulled back slightly on the price we might spend. But it’s gone the full circle now and it’s looking as if people might like a nice horse again that wouldn’t be as quick.

“You’re talking about the flick of an eye now in terms of time. I remember a filly of mine, she was point seven of a second slower than the fastest horse and there were 35 horses faster than her. It’s not a lot but if you see it on a list, it looks bad. It’s why we’re against an official clock.

“There are people that don’t have any interest in the clock, time mightn’t matter, but when you look 35th best, it gets in people’s heads.”

In the old days, it was all about what you saw and what was in the book. Good conformation, a nice action and attractive pedigree. The dam was always important to Browne though it is the sire that sells.

“I think the first criteria is a nice horse. I can’t buy a crooked horse, or a horse that doesn’t fill the eye. That’s only me. But you probably have a better chance he’ll stay sound if he’s correct. If he’s off in front or has a funny hind leg, there’s a chance that he won’t stand the test, training-wise.

“When you’re selling breeze-up horses, the bigger the name of the sire at the top of the door, the more they’re going to want them.

“The mother never gets the credit she deserves in the foal process. But I think if a mare is breeding, she’ll breed to a donkey.”

TWEAKING THE SYSTEM

While a creature of habit, he has had to tweak the system over time because of the increasing demand for a horse ready not just to run but to win. While Langs Lash went on to win the Queen Mary at Royal Ascot in 2008, graduates of the Mocklershill academy have tended to have more longevity. They are the only breeze-up consignor to have sold a classic winner – Speciosa bagged the English 1000 Guineas in 2006, a year after Penkenna Princess was a nose short of winning the Irish version and Walk In The Park (sire of Douvan and Min) finished second in the English Derby. Trip To Paris was an Ascot Gold Cup victor in 2015. So there is a balance to be found.

“Last week I had a good sale. Half of them breezed very well and half of them breezed middle of the road and they all seemed to get done. It’s like anything I suppose, when you’re on a run, these things happen for you.”

“Good sale” is an understatement. It has been a stellar season and with Goresbridge still to come at the time of the conversation, Browne and his team had remarkably sold every horse. The sale of a dark brown son of Street Sense, out of Mystic Melody, literally topped the lot though, setting a new record for Deauville’s breeze-up. Kerri Radcliffe, who bought the handsome colt for Phoenix Thoroughbreds, to be trained by her husband Jeremy Noseda, said that she had been to every breeze-up sale in the world this year and “this is the nicest I have seen.”

Browne knew he was producing a real specimen but was blown away by the events that unfolded.

“It was all happening very quickly. It’s very hard to get me excited but I got hugely emotional after it.

“The tears came. I sold a million-pound horse before (the 1.15m guinea General Marshall at Tattersalls’ Craven Breeze-Up in 2014) but there was something about this, the fact he was bought so cheaply. It was such a story. It could be anyone and it was just lucky to be me.”

He usually buys in partnership with Mark Dwyer but the former Cheltenham Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle-winning pilot had already left the US for his Yorkshire base. McCartan was happy to step in.

“We had both seen the horse together and we were going to buy him. We would have given a 100 grand for him. I was over in the airport in Kentucky waiting for a plane.

“Jim rings me and says ‘I’m after getting the vet report about this horse and he’s a cribber.’ It took the stuffing out of me a bit and I said to Jim we’d have to revise it down, and give 30 or 40 grand for him.

“I flew on to Philadelphia and was changing planes when he rang and said we’d bought him for 15. I was delighted then but sure look, you still didn’t know what you were buying.

“He was a great looking horse and the mother was a decent mare in France so there was European in the page. So it was very attractive. The horse wouldn’t be out of place in the Derby Sale next month. He’s a big, strong, strapping horse.”

A key and nerve-racking part of the process is passing the veterinary inspection at the sales. Browne is very unhappy with the expansion of duties he maintains the house vets have taken upon themselves.

“I can go with a good report from my own vet John Halley, but that doesn’t mean anything really because you have to pass the inspection at the sales.

“A vet’s job is to see if a horse has physical or health problems. But now they’re giving opinions on conformation and that is for the trainer or agent. It might be a very minor physical issue, when you see it in writing on a vet’s report, it blows it out of the water.”

Fortunately this colt proved to be more a periodical than compulsive cribber but they declared the tendency anyway. And it didn’t deter Radcliffe or another, familiar suitor.

“By all accounts this fella had a stride pattern to die for and he held that stride right through the work and wasn’t weakening. And he’s an exceptional looking horse. Godolphin bid 850 having sold him for 15. John Ferguson was very gracious and wished me well. We had a sneaky feeling we might get between 500 and 600 grand, which would have been mind-blowing.

“This is only half the jigsaw, he now has to go and do something … I’ll stand outside the door and tell a trainer or an agent that this horse will win a maiden but the next question is ‘Are they blacktype?’ I never tell anyone that because I don’t know.”

BAD DAYS

While he is right more often than he is wrong, Browne recalls plenty of bad days.

“I have seen a few recessions. Most of them you sort of know are coming and can deal with them. But I remember we went to Donny one year for a two-day sale in the ‘80s. We hadn’t a clue how things were going and all of a sudden the first horse went into the ring and it was a bloodbath. The first day was bad and the second day, we could not sell anything.

“We came out of that sale on our knees. We’ve had ups and downs since, but that one particularly comes to mind as being one of the worst I can remember. It still sticks with me.”

Browne began buying yearlings in America around 15 years ago but they went out of fashion for a while. He reckons it was due to misinformation about their constitution, peddled by European breeders jealously guarding their own interests.

People are seeing through that now though and there has been plenty success in recent times once more, with McCartan, Johnny Collins, Star Bloodstock and Browne just some of those making hay.

As the chat continues, trucks drive in and out, the Mocklershill facilities the envy of many trainers, vets doing inspections and fellow breeze-up operators. In other walks of life, it would seem strange to help competitors but this industry is different.

“We’re kind of a family, the breeze-up boys, and I like to help them if I can. The great thing about it, my bit of luck this year can be somebody else’s bit of luck next year. To be honest with you, that was the best part of last week. There’s a huge amount of goodwill out there. I know we’re a nation of begrudgers but it’s unbelievable the reaction there has been.”

Staffing has been a difficulty, as it is throughout the industry, but Browne employed a group of Brazilian riders in the early part of the noughties that spend nine months a year with him. Meanwhile, his daughter Jane is a key cog in the machine as was another daughter Tanya, who is now “going a bomb” on her own at Mayfield Stables with her partner Ronaldo Souza, who still rides work for Willie. Their success fills him with pride, as do the antics of Jamie, his eight-year-old son with partner Tracy who already has a keen interest in horses.

GREATEST PASSION

He has 90 inmates at peak time and also pre-trains for a number of high-profile clients in Ireland and France. Yet Browne’s greatest passion lies in training.

“I’m a failed trainer really. I have a half-dozen I want to run in the summer. If I was a rich man, I would probably prefer to win a race in Dundalk than get a million quid for a breeze-up horse. There’s a better buzz out of it. It’s stupid. It doesn’t make sense but that’s how I am… There’s satisfaction out of preparing a breeze-up horse too but training a winner is better.”

He hopes that Bibliotheca, a four-year-old filly owned by the Niarchos family will fill him with that glow a couple of times during the summer, and is also optimistic about a three-year-old Kodiac filly of their own. A two-year-old Epaulette filly owned by breeder Gerard Kevin, who bred her Group 2-winning half-sister Besharah, is exciting too. Browne trained Red Rannagh to win for Kevin last year.

“It’s a dream.”

The future will always be in breeze-ups though.

“You’re wondering how this can hold up with the world in turmoil but it’s a durable business. I don’t know how it has lasted. The first thing a man wants when he gets rich is a racehorse. There is a status to it.

I don’t really understand it but the demand is there so we’ll keep going.”