AS we ended the season in splendid sunshine, it is easy to forget about the weather woes which threatened to wipe-out a large part of the season not that long ago. It is a testament to the dedication of the hunt volunteers and land owners that 98 fixtures even managed to take place this season, as they battled to save their fixtures from the most challenging of conditions.

As a result of their work, the staging of 98 meetings represents just a decline of nine fixtures on the previous season, a drop not as drastic as what it could well have been when we remember back to the almost weekly updates detailing fixture cancellations or abandonments at the height of the weather disruptions. We lost five meetings from the autumn fixture list, in addition to a further 13 cancellations during the spring.

Unsurprisingly, this led to a reduction in the number of races which were run, dropping 9% on the previous season.

This drop was also in part caused by a fewer number of horses running between the flags during the season. A total of 2802 hunter certs were issued this season, down 6%, which fed into an 8% decline in the number of entries that were made and a 12% reduction in the number of runners over the course of the season in comparison with the previous year.

With this latest decline in the number of entries following a similar pattern over the past couple of years, the financial pressures on the hunts, who are crucial to the running of the entire point-to-point sector, once again comes into focus.

FUNDING

With the majority of hunts charging €60 for entries, a rough calculation highlights how this latest fall of 876 entries for the season represents a loss of over €40,000 from the sector when the €10 qualified riders fund levy is excluded from each entry. Coming off the back of declines in previous years, the area of funding has now once again become quite a pressing matter for many hunts and will require consideration as we go into next season.

While the number of horses running between the flags may well have declined, we did see an all-time record number of races on the track being won by Irish point-to-point graduates, spearheaded by a plethora of successes at the highest level, including 120 blacktype victories and eight Cheltenham Festival winners. Irish pointers also dominated on the Grand National front with Mountainous winning the Welsh National, Rogue Angel the Irish National, and Rule The World led home a 1-2-3 for graduates of Irish point-to-point racing in the £1 million Aintree Grand National. These continued successes on the biggest platforms in Grand National Hunt racing continue to showcase the profile of Irish pointers to the widest audience.

In addition those results, statistics highlighting how one in four horses at the Cheltenham Festival and one in two of the Aintree National line-up began their careers between the flags, tell the story of the impact it is having on the wider racing world and how this has never been any greater.