PRIOR to the meeting at Tattersalls on the recent bank holiday weekend Sunday, I received a kind letter from the remarkable George Briscoe, Master of the Tara Harriers.

I say remarkable since he first took up the mastership in 1942 – the year I was born – and I thought I was getting old! There can hardly be any master of hounds anywhere with such a long record of service.

In his letter he let me know that, contrary to popular conception, the Tara are in fact the senior partner to the Meath Foxhounds in what is one of the only remaining joint meetings in the point-to-point calendar.

After the Taras moved from their bank track at Dalystown near Trim to a new track at Dunsany the Meaths found themselves without a course as they could not continue using Navan Racecourse and asked to join the Taras for a joint meeting. Though they later moved to a Meath hunt venue on the Fowler family’s estate the Tara still feel themselves number one and so perhaps the meeting should be called the Tara Harriers and Meath Hunt.