FOLLOWING close on the death of Cecil Ross, the point-to-point fraternity lost another great supporter of the sport last Friday when it was announced that Billy Vance had died at the age of 84.

The Clones man owned, trained and bred many winners but is best remembered for his association in all three roles with the great mare Annie Sue VI who won 23 point-to-points including six consecutive runnings of the Fermanagh Harriers’ hunt race between 1980 and 1985. On four occasions she was partnered by Billy while, in 1983, Ivon Keeling was in the saddle.

Tony Martin, who landed the 1985 hunt race at Enniskillen Airport on the 1973 Snuff Matter mare, also partnered her to win the La Touche Cup at the 1985 Punchestown Festival, the bay having finished third twice previously in the famous banks race with Billy on board.

Others to ride Annie Sue were Andrew McCarren and Hugh Finnegan who, at 16 years of age, won four races on the mare in 1985 when, in her final season’s racing, she was successful in five of her eight starts. Standing just 16hh, she proved well up to carrying weight and on six occasions carried 13st or more to victory. In a time when owners didn’t travel too far out of their own country, she was hard to avoid in mares’ races in Leinster and Ulster.

While Billy’s son John and daughter Susan kept up the family tradition of riding point-to-point winners, Annie Sue VI also produced successful progeny. Her first foal Golanduff, born in April 1986, won four points under Robert Patton while Voldi, who was foaled a year later and was also by Tumble Gold, won seven points and was placed 23 times between the flags, giving both Johnny and Susan a taste of success.

Woodlands Boy, the mare’s 1988 gelding by Hawaiian Return, failed to win a point but did go on to score once over hurdles and three times over fences in England. Next came Annies Arthur (an 1989 gelding by Radical), who won five point-to-points and, in 1992, the Little Bighorn gelding Ballysadare Bay who won three times between the flags.

Bizet

Easily the best of Annie Sue’s seven thoroughbred foals was the 1996 Zaffaran gelding Bizet who, trained first by Tony Martin and then Francis Flood, won three times over hurdles and twice over fences and was third in the 2005 Thyestes Chase to the following year’s Aintree National winner, Numbersixvalverde.

Annie Sue VI produced just the one thoroughbred filly, the unraced 1998 Zaffaran mare Annies Carmen whose son Finea, a 2007 gelding by Exit To Nowhere, has won three point-to-points and a chase for Marshall and Keith Watson and last Saturday was second in a handicap chase at Naas.

In 1990, Vance covered Annie Sue with his own Connemara stallion Tabragh and the resultant filly, Sonnet, carried him as he hunted the Fermanagh hounds for 17 seasons. On the sidelines for a couple of years due to injuries sustained while schooling a young horse, Billy returned to the hunting field this season and led off the Harriers at their opening meet on Sonnet.

Vance was one of the driving forces behind the Fermanagh Harriers’ point-to-point, encouraging all of the family to work at the meeting which in recent years has been a two-day fixture held at Necarne Castle. Like Billy himself, its hospitality tent is legendary.

A farmer who lived all his life in Scarva House, Clones, Vance loved his hounds and two of them, Jester and Joyfull, were led by Catriona Conlan on Monday as Billy’s funeral cortege travelled from the local Presbyterian Church to the graveyard a mile outside the town. Fellow joint-Master Richard Trimble led Sonnet at the head of the lengthy procession.

Here we wish to extend the sympathy of The Irish Field to Billy’s wife Maeve, his sons Johnny and Andrew and daughters Susan and Clare.