IT may have been a low-grade handicap chase in Listowel, but you would not have known it, as Eric McNamara wrapped his daughter Kate and son Conor under each arm and they, in turn, enveloped him in theirs.

Mean something? Just a bit.

This venue and the Harvest Festival always has, with Eric coming here all his life from just up the road on the other side of the Kerry border in Rathkeale.

Winning the Kerry National three times (Ponmeoath 2007-08 and Faltering Fullback 2012), cemented the love affair, but it is rare he draws a blank on the banks of the Feale.

Cahirdown Boy was justifying favouritism in the Paud, Sarah & Mary Fitzmaurice Memorial, a 0-109 contest with a little more than €7,000 to the winner, but by that stage, everything McNamara saddled was sent off short.

The nine-year-old, owned by Seán Curran, was completing a three-timer for the trainer on the day and a double for jockey Seán Flanagan. To illustrate the red-hot form of the McNamara string, Gaelic Des Chastys, the other joint-favourite piloted by Daniel King, made it a stable one-two.

Earlier on, King did the steering as Frankendael claimed the Listed MCG Handicap Hurdle.

McNamara finished the Festival as leading trainer, with five winners. Another seven representatives were second and third.

Keeping the revs up, he recorded a double on the flat in Downpatrick on Monday. A notable element of this haul was Future Cutlet becoming the second Beechmount House three-year-old – running in Kate’s name - to win a maiden on the level this term.

Raw Ability scored on debut at Gowran Park at the beginning of June and was sold to race in Florida for £140,000 at Goff London HIT Sale a fortnight later. Expect Future Cutlet to have new ownership shortly too. In recent years, plenty of dyed-in-the-wool National Hunt operators have moved towards the flat to capitalise on the lucrative global markets in that sphere and it comes as no surprise that an astute operator of McNamara’s level would not cast a line sooner or later.

Good market

“We bought a yearling yesterday (Monday) and we aim to buy around six or seven, try and get them to run well next year and then sell them on. It is definitely an area we are looking to branch out into a little bit more. You have to diversify and there is a good market there for Irish horses off the flat with form.”

This new venture is indicative of what has always been at the core of the McNamara story since taking out a licence 40 years ago this year. His oeuvre contains a slew of big handicap chase triumphs, with Conor riding Real Steel to dramatic victory in the Paddy Power Chase in 2022, Mark Walsh steering Donkey Years to success in the Pat Taaffe Handicap earlier that year (just as he did in a handicap hurdle at Listowel last week), Questions Answered and Larkwing both delivering in the Tim Duggan Memorial and Kasalectric winning the Munster National under Listowel clerk of the course, Paul Moloney, 25 years ago.

Strangely Brown was a dream winner of a Grade 1 four-year-old hurdle in Auteuil in 2005, with Ruby Walsh in the plate.

But ensuring the business can wipe its face and that the bills are paid have made his yard a trading one. This has been made possible by a keen eye, developed in his early show jumping days, and the ability to acquire stock cheaply, improve it, put form in the book and move it on at a profit.

“We were always a selling yard and had some very good horses that went on and did well after we sold them. We would have liked to keep them too, but you can’t always. I think the dearest horse that ever came into this yard was 70,000. Ever. Most of them would be a lot cheaper. So we’ve done well with those types. They don’t all work out, as we well know, but we’ve been reasonably lucky with them.

Cheap horses

“The two horses that won the three Kerry Nationals were cheap horses. They weren’t dear horses by any manner of means. We weren’t able to pick the best pedigrees in the book, and we never were. So, we’ve done okay.

“Even that horse that won at Listowel last week, Mount Ferns; he was a cheap purchase (bought from the Emma Lavelle yard for £21,000 in May), and I think he could be a very good horse, keep improving now and be a success story for the lads to have bought him.”

He has retained a core of loyal owners that have stayed with him, even as the vagaries of world recessions put him to the pin of his collar and numbers dwindled, but is looking to take the operation to another level.

“We’ve had great owners here over the years, and they’re still with us and long may that part of it last. But this year, we want to try and capitalise on the good form a small bit.

“We want to buy a bunch of yearlings ourselves, but would also like to attract the owner that might just spend a bit more money. We want to try and get the calibre of horse up.

“We’re kind of back up to the numbers of between 40 and 45, so now it’s the case of trying to keep culling them and keep trying to get better stock, if possible. Try and have more quality than quantity.”

Kate is a key cog in the machine, along with Conor, who missed partnering some of those Listowel winners through injury. Eric and Paula’s eldest, Emmet, is a former champion apprentice and Derby-winning jockey, who has swapped the saddle for the calculator as an accountant, but with Kate around, his services aren’t required at home.

“Conor is very much part of it. He has brought in a few new owners that are friends of his and have brought in a few new horses that have added to it greatly. And Conor rides all the work here and, as a result, we have a far better idea of where we’re going or where we’re not going.

Paperwork

“The whole operation would close down only for Kate and that is a fact. Between mucking out stables and riding out, but her main thing is she’s in the office in the morning, in and out between the office and the yard, with all the paperwork and looking after all the syndicates. There is so much paperwork involved in the training aspect of the game now, it’s just incredible. Without Kate, I can tell you, I wouldn’t know where to start. And she does the books as well. She’s a great girl.

“I must say, every trainer you meet, they say they can’t get staff, but we’ve had staff here that are here for years and years. We haven’t been in trouble for staff really, because when they come here, they seem to want to stay here, for one reason or another.

“There’s no doubt, staff are getting scarce, but we have lads here and they’re here a long, long time.”

When you have a case where Willie Mullins wins six of the seven races – there’s 350 other trainers in the country, like!

Among those is Ray Hogan, a local who steered winners for McNamara over the years and continues to ride work and be a part of the team. Joining him in the mornings now is his son Calum, a pony racing product that propelled Ifitwasme to victory in the Adare Manor Opportunity Handicap Hurdle at Listowel.

It was Calum’s first victory, amazingly arriving in a race Ray had won 28 years earlier in the colours of the current sponsor, J.P. McManus. It’s the sort of family vibe that perhaps explains why people are happy with their lot, when they walk in the gates of Beechmount.

This love of locality and place is at the centre of McNamara’s affinity for Listowel.

Love the place

“We’re only 40 minutes away and I just know so many people in Co Kerry. It’s incredible. I just really love the place. As well as that, I think the time of year is the biggest thing. We put away our horses earlier than most people, so we have them back in a little bit earlier and we like to think they’re fit and ready to run when Listowel comes along, because it’s so hard to compete from November to April with all these expensive horses.

“You just couldn’t win a maiden hurdle or a novice chase. Not with the calibre of horses we’d have.”

He has never sat around and whinged, and continues to find his niche within the prevailing system, but McNamara, who has served as a council member of the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association for many years, does feel a little more help should be forthcoming to trainers on the margins in terms of the racing programme.

That said, he is not in favour with the announced provision of a 60-race series for every trainer apart from Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott, Henry de Bromhead and Gavin Cromwell.

“Firstly, I don’t agree with what’s happened. We all have opinions about it, but taking 60 races, I think they’re going the wrong way about.

“My opinion, what needs to be done is have races at all the big festivals. You take Punchestown, for argument’s sake, as the best example. Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott and Henry de Bromhead win the seven races every single day.

“In my opinion, the likes of that festival, you have to have a low-grade handicap hurdle or a low-grade handicap chase every day of the festival.

“So Eric McNamara or Austin Leahy or Ted Walsh or whoever will go home having had a winner. There’ll be 30 runners in that handicap hurdle and handicap chase, it will bring more people racing and one of us will go home having won a race. One race every day that the top four trainers are not allowed have a runner in.

“And have the same at Leopardstown at Christmas. I know we have Limerick at Christmas, which is great for lower grade horses, but you still have to have one of those races every day at Leopardstown. When you have a case where Willie Mullins wins six of the seven races – there’s 350 other trainers in the country, like!

“If you have one race, every day of the five or six major festivals for the smaller man, and had that with the likes of J.P.’s Martinstown series, that, to me, would be a better way of doing it. Because right now, the perception of the game is not good.

“If you have a 30-runner handicap hurdle, the amount of people that will go to that race meeting. But it has to be the big day. To give the small man the day out on the big day and his owner too. Even though it’s a 0-102 handicap chase or 0-102 handicap hurdle.

“That’s the way to do it, in my opinion. And take away some of those Grade 2s and 3s, there are so many of them.

“They are able to avoid each other, there’s only four or five runners and the favourite is 1/3 generally. Surely the 30-runner handicap hurdle is what the bookmakers want, it’s what racing wants and I feel strongly about it, that’s the road I’d have gone down.

“What they did (with the 60-race series) is not right. It doesn’t sit well with me anyway. I was never asked for my opinion on it and I think most trainers in the country were never asked for their opinion. A good few people have said to me, ‘Oh, we got to make sure this sticks now,’ but my honest opinion is, it doesn’t sit well with me and I would have gone about it in a different way.”

Meanwhile, he knuckles down, with his family, his owners and his staff four-square behind him.

Career highlight

That aforementioned Grade 1 triumph remains the career highlight, but he wants more.

In the past, that would have had to come with an unpolished gem, sourced away from the limelight. As he said in an interview with this writer in The Irish Examiner in November 2018, “We’re all the time competing with a Mini Minor against a Mercedes, but every now and then we come up with one that can take ‘em on.”

The hope is that this current run of form might catch the eye of some owners with a little more means to acquire a better pedigree, just as Tom Gibney’s consistency persuaded Isaac Souede, Simon Munir and Anthony Bromley to send him Intense Raffles. He delivered the Irish Grand National last Easter, with the promise of much more to come.

Strangely Brown winning at Aintree and also won a Grade 1 four-year-old hurdle in Auteuil in 2005 \ Healy Racing

Elite facility

McNamara has added new fences and hurdles to his grass schooling ground, a one-furlong circular, carpet warm-up circuit and an additional walker. He is boss of an ultra-modern, elite training facility right now.

“Auteuil was the best race of all time. I suppose it gave me an awful lot of satisfaction, really. I bought Strangely Brown at the sales. I think he cost 12 grand or something.

“We would love to get back to those sort of days. As I said before, we need to capitalise on things now and improve the calibre of horse here.

“We will try to buy them cheaply, as we have always had to do, but hopefully we can attract an owner or two that might be able to buy that better calibre of horse for us. That’s what we’d love to do.”