What led to starting the syndicate?

As a youngster, I would have been bought racing by my father to Kilbeggan, Roscommon and Thurles as they were local tracks to us. As for getting involved in ownership, we would have dabbled a little bit in the early days. Before Willie Mullins was winning championships, we were in a few syndicates here and there. Some successful, some not successful.

After being involved in some other syndicates previously, we thought we had enough knowledge and experience to have a go ourselves. We knew people who we could lease a few horses from initially. We lease well-bred fillies from owners and breeders, and try to get blacktype and then send them back for breeding purposes.

We take the full the full cost of training and get the full benefit of any winnings, and then hopefully, the breeder or owner will get some blacktype or at least win a few races. We were very lucky with one of our first fillies, Poet Power, who won in the Galway Festival in 2017 and was our first winner. We’ve grown since then and Straight Home was our 18th winner at Clonmel in October.

Initially, it would have been mostly Offaly people involved in the syndicate. We added to the syndicate through acquaintances and friends. We have people from numerous counties in Ireland now, but also we have a few from abroad, from England and we’d have a few from Luxembourg in it. They all have Irish connections. It’s a great way to bring people together and we don’t go too big. Some syndicates have huge membership numbers but our model is based on 20 shares in each horse with some members having shares in a few horses. It’s a good social interaction as well and we meet up at a lot of the festivals during the year.

Leasing must take the pressure off when it comes time to retire a horse?

You always know when they’re at the end of their racing career, or if they pick up an bad enough injury that you’re not going to keep racing. You always have that safety net, being able to send it back to the breeder or owner. We’ve purchased a couple of geldings, like Dads Lad, Old Bill Barley, and Rule The Wind, and two of them now have been retired. It has been hard with both of them to try and find people to look after them and we’ve since found good options, but we always want to make sure they’re looked after when they retire. That’s critical.

Have you found that breeders are helpful when you’re looking for a horse to lease?

We have three or four main breeders that we go to when we want to lease a horse. We’ve built up a good rapport with Mount Eaton Stud, who have been very good to us. We’ve got a few winners out of them, like Poet Power and Walk On The Moone. We’ve dealt with Burgage Stud, who have been excellent -Victor Connolly is top class. He’s always given us a couple of fillies over the years; Jazzaway was our most successful one.

We have another couple of fillies from him at the moment, one of them being a half-sister to Jazzaway. We’ve dealt with Ken Parkhill and he’s provided us with a winner as well. We’ve also dealt with Ballintry Stud. We have a small base of breeders; they trust us and we trust them. Gavin and Maureen Lawlor have been a great help also. They pre-train our young horses before they go to Willie’s and advise us on whether they have the ability.

What are you most looking forward to this year?

2022 was our highlight in that we got six winners, including a Cheltenham winner in October with Dads Lad. From then on, we had two very barren years up to October this year. It took two years to go from our 17th to our 18th winner, with a lot of horses in between, who either flopped or got injured, or didn’t make the grade even to get into Mullins’.

We just had bad luck, but we have a lot to look forward to now. We have Straight Home, who we’re leasing from Paul and Jody Townend’s father Tim. She won in October at Clonmel and we’re hoping to go to Dublin Racing Festival for the Paddy Mullins Mares Handicap Hurdle, all going well. After that, then we have Old Bill Barley who has been a little bit unlucky.

He’s been placed four times, running into Win Some Lose Some the last time, who recently won at Leopardstown. We have a horse which is very aptly named, called Closutton, one we are leasing from Patrick [Mullins].

She’s from a very good family and they’ve all been winners up to now. She’ll run in the spring, and hopefully, with a name like that, she can get her head in front. We have three fillies who are all going to Mullins’ in the spring, and are all related to horses who we’ve been involved with in the past. We have a few shares available in them and we’re hopeful that they can be good.

It sounds like patience has been a big learning for your syndicate over the last few years.

It has. Success breeds expectation as well. We had a massive 2021 and 2022 where we had 11 winners at the Punchestown Festival, Galway, and then Cheltenham topped it all at the October meeting. The expectation levels went through the roof then, and you can be brought down to earth very, very quick. The lesson everyone learned from our experience over the last two years is that when we do get this success, we should enjoy it because sometimes it isn’t long until it turns the other way. In the past two years we tragically lost two very prominent members of the syndicate, Ciaran Kelly and Johnny Mooney. They were both involved from the very beginning and only in their 30s and 50s. It definitely helped to have the community of our syndicate and put our bad luck on the racecourse into perspective.

Has sharing these experiences brought you all closer as a group?

It has, yes. It’s a very close-knit group and we always meet each other at the races. For small money, it’s a great way of getting involved in racing. We have WhatsApp groups for each horse and we keep everyone updated. Patrick lets us know how he expects the horses to run and everyone is aware of the expectations.