NAAS last Sunday was an anomaly in the current Irish jumps season as it was run on testing ground; prior to that meeting, there had only been 15 races run during the 2024/’25 campaign with heavy in the going description – the meetings at Tramore on November 26th and New Year’s Day, along with a handful of races at Listowel.

I was against both feature race winners, The Yellow Clay and Ile Atlantique, though at least in the case of The Yellow Clay in the Lawlor’s of Naas it was ground-related, the idea being that he would prefer a sounder surface, and this was reinforced by the comments from connections afterwards.