LADS and lasses are different – fact. Forget it, lads, at your peril! Stable lads do get fond of their horses, even attached to them in some instances. But lasses can and do get emotionally involved with their four-footed charges. Remember Janice Coyle and Desert Orchid?

Headlines sell newspapers - fact. Nonetheless, the front page of Saturday’s Irish Field: ‘DREAM TEAM - Tony Mc-Coy joins forces with Denman for the first time’, Accompanied by a photo-montage superimposing McCoy’s face in place of Denman’s former jockey evoked an immediate reaction - hubris. It is a Greek term for mocking the gods.

Nothing entertains an erstwhile racing official as much as watching the authorities agonise over how to eliminate opportunism.

How unsurprising to read that the numbers of thoroughbred foals expected to be born in these islands in the coming months is dramatically down on previous years. Equally unsurprising that Weatherbys should be leading this lament.

Sea The Stars is the greatest horse to have been trained on the Curragh of Kildare! If this claim is true, it can only be based on that most invidious of yardsticks – comparison.