Two poor meetings today

As is usually the case on a Monday, only very poor sport at two meetings on offer today. They go over jumps at Hereford and it often pays to follow Venetia Williams at her local meeting, but she has few runners today and her best chance would appear to be Carrickboy (Aidan Coleman) in the handicap chase at 17.45 CET. German-bred Alpha Way (Tom Symonds/ Felix de Giles) won 3 races before Christmas, two of them here, but faces much better opposition now, and we consider that Phidippides (Evan Williams/ Paul Moloney) and Made in Time (Rebecca Curtis/ Tony McCoy) are the main dangers. One cannot normally expect 12yo´s to improve, but Midnight Spirit (Martin Bosley/ Hadden Frost won so easily at Towcester 8 days ago that we think he can defy a 7 lbs penalty in the handicap hurdle at 17.15. We also expect Doeslessthanme (Paul Nicholls/ Nick Scholfield) to take the novice chase at 16.15, while the Shirocco filly Schism (Jonjo O´Neill/ Tony McCoy) half an hour later is another penali sed runner who can follow up.

The card at Lingfield is pretty dreadful and the main point of interest is the prolonged battle for the all-weather jockeys championship between Luke Morris and Jpoe Fanning. Morris has more rides today, but we feel that Fanning has the better winning opportunities, and we would not be surprised to see him land a treble on Quiet Appeal at 17.00, Haymarket an hour later, both for Mark Johnston, and Munsarim for Keith Dalgleish in between.