With the Morgiana, John Durkan and Betfair Chase in the rear-view mirror, and the Fighting Fifth, Coral Gold Cup and Hatton’s Grace fast approaching, there is zero shortage of top action to be consumed by in weeks like we’re in right now.

Naturally, that can make it easy for results away from the glitz of Grade 1s to fly under the radar somewhat, but a mid-week double for Irish connections across the water was one thing that caught the eye this week. It was a feat that continued what has been a quietly excellent season for a talented, and arguably underrated, Irish rider.

We all know by now what Grand National-winning trainer Emmet Mullins is capable of. Hats off to him and his team for executing a smart piece of placing to send two runners to Kempton on Monday and pulling off a double.

His Dream On Baby was rated 126 in Ireland, so it was a fine result to gain an important blacktype win in a listed mares’ hurdle, while Chance Another One proved ahead of the handicapper again in a seven-runner handicap chase, worth £22,000.

Given he struck off 124 there, what a stone-wall certainty he was when winning off 91 on his stable debut at Ballinrobe in July!

At the heart of the brace, however, was jockey Donagh Meyler, who has been riding noticeably well for some time now, even if there maybe hasn’t been bundles of fanfare around his exploits. The numbers are now beginning to add up, though.

When the Kilmacow, Co Kilkenny native and Mullins returned to Tramore on Tuesday afternoon, they again visited the winner’s enclosure with Barra Rua in the mares’ maiden hurdle.

That victory meant that Meyler had brought his season’s total to 29 winners in Ireland - surpassing his best ever return for a campaign. That is no mean feat with a whole five months still to play in the season.

On top of that, 10 years on from his first winner aboard Anibale Fly in a Navan bumper, Meyler’s strike rate of 12.7% is certainly the highest he’s ever had in his career. In terms of numbers, though, arguably most impressive is his current standing in the jockeys’ championship.

On the rise

In the last half dozen seasons, Meyler has finished 35th, 18th, 31st, 18th, 20th and 15th in the end-of-season table. As we prepare to enter December, he’s currently perched in fourth, behind only Darragh O’Keeffe, Jack Kennedy and Paul Townend. Not bad company to be keeping, to say the least.

Emmet Mullins has been the 30-year-old’s main supplier of winners in recent seasons (nobody has ridden more winners over jumps for Mullins throughout his training career). There have been useful links with other yards nurtured too.

Noel Meade has teamed up with Meyler for seven winners already this season and Jessica Harrington for four, including a strong winning ride in a three-year-old hurdle at Punchestown last Saturday aboard Quinta Do Lago. A day earlier, Mark Fahey was full of praise for how Meyler lifted home Flicker Of Hope in a Fairyhouse beginners’ chase. All told, his 29 Irish winners this season have come for a total of 11 different yards.

The recent months that have yielded his career-best tally have also come against the backdrop of a difficult-to-take demotion in the Galway Hurdle this summer.

Meyler was visibly devastated after the stewards reversed the placings of Helvic Dream and Ndaawi in the €270,000 contest, and understandably so. It was to his immense credit that he picked himself up to deliver a peach of a ride on Ross O’Sullivan’s Strong Link to win the very next race after the Galway Hurdle.

As O’Sullivan summed up in the winning debrief: “Mentally, to lose a Galway Hurdle in the way he did, then come back out and give this horse the ride that he did - to have the confidence to slip up Paul Townend’s inner - that’s the sign of a really good sportsman.”

Bouncing back

While perhaps having a slightly understated nature, anyone listening to Meyler’s winning interviews in recent days at Kempton and Tramore will have come away with the sense that he’s motivated to build on the excellent spell he’s been having. When asked by Racing TV’s Nick Luck about whether he’d be open to exploring further suitable opportunities in Britain on days when racing is quiet in Ireland, Meyler quipped: “Very much so - I’d go to Baghdad for a winner!”

Speaking to Kevin O’Ryan at Tramore after Barra Rua’s win on Tuesday, he added: “After Galway, I said to myself that there were two ways of taking what happened. You could lie down and feel sorry for yourself, but I didn’t want this season to be just about the Galway Hurdle.

“I’ve topped my best season, it’s been unbelievable. My agent Garry [Cribbin] is doing an amazing job getting me loads of outside rides, and that makes my job easier.”

It’s not as though Meyler hasn’t been a fixture on the big stage previously. As a 20-year-old, he stormed to Galway Plate glory aboard Lord Scoundrel for Gigginstown and Gordon Elliott in 2016. That October, he partnered a certain Tiger Roll to victory in the Munster National for the same connections.

The following 2017/’18 season saw him capture the Midlands National on Phil’s Magic, a Paddy Power Chase on Anibale Fly and a maiden Cheltenham Festival victory in the Martin Pipe aboard Blow By Blow. The flow of big-race winners quietened somewhat in the seasons that followed, though a good partnership with Scarlet And Dove delivered multiple graded successes. However, his link-up with Emmet Mullins in recent years has been reaping real dividends for both parties.

A Grade 1 breakthrough for the pair with Feronily at the 2023 Punchestown Festival goes down as their highlight together, though there have also been notable twists along the way at other levels, including a Grade 2 win at Auteuil with McTigue, valuable handicaps with Merlin Giant, Slate Lane and Sea Music, and a Grade 2 novice hurdle win through Corbetts Cross. He has equally been able to deliver the goods at basement level racing too on well-backed and short-priced favourites.

Meyler also added another Galway Plate to his CV last year with Pinkerton, trained by Noel Meade, and this year rode Jesse Evans to win the Grade 3 Grimes Hurdle for the same stable.

We often hear how challenging the current National Hunt picture is for trainers, with the concentration of top horses in a small few hands, but that dynamic also has knock-on implications for jump jockeys. Making a decent living out of the game is not straightforward for many at a time when the vast majority of top races are won by a relatively small group of riders operating in the superpower stables.

To see Meyler making definite progress and having his best season, nearly eight and a half years on from riding out his claim, surely must serve as a good example to any rider that it can be done in an ultra-competitive weighing room. Especially given how he responded to the setback of Ballybrit, it has been really pleasing to follow the success of his past few months. Long may it last.