BRIAN O’Connell succumbed to the inevitable during the week. In a game in which two ambulances follow you as you work, when the medics tell you that it is time to draw stumps, your only option is to draw stumps.

The advice was that, despite several operations on his shoulder, it would just be too much of a risk to continue race riding.

O’Connell will always be associated with Dunguib, the horse he rode in all of his 16 races and whom he rode to victory nine times, including in the Champion Bumper, the Royal Bond Hurdle and the Deloitte Hurdle.

It was Dunguib who carried the rider from the amateur ranks into the professional ranks, and O’Connell was a top professional. He rode Last Instalment six times, and he won on him four times, including in the Grade 1 Fort Leney Chase and in the Irish Gold Cup. And he won the John Durkan Chase on Don Cossack on the only occasion on which he rode Gordon Elliott’s horse in a race.

The good news is that O’Connell is fit and well and looking forward to the next chapter of his career, which will inevitably be within racing.