SOME might have felt it was a little slice of karma came down with the rains in Galway on Wednesday as Clarcam galloped away up the Galway hill to a decisive Galway Plate success.

Back in second was the Willie Mullins-trained favourite Patricks Park, only confirmed as a runner an hour and a half before the race after his stable-companion Ballycasey was declared a non-runner due to changing ground conditions. All within the rules.

It was the same Clarcam who had been beaten four and a half lengths by Ballycasey over two and a half miles on Gowran Park heavy ground in the Red Mills Chase as a 10-year-old.

What was so irritating about how events played out was that everyone suspected that one of the Mullins runners would come out but, playing on the edge of the rules, Willie Mullins waited until the last moment to take out Ballycasey, after he had been declared on yielding ground that was again yielding by racetime.

The favourite for the race was not a runner all morning though we all expected him to run. Explain that to someone not familiar with racing.

It would have been amusing if the night before, someone from RTE had posed the question we all were asking when interviewing the trainer on his Plate entries – “and Willie, tell us, which one will you take out to let Patricks Park in?”

RIGHT Plate favourite Patricks Park

Mullins was of course doing right by his owners, It was then the ‘excuse’ of withdrawing due to the going that generated more comment.

You can’t prove that a horse goes off his feed if he is drawn 14 round Chester, but you could prove Ballycasey had not been hindered by heavy ground in the past.

The withdrawal was on the basis that “Ballycasey was suited by small fields of runners but competing on today’s ground conditions with a large number of runners where he would encounter kickback was not suitable to him at this stage of his career.”

If the first reserve was from another stable, you suspect he might have had to endure the "kickback"

Ballycasey is a bold jumper who, given the Plate is often won by prominent runners and has won over longer distances, could have raced up with the pace if kickback was a problem.

If the first reserve was from another stable, you suspect he might have had to endure the kickback, just as the reportedly good-ground preferring Sharjah did in the Galway Hurdle.

It is the rules that are wrong, there should be no addition to a big handicaps after the morning of the race. Carlingford Lough was another late one previously.

Preventing a trainer (or an owner with multiple runners) from taking out an outsider at such a late stage to be replaced with a better fancied stable companion would be difficult to enforce but might be a fairer scenario.

We had to opposite situation before the Grand National this year when winning owner Trevor Hemmings launched an attack at the BHA over the Grand National entries and weights, when two horses came out of the race after the Friday deadline for reserves, denying one of his runners a run, but this is surely a better system than an hour before the race.

It was a great week to again showcase Mullins’ training expertise in getting back horses that had serious injuries and confidence issues, in Riven Light and Sharjah, but this, squeezing the letter out of the law, and the dead-pan, almost indignation, when questioned on it, drew little credit to him.

“I don’t understand where racing is going that we can’t do that. Patricks Park is lucky to get in now that we’ve had a change in ground the horse was withdrawn.”

Of course it was all within the rules but just tell it as it is.

There was colossal feel-good factor from the two All-Ireland Hurling Semi-Finals last weekend that spread out far beyond the boundaries of sport.

You can label this episode much ado about nothing, but racing badly needs a feel-good factor, and coupled with the “will he, won’t he non-appearance of Cracksman in the King George on Saturday, added to this palaver, did very little in that respect.