AS the spring season begins to steadily pick up a gear and attention is soon set to turn to the latest crop of four-year-old’s ahead of their competitive debuts early next month, it is interesting to take a look back at how the autumn season stacks up against its predecessors to gauge a snapshot of the health of the sport at present.

It appears to tell two contrasting stories - one of continued growth within the four-year-old division, however, elsewhere the picture is not as positive.

The quality of horses competing within the four-year-old maiden division throughout the autumn was nothing short of exceptional, as was highlighted by the emphatic success in last Saturday’s Grade 1 Tolworth Hurdle by Finian’s Oscar, a horse who had won his four-year-old maiden at Portrush just over two months earlier.

That quality has undoubtedly been a driving factor in the phenomenal growth in the total value generated by point-to-point horses during the autumn sales, as potential owners and trainers compete to secure the pick of the Irish form.

Just shy of £3.5 million was spent publicly during the autumn on Irish point-to-pointers, with the figure likely to be significantly higher when the total sum of private sales is also taken into consideration.

Focussing solely on that sum of £3,483,000, which was generated between October and December, it represents a sizeable increase of over £1.1 million on the total generated from the 2015 autumn season, when £2,341,800 was spent publicly on Irish point-to-pointers.

In fact the 2016 figure surpasses the total public spend for each of the past five seasons. To illustrate the significance of the 2016 sum, it is almost £2 million greater than the amount spent on Irish point-to-pointers just four years ago during the 2012 autumn.

Given the strength within the four-year-old division in recent seasons, is not surprising that the autumn hunter certificate figures for that age group are on the rise, as the profits generated in recent seasons continue to be reinvested, which is a positive for the National Hunt breeding sector here.

DROP IN HUNTER CERTS

Despite that increase within the youngest age category, disappointingly, there was a 6% drop year-on-year in the overall number of hunter certificates which were issued over the course of the autumn in comparison with 2015.

To gauge a picture of how the current autumn hunter certificates stack up, the most simplistic option is to examine the hunter certificate numbers at the end of the autumn season and compare them with a year previously, which very clear illustrates that conflicted story. With the exception of the four and eight-year-old age groups, there was a decline in the numbers of all other age categories.

At the end of the current autumn campaign, 515 four-year-old’s held hunter certs in comparison with 481 12 months previous, a rise of 7%. Strikingly, despite the rise in the number of eight-year-old’s running between the flags during the autumn, there was a notable drop of 16% within the numbers of six to eight-year-old’s holding a hunter certificate in comparison with the same period 12 months earlier.

This has been evident in the fact that the once weekly story of multiple divides within the older maiden category just a couple of years ago, has been replaced by the one solitary divide for a six-year-old and upwards maiden during the autumn at Borris House last month.

While the foal crop is once again on the rise, which can only be seen as a positive in terms of the increasing numbers of horses that we can expect to see competing between the flags in the coming seasons, it is this older maiden age group, which by the nature of the age profile of the horses running within it, that will be last to feel that benefit and therefore most in need of attention.

MONEY INCREASE

This all goes to emphasise further the importance of the recently announced prize money increase which is being targeted specifically at races for these older horses and has to be seen as the first step to restoring the levels of prize money funding point-to-point previously received.

The forecast spend of €752,926 on prize money for point-to-points in 2017 is still close to €150,000 below the 2008 sum of €900,000.

Unsurprisingly, given the overall drop in the number of hunter certs, entry numbers have also continued to slide throughout the autumn. A total of 2,172 entries were made during the autumn campaign, a drop of 156 (7%) on the 2,333 received for the 2015 autumn term.

The average entry across the 25 fixtures also fell in comparison with 2015, when, incidentally, the same number of meetings took place, with the average entry dropping from 93 to 87 per fixture. Horse Racing Ireland’s funding increase, which was also targeted to support the hunts, is a timely support for them to meet this shortfall.

While these figures do tell the story of declines across many of the key indicators for the health of participation within the sport, it is worth noting that when these figures are taken in the context of the overall fall in hunter cert numbers across the past number of season ending tallies, it does represent a very welcome levelling out of the decline, as, in particular, the sport has endured three notable year-on-year declines of 12%, 15% and 17% respectively for each of the past three seasons.

The effect this has had on the overall revenue hunts generate from running a point-to-point and ways in which this gap can be filled will likely form much of the discussion at the point-to-point seminar, which takes place this Wednesday, January 18th, at the Hotel Minella in Clonmel, commencing at 7.15pm.

Topics covered on the evening will include finances, raceday resources, promotion, advertising, sponsorship and new ideas. The panel of speakers drawn from across the industry in Ireland and Britain will offer insights on their experiences of staging and developing their events, the challenges they have been faced with, and how they have been overcome.

The seminar will also feature contributions from the audience, whose input will be critical in pushing the conversation of the evening to ensure a broad range of views and thoughts are aired.