ENNISNAG Stud is based in Co Kilkenny and is a family-based stud farm passed down from generation to generation. I previously worked at Coolmore and managed Ballylinch Stud for 18 years before I switched from thoroughbreds to sport horses.

Niall works at Ennisnag too, I would like to be more in the background if I could and he’s very good at social media and that side of the business.

Andy, our dad, is a vet and still works in the factory in the mornings at 88 years of age. They all love Dad there. He reads the newspaper from cover to cover before he goes in and he talks about politics, old Ireland, and this week it will be the Horse Show. He’s well read and we’ve always valued his and my late mother’s advice.

1.Congratulations, you’ve had an outstanding week at Dublin; ESI Rocky, top Irish horse at the Europeans with Seamus Hughes Kennedy, goes on to jump a double clear in the Aga Khan, you bred BP Othello and own Unicum-H, the five and six-year-old champions. Sum it all up.

I think what really brings it together is my father. When we won the class, Dad says: ‘I’m going to ring Susan [Andrew and Niall’s sister]. She’s in America and Niall says: ‘You can’t ring Susan yet, it’s four o’clock in the morning there!’ But he went ahead and rang Susan.

To see the happiness and excitement in his face and how much it meant to him, that’s what the win meant most to me.

Dad probably first rode at Dublin 80 years ago when he was a kid. Dad rode all the horses for Seamus [Hughes] until Marion came along and he was a super rider. But he was also a vet and I remember Dad going to shows… he jumped the first round and he’d go off and do a heifer calving, then he’d come back and ride the second round!

James Kernan congratulated us this morning and he said he can remember a class being divided between Dad, James’s father [Frank] and Tommy Brennan. That’s history.

2. ESI Rocky - did you always think he could be this good?

I thought he was a good horse but it’s very difficult to know for sure until they get up to a level. They have to go to the right home, which is huge in my opinion. They have to stay sound, they have to progress mentally and physically, like to do their job and not get a bad experience.

I think a lot of horses with ability get to a certain stage and then it depends how they react to certain situations in their life to see how far they can go. It depends what road you take and how you manage that road.

He’s a big, big horse and he’s also highly-strung. Therefore, soundness and mind are two things that could have been an issue but he always showed a lot of potential, from the first time we jumped him.

3. Stakkato Gold, ESI Rocky’s sire, why did you pick him?

I actually sent four mares out because he wasn’t fertile and the semen didn’t travel well, so it was hugely expensive. One didn’t go in foal but the other three did and Esi Ali and Rocky were two of the foals.

4. Good boxing theme names! ESI Ali is now at Evergate Stables in America, what are the plans for Rocky?

I honestly don’t know. I presume the long road is Olympics, but then it could be very difficult to refuse sometimes when someone comes in with an offer, so I don’t know. We’ll live in the present.

5. “Fools breed foals for wise men to buy.” Agree/disagree?

I do both, I’ve bought and I’ve bred so and I’ve been successful with both approaches. I’ve bought Unicum-H and I’ve bought a number of horses as well to breed from, so I can see both ends of it. It’s expensive to buy good horses but it’s also expensive to breed them, so I can agree and disagree with that statement.

6. How many mares do you have?

I always wanted 20. That was my number the whole time and I have 30 at the moment, so I’m actually going to sell a few this year and just make it manageable. It’s a lot of work and too expensive, because for every two or three I breed - and I like to breed 18 to 20 foals a year - that make it to headlines, there’s 17 others that are at eating away at home!

I have Shane Dalton, who won on Unicum-H and has done a phenomenal job. He rode ESI Rocky as a youngster too. And then Billy Sinnott, another good kid for the future, comes in and rides a couple of horses just to take the pressure off Shane.

Even with their help, I can’t have that many stock, so I jump all the three-year-olds, keep two or three and sell the rest.

7. Do breeders get enough reward?

I don’t think so. And part of the problem is the time it takes to know how good a horse is. For example, Rocky’s mum is 23, Toulouse’s mum is 22 and that’s the time it takes to know what you have. It is very difficult. I feel for breeders, I really do. But if there’s no breeders, no horses. So, I think breeders should be rewarded better.

8. ICSI vs natural breeding - your views?

I think it’s important to have clarity and perspective. I have a mare that’s breeding naturally, she has 12 foals in her career and five of them jumped 1.45m plus.

To me, that’s an exceptional mare. I went into a yard in Europe where there was a seven-year-old mare, the owner said ‘That mare is sold to America, she’s a very good mare and she had 36 embryos’.

Now, how can you compare that mare with her 36 embryos at seven, because, say, if she lived until she was 14, that’s potentially 72 foals. How can that be compared to my mare who has had 12 foals?

9. Who’s the most tech-savvy?

Andrew: Niall! I have to ask my girls how to share something on Instagram!

We have a horse for Harrie Smolders at the moment. Like, I would never have gone up to Harry whereas Niall messaged him when they bought a horse that we bred and then we got to meet him at a show.

Niall: Dad’s life revolves around Andrew’s horses. He has his iPad and scrolls Facebook to see how the horses did. We have a WhatsApp group and the minute Ali, Rocky or Romeo have jumped, that clip goes up on the group and he rings five minutes later when he’s seen it.

10. You’re a great supporter of the HSI/Teagasc young breeders programme?

Well, one of the reasons was I was in school every day growing up, listening to Ita [Brennan, the brothers’ aunt] who bred Going Global, Seamus or Max Hauri. It was my uncle Seamus who, in my opinion, was the best judge of a horse there ever was and my father.

In the future, the biggest problem we’re going to have is staffing and that’s the reason I do it: to try and give them a little bit of what I got for nothing: being educated without even knowing it.