CO Tipperary-based Conor Higgins was delighted to have been asked to judge the hunters at Balmoral this year along with Britain’s Michaela Bowling.

On Wednesday and Thursday, he met up with Philip Scott at whose Barnfield House Equestrian Centre outside Ballina, Co Mayo he learned to ride. Scott judged the breeding and youngstock sections with Britain’s Richard Ramsay and the Connemara flat and working hunter classes with Mairead Ryan.

Scott’s daughter Philippa was also one of the judges on the first two days of the show and the ringside experts didn’t envy her task in the Botanica International classic side-saddle class where the result was decided on marks awarded.

When these were added up, Scott’s winner was the six-year-old Millhollow Stroller gelding Shanbally Deja Vu who was ridden for his north Co Dublin owner Susan Fanning by her daughter, Tara Murphy.

Davis off duty

Noticeably absent from this year’s Balmoral Show was the Connolly’s Red Mills stand which, for many, signalled the turn down to the two horse rings.

However, the company’s head of equine marketing, Jane Davis, was present and she won Thursday’s British Horse Society Irish Draught ridden class on board Willie Corrigan’s four-year-old Gortfree Hero gelding, Gortfree Rocky.

Disappointingly for Davis, things did not go so well for her in the Clive Richardson Ltd performance Irish Draught section where the champion was the four- and five-year-old class winner, Charlotte Moore’s Tullys Cherry.

The latest winner from a line developed by Moore and her husband Nigel, the five-year-old Skip And Sea mare has been ridden all season by mother of two Sammy Weston whose partner, James Hammond, broke the chesnut.

Jenny Williams filled the reserve slot on the older class winner, her husband Ian’s seven-year-old Treanlaur Rocky gelding Gneeve King William, winner of his division of the RDS national ID performance championships at Lambertstown in August.

Peaky Blinder wins again

Describing Brian Murphy’s support crew as he walked around the showgrounds as a gang might be stretching things but does lead into him winning the Eventsec cob championship on Peaky Blinder.

Pat Loughlin’s Irish Draught gelding, who won his maxi class en route to claiming the title, is a nine-year-old by Rockrimmon Silver Diamond.

The well-known grey, who has multiple championships wins to his credit, was bred in Co Mayo by Sandra Cleary Noone and Peter Noone out of the Mountain Diamond mare, Larigan Coolderry Diamond.