“IT was a good day, a really good day,” was the comment of Will Kearney, whose Frankfort Stud hosted the first Eventing Ireland fixture of 2026 in the bottom half of the country last Sunday when, it seems, the weather gods were on his side.

“The forecasters told us to expect rain in the early morning, but then pushed it out to 11 and then to noon and then it never came,” said Kearney who, as the cross-country course builder, ran this event under the banner of Equus Trials Management, the company he formed last year with the day’s cross-country course designer, Dereck Hamilton.

“The ground in the main held up well, but did cut up a bit in the jumping arena 2, where we moved the fences following the EI100 classes. It was a bit chilly and breezy, but everyone was just delighted to get out and compete.

“We had great sponsorship for Sunday’s event, especially from Overlander, which not only started the season down here but got the new Leinster League under way. There are seven other legs in the league, which will have a prize fund of €30,000. I think it will spice things up a bit and will be of particular interest to the good amateurs, who can’t really compete with the professionals but get nothing just competing with themselves.”

Neither of the two starters in the EI110 (Amateur) managed to complete on Sunday, but the majority of the 14 combinations who contested the Mooreshill Equine Veterinary EI100 (Amateur) class did so behind the Co Westmeath competitors Rachael O’Callaghan and Emily Murphy.

O’Callaghan finished on her winning dressage score (23.5 penalties) with a new ride for this season, the Anglo European Studbook-registered gelding Springwind Cevin, an 11-year-old bay by Cevin Z. Murphy had a fence down show jumping for a total of 28.5 with her unraced thoroughbred mare Lilly Bobtail, a six-year-old daughter of Harzand.

The locally-based Edwina O’Connor was a second over the time in the cross-country phase of the Brennan Agri Sales EI90 (Amateur) class but, thanks to her excellent dressage score (24.5), she ran out a very comfortable winner on board her well-known 12-year-old Irish Draught gelding Ashwood Reggie (Keamore Diamond Clover - Beary Lady).

On their only other start in EI company, O’Connor and the grey won the EI90 Open at last year’s national championships in Barnadown. They will split their time between eventing and the show ring, having qualified for the older ID performance class at Balmoral.