IN addition to international and national reports each week, the Irish Horse World carried many, varied features throughout the year.

Having started in October 2018, Susan Finnerty continued her series West Of The Shannon until early April, when it ended with Ardcolum Duke’s breeder and ex-Arigna coal miner Joe Flynn, while other features penned by Finnerty included those on some of the top Irish-bred event horses.

Features by Judith Faherty included that on Bernard O’Sullivan, Ireland’s sole reining athlete at the 2018 World Equestrian Games, Cian O’Connor, Michael Blake and Rodrigo Pessoa, the Irish para dressage team who competed at Doha and, towards the end of the year, a fascinating interview with EquiRatings founders, Diarm Byrne and Sam Watson.

Many of Roisin Sheridan’s features were about owners, in all disciplines, at home and abroad, and, interestingly, the majority of these were women. She also wrote about Cavan Sales’ 25 years in business.

In addition to her regular coverage of the national eventing and sales scene, Sally Parkyn contributed a number of features over the past 12 months including those on the Traditional Irish Horse Association, Andrew and Niall Hughes of Ennisnag Stud and Jonty Evans.

There were also regular reports on the many clinics, symposiums, conferences, AGMs, roadshows, stallion and mares inspections, hound shows and glitzy awards functions held throughout 2019.

This writer is as guilty as others of sometimes just reading articles on-line that I am particularly interested in and not others.

Going through the print editions for this review serves to remind me that we should all read the paper each week from cover to cover.

There’s a lot in it!