STRANGE to be trying to get your head around the Lincoln just eight days after the Cheltenham Gold Cup has been run. But that’s the nature of this game. Seasons roll into one another. It’s a continuum.

You can understand why Fire Brigade has been put in as Lincoln favourite. He was a progressive three-year-old last season, he won over a mile on soft ground at Haydock in August and, while he was beaten by market rival Addeybb in the Silver Cambridgeshire at Newmarket in September, he bounced back from that to win impressively at Leicester at the end of October.