“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.