IT wasn’t quite as clear-cut or as easy as odds of 2/7 might have suggested but Gordon Elliott’s Cheltenham bumper third Queens Brook got her season off to a winning start in the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Maiden Hurdle.

This Noel and Valerie Moran-owned daughter of Shirocco looked a potentially top-drawer novice hurdler on the form of her two starts last season but wasn’t at that level for this comeback win under Davy Russell.