I was talking to a former leading rider before racing began at the new Fairyhouse point-to-point track. He was very enthusiastic that the races at that meeting were run with 17 fences making it the track with most jumps on this island. He was of the opinion that there should be a minimum of 15 fences for all races over three miles as jumping is the name of the game.

I thoroughly agreed with him but, in order to hold costs down, hunts do not wish to hire more than five separate fences. The practicalities of this means that in many cases 14 obstacles become a necessary reality. However, there are 12 tracks already used this year where 16 fences are jumped. As all possess just five fences, this implies that they are circuits of less than one mile.

In contrast 10 courses jumped only 13 fences and an additional three only 12. Not surprisingly these are the longer circuits with the least fences jumped at Ballindenisk, Boulta and Rathcannon. Of the tracks where 13 are jumped the oddity is Dromahane where, depending on the layout of the circuit, 14 or 15 fences can also feature.

Punchestown is the only one of them where six obstacles are used which emphasises the length of the circuit employed. All the other tracks which use six separate fences manage to get 14 or 15 jumps per race.

That there are enough fences around means that it should not really be imposing an insurmountable financial burden on tracks with the least fences to bring them up to a minimum of 14 for three miles though re-siting of existing obstacles is not always easy.

In Britain, it has long been enshrined in the rules for point-to-points that there must be 18 fences (minimum) for three miles and that two must be open ditches. And for many years there had to be a minimum of eight separate fences with no more than two jumped three times. With the advent of modern portable fences this latter ruling has been relaxed to allow shorter circuits to be used but still their jumping requirement is maintained.

I am not suggesting that Ireland goes the same way as 15 fences probably suits novice horses, on which our sport relies, to learn and thereby become marketable but we do not really want it be too easy.