IT was good to see that half of the races at the Route Hunt point-to-point outside Portrush last Saturday were won by northern-trained horses but, with a bit of luck, there could well have been six winners for local handlers.

The successful trio were Karen McNeilly’s charge Shumaker (Mark O’Hare) in the five-year-old geldings’ maiden, One Cool Clarkson trained by Neil McKnight
for his wife Christene (breeder of the Clerkenwell gelding) in the winners of three and Billie-Jo Irwin’s Ballyhowne (Ben Crawford) who claimed the older geldings’ maiden for the Stuart Crawford yard.