Anthony McCann is a trainer in Monaghan who took over the training operation of the late great Oliver Brady. Anthony also heads up the All Four Counties Syndicate who had a winner at Naas last weekend with Familiar Dreams.

How did you get interested in horse racing?

My grandmother was more into show horses. An uncle of mine ran an undertaker business and he had a horse-drawn carriage as well. So I always grew up around horses and did a fair bit of riding. My uncle started doing a bit of breeding and there was one horse that I got quite attached to. He wanted to get rid of this particular horse and I decided to take it on. I took it down to Oliver Brady. I started going racing with Oliver a bit and I ended up being assistant to Oliver and it all just started from there.

Oliver Brady was a character in Irish racing, wasn’t he?

He was unbelievable. He went to school with my grandfather who passed away just before Christmas there. He used to always say that Oliver was the same in school, he was always a messer at school too. Racing needs those sorts of characters though and he was brilliant.

So how did the All Four Counties Syndicate come about?

There was a man down in Carlow called Ewan Murray who had a share in another horse called Rockstown Girl. I ended up buying a couple of fillies in Tatts, so I got this syndicate together. Another friend of mine bought into the syndicate as well. It’s going very well so far as are plenty of the syndicates that we have in the yard. I do have to thank Padraig Ruthy for that, he is running a lot of them for me. He always has mares up for lease and is very good to deal with.

I wouldn’t have time to deal with a huge volume of people so it’s great to have Padraig there to run his few syndicates and he is a very good friend of mine.

Familiar Dreams made it two from her last two efforts at Naas last weekend. Tell us about her.

Yeah, she did a fantastic piece of work before she ever ran so we were always quite excited about her. She ran in Naas first time out and ran a very good fourth. I knew she was a better filly than what she showed that day.

We went to a listed bumper at Limerick and finished second to The Yellow Clay who ran in this week’s Cheltenham Bumper. So we were over the moon with that run. She ran second three times then and we thought we were never going to get across the line with her.

We let her off for the summer and she ran poorly on her first run back. We kept faith in her and she got the job done next time out at Cork. Same again last Sunday at Naas. She was the best horse in the race. She loves galloping, she doesn’t like tactics or anything she just likes getting on with it.

She is very simple and very easy to train and I like keeping everything simple with her. When Aine asked her to go last Sunday, she nearly put her out the back of the saddle. She just is a fantastic little mare.

Does having a share in a horse add any additional pressure on you as the trainer?

Not really. I treat them all the same. I feed them all before I feed myself in the mornings. I check all the horses before anything else. I probably could have gotten the share that I have sold but I just felt Familiar Dreams was something special.

I wanted to keep something in her myself. The rest of the lads see that as a positive, the fact that I wanted to keep a share in her myself means that she must be alright you know.

I suppose sometimes for smaller yards, owners can be hard to come across and I am sure sometimes you have to hang onto a share or two yourself to get a horse going and racing but then there are advantages to being a smaller operation as well, aren’t there?

Absolutely. We all would love to have the green and gold in our yard or the Gigginstown colours. We would all love to have them but you know if those owners have the money to spend on those sorts of horses, of course, they’re going to put their horse with Willie or Gordon or whoever. I do think the smaller yards do work a lot better for some syndicates. Some horses need a bit of TLC and a bit of bonding and I think a smaller yard is better able to provide that. I have a very good team of people here and we can get all our horses out to the paddock when needs be and everything works well.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s tough going as well, you know, in terms of keeping up with repayments on lorries and tractors among countless other expenses. Honestly, at the start of last December, I was 50/50 on whether I was going to renew the licence this year.

As a smaller yard, you are never comfortable and that is the tough side of it. So when we do have a winner, you might hear one of the bigger lads saying, it was very easy won, but you’ll rarely hear a smaller lad say that because it’s far from easy to get to that stage.

Have you anything else at the moment in the yard that you are excited about?

Yeah, I’m excited about Rockstown Girl. I am involved in her as well and she is a very nice filly. She was placed in graded bumpers at Leopardstown last year. She also ran at Thurles behind Fun Fun Fun. She is coming back now in the next couple of weeks and I think that she is quite special. I think she could be very, very good. We are going to wait till after Punchestown with her for the novice handicap but we are very much looking forward to her going again. I also have a lovely New Approach horse there for Rita Shah that we bought from Godolphin. We are waiting for the better ground to come back.