TEN thirty on Tuesday and, while a trip to Melbourne for the big race might have sounded an attractive option, the place to be was the Scarteen Kennels and the spiritual home of hunting in these islands. Horses were fresh and jockeys apprehensive, but more importantly, the hounds looked a picture.

It was a scene that has been replicated almost without a break on this very day since the flight of the wild geese around 1640. Then was an era when many of the large land-owning families, seeing no future in Ireland, decamped to France where some became known as the ‘wine-geese’, after entering the wine trade and giving us such families as the Hennessys of Cognac (brandy) fame, who originated from Duhallow country near Mallow.