SOME times it’s no harm to be stuck in the past. It was a strange week, comparing the allure of a six-race, poor quality beach meeting with no gimmicks, basic food outlets, to a star-studded day of the best flat horses around but where there was a feeling that just something was missing there. This should be more exciting?

Laytown had represented one of the landmark, ‘phew, we can breathe again’ outings by the end of the Covid lockdown when it staged the meeting in November 2021. Hearing Whiskey in the Jar blaring out from the loudspeakers made us feel life was coming right again.