One evening a couple of years back, Christy Dixon was listening to Clare FM from his home in Dublin when Joan Hanrahan played a slow-air track, ‘An Fhuinseogigín Rua’, on her show The West Wind. Dixon had learned the song going to school in Mullagh in west Clare but the memory was even more poignant because it reminded him of his time playing music with the famed Willie Clancy.

Mimis Ace, trained by John Kiely for Maura Kiely, Blackrock, earned his ticket to the Boylesports Irish Derby by taking Saturday night’s final of the trial stake at Curraheen Park in great style.