OWNER Patsy Byrnerecorded a double at Macroom yesterday, taking the All-Aged Stake with Toast Master, which he owns in partnership with bookmaker Berkie Browne, and the Reserve Derby Trial Stake with Breaking Tide.

LEGENDARY Kerry trainer Pa Fitzgerald recorded his second J.P. McManus Irish Cup win in-a-row, and his sixth in all, when last season’s Boylesport Derby runner-up, Sandy Sea, landed the €80,000 winning prize for well- known owner Patsy Byrne (Duagh and London) at a well attended and highly successful Patrickswell meeting yesterday.

THE opening session of the J P McManus Irish Cup at Limerick Racecourse yesterday had its usual quota of shocks with the biggest being the elimination of last year’s winner, Castlemartyr (unsighted) by Another Session.

Clonmel is coursing’s Mecca, an annual pilgrimage repeated over the three-day early spring National Coursing Meet at Powerstown Racecourse, but it’s a restricted affair.

For those more used to the muck, mud, rain and cold of deep winter that normally accompanies their favourite sport, it was positively balmy in Clonmel yesterday for the first day of the 83rd running of the annual National Coursing Meeting.