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.

ANOTHER day for the diehards in Clonmel yesterday, another Arctic morning of hard frost and heavy snow; spring, yes, but this was a reminder of what this sport can be like in darkest winter, an occasion on which finery is only for the birds and the uninitiated – this was a day for all the heaviest underwear and outerwear you could muster.

POWERSTOWN Park punters, already reeling from a host of shock results in the classics, will this morning be greeted with the disappointing news that favourite Coolcastle Point (Trajectory-Wake Up Time), is a shock withdrawal from the Derby.