AT WELL over six foot, Andrew McNamara cuts a disproportionate figure for a National Hunt jockey. You get used to seeing the more, let’s say, compact jockeys coming and going from the weighroom, but the sight of McNamara emerging into the parade ring alongside his colleagues – literally head and shoulders above them – is a strange one.

DESCRIBING Philip Carberry as having been around the block once or twice is hardly wide of the mark, considering he’s now in his ninth season as a professional jockey.

Seemingly from nowhere, Martin Brassil has emerged as one of this country’s rising training talents over the past two years. But, as Declan Colley discovered, the quietly spoken Curragh handler prefers to let his charges do the talking for him.