Stars faces a far more searching test

YOU would have to say that the line-up for Sunday’s Irish Derby at the Curragh is entirely predictable.

The biggest certainty was that there would be no English runner, on the basis they could not mount any sort of challenge at Epsom. There was simply no good reason to travel second-raters across the Irish Sea.

The other entirely predictable scenario was that Aidan O’Brien would be multi-handed and the fact he left in ten of the 17 possibilities was no great surprise.