Roque puzzler for Murphy
The eight-year-old was sent off a warm favourite for the Leopardstown Grade One on the back of a five-race winning streak which included the scalp of Sizing Europe at Down Royal.
But he could only finish an 11-length third to Synchronised, leaving Murphy scratching his head.
“I was very disappointed to be honest,” said Murphy.
“In hindsight he just didn’t gallop to the line like he has done in all his previous races.
“He jumped the last and then just seemed to go up and down on the spot.
“We’ll never know how much his first race of the season took out of him.
“We don’t run them when they are not right but he’d had a few little issues before Down Royal and it maybe took him longer to recover than we expected.
“All credit to the winner, he’s improving, but I’d like to think we were better than that and I hope we’ll be a different horse in the (Irish) Hennessy.
“All we can put it down to is the fact it was very hard run first time out, if he’d had a run he might have recovered quicker.
“He’s come out of it OK, he didn’t have a hard race compared to Down Royal and if we have a clean run up to the Hennessy I’ll be happy,” he told At The Races.
Meanwhile, Donald McCain expects Peddlers Cross to bounce back from his disappointing display at Kempton after a couple of issues came to light following that run.
Last season’s Champion Hurdle runner-up made a seamless transition to chasing game, winning twice at Bangor to take him to the top of the ante-post lists for the Arkle Trophy at the Cheltenham Festival in March.
But his comprehensive defeat at the hands of new Arkle favourite Sprinter Sacre in last month’s Wayward Lad Novices’ Chase perplexed his trainer, who admits he is pleased to have found something to explain the below-par performance.
“It was obvious to me that he wasn’t himself and we have found a couple of things that weren’t right,” said McCain. “There are a couple of issues. What we have found is more than enough to fully justify his run.
“We’re sorting the problem out and hopefully we should be OK and we can get him back on track.
“I think now we’ve found those problems there is no reason for us to change our original plan and all going well, we’re aiming towards the Arkle.
“I’ve never been so pleased to find a problem with a horse in my whole life.”
While McCain is now looking forward to Cheltenham again with his star performer, he has cast some doubt over whether the seven-year-old will run again in the meantime.
“The issues we’ve found are going to need a bit of management so we’ll try to sort that before we make plans for his next run,” the trainer added.
“It would be nice to get another run in before Cheltenham, but if we don’t I wouldn’t be too concerned.”
