Newcastle to inspect

Officials at Newcastle will stage an 8am inspection on Thursday ahead of their schedule Saturday fixture.

Gosforth Park has hit by a substantial amount of rain over the last fortnight and clerk of the course James Armstrong is not too optimistic at this stage.

He said: "We've had probably four inches of rain in the last 14 days or so and we're coming out of a very cold winter, so it has not improved as much as it would have done if we'd had a nice, mild spring.

"We've got areas of false ground in all sorts of different places ad it simply isn't improving very quickly.

"The going stick is currently reading 2.6 and that is the lowest reading I think I've ever had.

"We're certainly not raceable at present and we'll see where we are on Thursday morning."