Ballindenisk action© Photo Healy Racing
The famed Minella prefix continues to glow with Cocooner and Crooner keeping the Clonmel moniker very much up in lights in recent times.
Minella Cocooner of course famously landed the Bet365 Gold Cup at Sandown just over a week ago for the Bobbetts and Mullins' and Punchestown on Saturday saw another staying chase go in a familiar direction.
The Pat Taaffe on the final day of the festival featured a return to form for Minella Crooner. He put two pulled up efforts behind him to take the valuable prize for owners KTDA Racing, Nick Courtney and Cillian Moran. Sam Ewing did the steering for the Gordon Elliott yard.
It would come as no surprise to anyone, if Clonmel hotelier John Nallen had saved the name Minella Premier for something a bit special. It certainly looked that way yesterday at the Muskerry Foxhounds point-to-point in Ballindenisk as Minella Premier made a stylish winning debut in a four-year-old geldings' maiden.
A son of Shantou, Minella Premier destroyed twelve opponents in the hands of Johnny Barry, and is now likely to be sold.
The youngster, owned by Nallen's wife Bernardine Rochford in partnership with his sister Elizabeth Nallen-Bowen, accounted for Malinificient by an unchallenged twelve lengths, in the style of a horse that will be making plenty of headlines going forward.
Just for good measure, later on the same card Minella Staycation gave James Coffey (21), who hails from Gurtacrue outside Midleton, a second career winner. The Beat Hollow gelding did the needful for owner/trainer Terence O'Brien in the six-year-old and upwards geldings' maiden.
