After race at Downpatrick Fri, 22nd Sep, 2017 (1st)  the whole focus of what I’ve been doing in recent times has been to give myself dual-purpose (flat & jumps) capacity. I used to train national hunt horses and had plenty success at it and enjoyed it but we evolved more into flat. Now I’m trying to move towards dual-purpose and it allows the yard to continue all year around. There’s a great interest in national hunt up here which you have to be able to cater for. In recent times, we refurbished my original gallop and we built a new seven furlong gallop which gives us three different gallops to use. It allows us every option for every type of horse and at my recent Open Day, there seemed to be positive feedback and we’ll see what comes out of it. This (Scotch Beg) is my only jumper at the moment but we’ll have some three year olds who will convert to hurdlers. A Oliver

After race at Downpatrick Sun, 18th Jun, 2017 (1st)  That's the first time I've met Helen (Mooney) but she gave her a super ride. She was spot on where she was supposed to be. She ran well at Clonmel and didn't really find. Apparently there was a lot of rain which I would say maybe deadened her pace. She likes the good ground and travelled sweet as a nut (today). It was a good run-in, I thought anything could happen on the run-in. Downpatrick has been very lucky for me. I haven't had that many National Hunt horses over the last year or two. We have won bumpers here. The last bumper horse I had won here about three years ago. She has had a tough campaign. We were going to leave her off for the autumn but you never know, the plans could change. She might have hit a sweet spot. She is a very honest mare owned by people (Bill MacKenzie and family) who have been great supporters of mine this year or so with this mare. It means an awful lot to them so I'm delighted. A Oliver