Commercial outfits hoping for rain to avoid repeat of match points

Match races are unusual throughout the point-to-point season, which made last Sunday’s two matches at Rathcannon rare.

In the five-year-old geldings’ maiden just two of the 39 entries stood their ground, while the defection of Isaac Wonder before the open also reduced that race to two runners.

Such small fields in the younger-age maidens in particular will not have been a welcome sight for those commercially focused owners and trainers, with the four-year-old maiden at Castletown-Geoghegan on the same afternoon being contested by just three horses from an entry of 33.