Easy to pick holes in this season's Irish form and Brits may have missed a trick

The upcoming Dublin Racing Festival, featuring eight Grade 1 races over the course of two days at Leopardstown, is a major event. Yet the realities of the primary narrative in jump racing mean its public profile is dominated by a quest for Cheltenham clues.

Perhaps there is something inherently wrong about that, bearing in mind a prize-fund of €1.35 million for the Grade 1 races alone, but it is something Leopardstown and its generous sponsors have to live with for the foreseeable future.

A stated ambition to attract a meaningful number of British-trained runners has fallen flat on its face for the third year in a row. To be fair, it always looked a tall order based on the patterns followed by the leading British trainers over the past decade or so.