Leading owners should initiate cap on runners for the greater good

Last week's column highlighted that all in the garden of Irish jumping is not rosy and argued the astonishing 19-winner Cheltenham haul represented an anomaly to the situation at home. In the days that followed, trainer Tony Mullins emphasised the point in a powerful way.

"I've more or less been driven out of the game," said Mullins, who in the 1996-97 season saddled 19 winners from 153 runners in Ireland. In the 2006-07 campaign he recorded 11 winners from 128 runners. So far this season his tally stands at three winners from just 43 runners. He used to employ ten staff but now has only three, although that, Mullins admits, is probably too many.

The problem in Ireland is jump racing, traditionally the people's sport, has to an unprecedented extent come to be dominated by a small number of powerful players. This has reached an indisputably unhealthy level, never more vividly recalled than in a recent Graded novice chase when nine of the ten entries were owned by Michael O'Leary's Gigginstown House Stud. The other belonged to JP McManus.