Willie Mullins isn't happy - but the great man's interests and those of racing aren't necessarily one and the same

Thyestes Chase day possesses an almost spiritual veil of reverence, a staple of the jumps scene in Ireland for 71 years that imbues the dreary January blues with a touch of rustic cheer. 

It's a ritualistic, dyed-in-the-wool purists' racing afternoon deep in rural Kilkenny, so the congregation who flock to Gowran Park on the penultimate Thursday in January won't take too kindly to a sermon from this particular mount, especially if it might do anything to diminish the halo of their one true training deity. 

This is WP Mullins country. He returns to the county of his birth with five contenders in his quest for a tenth Thyestes, 25 years after the first, Micko's Dream.