De Bromhead leads the invasion again as Irish head to Cheltenham en masse

A morning in the company of Nicky Henderson is never time wasted and the manner in which he summed up Ireland's complete domination of the Cheltenham Festival last March still lingers in the mind.

It was the week after horses trained in Ireland had won 23 of the festival's 28 races that he looked me in the eyes at his Seven Barrows base and delivered the telling sentence: "We were literally outnumbered before we started. They're bringing good horses but their strength is in their depth. They had so many."

Like a surgeon manipulating a scalpel, Henderson had cut straight to the pressure point. The festival was an unequal battle – the combined force of the Irish swamping the home team's defences, sending jump racing's biggest prizes streaming back to Ireland.