Sandown salutes the sport's champions but an absent friend is on so many minds

The story of this day was in some ways the story of this season.

For in Sandown's winner's enclosure stood an Irish horse with his Irish trainer and Irish jockey, while a few feet away a group of happy, friendly Irish racegoers sang and shouted their joy. It was the same at Cheltenham, the same at Aintree and so often the same elsewhere on Britain's biggest jumps afternoons. This time the faces were different, and the weather was warmer, but Ireland's hegemony remains.

Yet there was more to this day than that. Hewick took the biggest prize, but Paul Nicholls claimed the biggest pot, claiming five of the seven Jumps Finale races to make his 13th trainers' championship success even more comprehensive than it looked set to be when he drove away from Ditcheat.