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Captain's Blog - 18th November 2010

England were totally outclassed by a rejuvenated French side last night and the knives are out for Capello. He has been dubbed by one newspaper as the prat with a hat, a rather pathetic attempt to copy the wally with a brolly headline that accompanied Steve Mclaren’s demise from the England job. I am a good deal more sympathetic to Capello’s plight than many as I believe it is not his fault that we are not a top class International side. It is my belief that the players are simply not good enough to compete against other top nations and it does not matter who is in charge the players will still not be good enough. Play any system you like, play them in different positions, give them different training, motivate them in a different way and I am afraid you would still get the same result. Putting another man in charge may change the focus and freshen the whole thing up but in truth it would make little difference to results. The problem is that technically we are not gifted enough and the root of that has to lie in our game at grass roots level. We must be prepared for more of the same over the next few years I am afraid.

Zenyatta has been retired. I like to describe her as the Queen of Synthetics who had enough class and guts to win on dirt as well. She won 19 of her 20 starts and was brilliantly campaigned by her shrewd trainer. Unfortunately she will be remembered by some for her defeat in the Breeders Cup Classic this year where she was beaten by the track, but for me she will always be a mare who loved to bounce off polytrack and had a devastating finishing kick. Her sire is Street Cry and his progeny are worth looking out for on Polytrack over here. One final point about her is that she engaged the racing and sporting public in America, she made the front pages of the Newspapers, people who had never watched a horse race before became excited by her and watched her performances. People held signs aloft carrying her name when she ran at the Breeders Cup. In an era when Racing needs all the help it can get she can be credited with doing something that only Marketing guru’s could dream of.

No luck with our big priced selection Dingaan yesterday, I guess on the back of a good run I got a little greedy if not a little over confident and tried to smash the thing out of the ballpark which clearly was a mistake. Back to basics for me today and hopefully back to winning ways.

Have a good day one and all.

Today's Selection

1:30 Hereford – Marino Prince (7/4 Stan James )