Come On Ireland!

There's an ad circulating at the moment about how Ireland's rugby side is the 'Team of Us.' It's about the country and the team supposedly all being 'in' position together for Ireland. At the end Rory Best, the captain, says 'that's everyone then' and gives the nod to kick off.

It's a slick piece of aspirational nonsense hardly designed to be taken literally. For one thing quite a lot of people aren't 'in' this on-trend rugby love-fest. Some actively opt 'out.' But allowing for the hollow corporate hard-sell, it's a fact that Ireland's rugby team actually does represent the country.

I bring this up because Irish racing's annual 'Team of Us' moment is coming up at Cheltenham. That means there's going to be a lot of material portraying the week through a prism of 'us' and 'them' in the Anglo-Irish context of the Prestbury Cup.

You can claim it's just harmless. You can justifiably argue the cross-channel rivalry is a significant ingredient in Cheltenham's appeal. Totting up the winners trained either here or in Britain is certainly a handy narrative device.

Except this nationalist element too often winds up being portrayed with far too straight a face, often by those spinning their own agenda of portraying some sort of Team Ireland image that really is nonsense.

Ireland's owners, trainers and jockeys represent themselves. They might help showcase the game here but the whole flag-waving bit needs to be toned down. This team shtick will mean something on that cold day in hell when Cheltenham's stands are filled with punters shouting 'Come On Ireland!'

However even the colder reality that backing an English winner is preferable to betting on an Irish loser does still leave some room for sentiment. It just doesn't need to come wrapped up in so many hokey layers of spin. That's why this year's festival produces an anniversary worth noting.

In 1989 there might even have been a few justifiably desperate 'Come On Ireland' shouts. An Irish blank represented the nadir of the visitors fortunes at Cheltenham. If the festival is unrecognisable in scale now so is the rate of Irish trained success, culminating in 2017's record haul of 19.

A lot of elements can be mentioned in relation to such a transformation. But essentially it is rooted in the economics of some immensely wealthy owners investing huge sums of money in keeping the best young prospects to be trained here.

That doesn't lend itself to glossy 'Team of Us' portrayals but racing's perennial reality is that any jockey or trainer only works with the material they're given. It's enough of a good thing that a lot of the best material stays here. It doesn't need the green flag wrapped around it by 'us.'

Part of the dividend from the huge financial investment made by Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary was a good old fashioned feel-good factor result delivered by the Grand National hero Tiger Roll at Navan on Sunday.

It wasn't the strongest Boyne Hurdle ever run, never mind the strongest Grade Two. The widespread assumption was that Tiger Roll was out for pipe-opener ahead of Cheltenham's Cross-Country on-route to Liverpool.

And yet the little horse with the big heart travelled like a dream throughout and ultimately won in style at 25-1.

It's hard to believe Tiger Roll is still only nine. It feels like he's been around forever since winning the Triumph Hurdle in 2015. Given his diminutive stature that would have been widely perceived as being the limits of his potential.

Yet he matured into a singular triple-Cheltenham festival winner before securing a place in jumps racing's most famous roll of honour in Liverpool last year.

Now he's favourite to become the first since Red Rum to win the National back-to-back. Prior to Sunday Gordon Elliott had indicated he felt a 9lb rise in the weights might make a successful Aintree defence too much to ask for.

However the dangers of writing off Tiger Roll are written all over a few years worth of formbooks. The way he travelled through Sunday's race indicates a horse in rare good order. He's going to be a good thing for many in Cheltenham, and not just an Irish good thing at that.

But it's the prospect of another diminutive flat bred horse - "a little rat of thing" as O'Leary once described him - with a chance to defy the odds in the world's most famous steeplechase at Aintree that's already enthralling.

Tiger Roll was part of a 428-1 four-timer for Gordon Elliott on Sunday. With three weeks to Cheltenham it is encouraging for those who believe he is a worthy favourite to be the festival's leading trainer for a third year running.

The weekend's most notable accumulator however was probably the 45,863-1 eight-timer enjoyed by Paul Nicholls on Saturday. It was more evidence of a rejuvenation in the fortunes of the former ten-time British champion.

Nicholls argues he didn't exactly go away anywhere in the last five years. He has always been Nick Henderson's closest competition in Britain. But in Cheltenham terms both have been playing catch up against Elliott and Willie Mullins.

Given the way the season has gone, and in particular how the fortunes of the top novices on either side of the Irish Sea have unfolded, next month could see Henderson and Nicholls catching up with a vengeance.

For Nicholls in particular this season's results must feel sweet. Playing second fiddle must have been galling for the man who trained a collection of greats in the modern game, and carved out notably sustained and lengthy careers for most of them.

Clan Des Obeaux's King George victory has to have been particularly satisfying. His weekend win at Ascot meant little in form terms. But it looked to confirm how a master of his profession has another true top-notcher on his hands. You don't have to be confined to one side of the Irish Sea to appreciate that.

Finally, good sense won out last week with the British Horseracing Authority's fudge allowing racing to resume after the sport was shut down for six days due to equine flu. It was a necessary fudge but a fudge nonetheless.

The logic of what occurred to racing when six positive test results were discovered in Donald McCain's yard meant the discovery of four more at Simon Crisford's should have kept the sport shut down. That was untenable which meant the original logic was faulty. But all's well that ends well.