Brendan Sheridan receives a presentation from Evie Brownlow to mark his final day in charge© Photo Healy Racing
Downpatrick racecourse marked Brendan Sheridan's last day as Clerk Of The Course on Sunday with a presentation.
The former jockey is retiring from his duties at Downpatrick and Down Royal but will still be continuing with his work at southern tracks.
He said: "I've been here nine years now, I took over from Iain Hamilton. Great people to work with - the foreman Fintan Ward and his team of people on the track do a marvellous job. Richard Lyttle (racecourse manager), Ruth Black, everyone involved here inside in the enclosure do a great job.
"It was a pleasure working here, they are great people to work with. I'm only retiring from here and Down Royal but I still have a lot of tracks down south to deal with.
"It has been great for me and I will still come and probably stand in for people on holidays and different things and that but I loved working here.
"They have made vast improvements here on the track and also in the enclosure but if you don't have the track you won't have horses - the improvements on the track have been very, very good here over the past years.
"There is a five-year plan coming into motion now and hopefully everything will work out and there will be a lot more improvements to the track.
"Every race meeting they want to improve on something - they take some little thing from every day and try and improve on it and usually they do improve on it. It is get up and go all the time. It is a track that is going forward and going places very rapidly.
"Nine times out of 10, if not 10 out of 10, when you come here you get very nice ground. It doesn't always happen if the weather goes against you and that's the game we are in. There's always a great covering of grass - the foreman has been here six or seven years and he is a great man on ground.
"All you've got to do is look at the people who send horses here - Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott, Noel Meade. There's no-one afraid to come here with a nice horse. If you look back over the years, horses that have won here have gone on to do great things."
