'He's the top one of ours' - David Casey on the Irish Grand National The British Trainers’ Championship will once again go down to the wire as Willie Mullins aims to snatch glory from the grips of Dan Skelton. David Casey, who is assistant to Willie Mullins, and one of the many brains behind the hugely successful Closutton operation, spoke to BoyleSports recently and revealed their best chance in Monday’s Irish Grand National. Get a host of free bets with the BoyleSports sign up offer: Find BoyleSports horse racing odds for the Irish Grand National. We would love to win the Irish Grand National again but we are not as well stocked as we have been in recent years We have won it a couple of times. I Am Maximus won it for us a couple of years ago. That was brilliant. We would love to win it again. The way the season has gone, a few of our biggest bullets will have been fired at Ayr and Aintree. So numerically we might not be as well stocked as we have been in other years. But we have a few nice horses going in there. The maximum we will have at the moment is maybe two or three. High Class Hero will definitely run, as will Sa Majeste. Quai de Bourbon could also despite falling at Aintree, but it may be better to wait another week for Sandown. High Class Hero and Sa Majeste will be the standouts. Grangeclare West could go to the Bet365 in Sandown or he could go to the Punchestown Gold Cup. I imagine one of those two. He came out of Aintree great. He had a couple of lazy days when he didn’t do a lot. He ran a stormer at Liverpool. High Class Hero is our best chance in the Irish Grand National I have to go with High Class Hero. The trip will not be an issue. We have had really dry weather but that won’t be an issue for him either. He is only a novice, but he has plenty of experience from point to pointing as well. He is a pretty good jumper. A lot of the top weights will come out, so he will carry a lot of weight. That could be a negative, but he’ll be the top one of ours. We are always full with horses at the yard, but we always accept more We don’t really have any criteria. If somebody wants to have a horse with us, and we would like to take it, we will. That is basically it. We always do our best with every horse and every ability. It doesn’t have to be a set standard. We’ll take our time and assess it and see how we go. We are always full, but we’ll always accept horses! We are looking very strong for the season finale at Sandown - Ireland will always be our priority though We are pretty strong at Sandown, that’s all I can say. It will come down to Sandown without a doubt. Looking at the card, I think we can be very competitive. You look after at home first and Ireland will always be our priority. We’ll assess it again after Cheltenham. And who knows what horses we’ll have next year. And will they be of the same quality? You just don’t know. It can be cyclical. I’d compare Willie Mullins to Sir Alex Ferguson as they have both won it all - but as a Liverpool fan I’d rather compare him to Bob Paisley I would probably agree as he has won it all. But being a Liverpool fan, it wouldn’t be wrong to compare him to Bob Paisley too! To keep building championship teams is very hard, to be able to keep identifying young talent, bringing them through. Sir Alex was brilliant at that, and Willie is too. With Willie most of it is instinctive. It’s his eye. He does it all on what he sees. Willie can get angry sometimes - but it doesn’t last very long You’d be surprised. He can get angry, but it doesn’t last too long. I am usually the one who gets sent out to relay his disapproval. I’m the messenger though. When someone sees me coming their way, they know there’s potential trouble! It doesn’t last long and hopefully they learnt the lesson. But if they do it again, then they know there’s trouble. Rory McIlroy is an all-time Irish sporting great after his Masters success at Augusta He is an all-time Irish great. When you look back at the knocks he has had, and people kept questioning him and in the last couple of years putting himself forward as the face of the PGA Tour and a kicking block against LIV. That looked like it had a huge negative effect on his golf. To lose the US Open like he did last year, you were hoping that wasn’t going to happen again at Augusta on Sunday night. Something has changed in him because whenever he had a bad hole at the Masters, it didn’t seem to affect him as it had done before. It's a shame he's not big into racing. It would be great to have him as an owner! He likes his F1 and tennis more.
