Plan comes together for Oliver and Hayes Chris Hayes produced the Andy Oliver trained Sounds Like A Plan with a well timed run from off the pace to land the BoyleSports 'Pick Your Place' Handicap at Leopardstown. A beaten favourite at Naas last time, the grey son of Night Of Thunder was stepping up from sprint trips for the first time. Nicely settled in mid-division by Hayes, the 13/2 chance held the perfect box seat position, as Misappropriation chased race favourite Bonus Time. The latter kicked for home over two-furlongs out under Billy Lee. With Colin Keane having no more to give on Misappropriation from over 150 yards out, Sounds Like A Plan went second. Quickening up smartly 50 yards out, Sounds Like A Plan passed Bonus Time to win snugly by half-a-length. “That’s great, Chris gave him a lovely ride and it more or less went to plan,” said Oliver. “We had him highly enough entered this year and we just had a bit of a set-back early on. It’s great to get him back on the front foot. “He saw out the trip well. He’s out of a very fast mare, and he works like a fast horse at home, so you never quite know. “We thought we’d start him off over six this year and he had a very nice run at Fairyhouse. His run at Naas was a bit of a puzzle to us but he possibly bounced on the second run after the long lay-off. “We decided to step him up in trip and he worked very well at the start of the week so we thought we were in fair shape coming into today. “We haven’t looked any further forward than this but we’re coming to the time of year when the three-year-olds can compete in all types of things. “He saw out the trip well so it gives us options. He’s a fast horse and we thought he could go either way. He hit the line fairly hard there so you’d like to think you have plenty of options. “Ground-wise he’s fairly versatile as well. That’s quick ground but as always here it’s very safe. He handled that well and he can also go with a little bit of ease.”
