RACING/Leopardstown Christmas Festival: Brian O'Connor talks to Beef Or Salmon's trainer Michael Hourigan ahead of Sunday's Ericsson Chase where he renews rivalry with Best Mate.

Michael Hourigan has a personality that more than compensates for any lack of physical inches but he's still pretty sure he remained unnoticed when overhearing a conversation at Cork races nine days ago.

It was a typical racecourse chat as punters tried to warm up in the bar. Nothing to grab the trainer's attention unduly, until it turned to the subject of Beef Or Salmon.

The hottest young chaser in the country had just won the second of his three starts this season, not in the manner widely expected but still enough for the two men near Hourigan.

"Something else, and I tell you what. He's Munster's horse now."

Casual bar-room words with a sentiment attached that only the proximity of booze can generate. And yet despite that, and the fact the horse is actually owned by two men from the North of Ireland, they have stuck in Hourigan's mind.

It only confirmed that he is dealing with something bigger than just the training of a talented racehorse. When it comes to steeplechasing and the hunt for the Cheltenham Gold Cup there can be little privacy.

The Patrickswell-based trainer with the quick grin and the roguish glint has been here before of course with that ill-fated standing dish Dorans Pride.

Nevertheless the wider interest in his new star continues to grow and ahead of Sunday's Ericsson Chase at Leopardstown, it is starting to come to a head.

Every day, the same press phone calls, asking the same questions and trying to root out something different to what he has said countless times before.

"It is non-stop with everybody wanting to print their own bit," he concedes before adding: "Mind you it doesn't cost anything to be pleasant and it would be a hell of a lot worse if ye weren't ringing!"

As befits the man at the centre of it all, however, he does demand certain courtesies and one thing guaranteed to set that chin jutting aggressively is any dissing of Beef Or Salmon. Somethings, especially in regard to Munster's horse, really are beyond the Pale.

Asked, after Beef Or Salmon's Durkan success earlier this month, if the prospect of Best Mate travelling from Britain for the Ericsson would mean a diversion for the home star, Hourigan's smig almost went Jimmy Hill-like with defiance: "Why should it?"

Just minutes later, Tony McCoy, who had ridden the Martin Pipe-trained Tiutchev into second, dismissed the Durkan in general as "ordinary". Even now, it's a description that grates.

"Why then did they bring an ordinary horse so far?" he asks. "Why didn't they try and make an ordinary race better?"

Belligerence is not Hourigan's usual face to the world but when you have such faith in a horse, persistent digs at your pride and joy can get boring and at this level, there is always a critic.

Up to now the digs have been about Beef Or Salmon's running style which used to be stalk and go from the last fence. Or how he lasted only to the third fence once he left Ireland in last season's Gold Cup. Even his jumping which can take time to warm up.

A mistake at the last at Clonmel on his first start this term confirmed the latter point for some but his two starts since have only proved to Hourigan how good his star has been all along.

"Without doubt he is a better horse now than he was this time last year, purely because of maturity. He has proved this season he can race with the pace or off it, jump with the pace or off it and his accuracy is very good," he says.

"I was actually happier with his win in Mallow (Hilly Way Chase) than in the Durkan because he held his own with two milers at their own game and beat them. They tried to harry him but it didn't work. Okay, he made a mistake at the second last but who's foot-perfect at every fence?"

Certainly not anything that is doing the beat now, a view that Hourigan holds despite some of the more outrageous hyping of the current Gold Cup-holder, Best Mate.

"They are trying to put him in the same class as Arkle: I mean for the love of God, we will never see another Arkle. He won giving horses three or four stone. Our horses will beat one another at levels but no horse around now is able to give three stone away to a handicapper. Even a bad one will beat me at those kind of weights," he declares.

All of which doesn't put Hourigan in the dissing camp or in that other camp that suggests everything and everyone was miles better in the old days.

It's merely the reality for a man whose reality now, with a full yard of horses, is a lot better than it was when it took him years to saddle even one winner. It's the memory of those days that make Beef Or Salmon so appreciated now.

"This is an animal that Mick Kinane rode to win at the Curragh, just a month after a horrible fall in the Gold Cup, and when he got off he said 'this is a serious horse.' For a guy like him to say something like that says a lot. Beef Or Salmon also should have won a November Handicap but really he wants three miles plus over fences. He's still good enough and fast enough for the flat but jumping is his forte. Going that gear slower allows him jump so well," he says.

Last year's Ericsson was the race that confirmed Beef Or Salmon's position at the top of the stayers tree in Ireland. If he cannot again beat the best of the rest here then there will be widespread disappointment. Hourigan's won't be too bitter however.

"If I'm beaten, I'm man enough to take it on the chin. It won't upset me, just so long as the horse comes back in one piece. I know the horse I have and I know there will be other races," he says.

Down Munster way the sentiment will be applauded, but not as much as another Beef Or Salmon success.