The abandonment of yesterday's Gowran Park card may have deprived Boulabally of a good opportunity in the Bagenalstown Handicap Chase, but Tom Taaffe has re-routed him to Kilbeggan for this evening's Bloomfield Hotel Handicap Chase, and while this distance is half a mile longer, it is well within his compass.

Indeed, his latest start had been over this same course and distance last month and on that occasion he split Coolree Lord and Chelsea King in a hard-fought three-way photo finish.

However, improbable as it may seem, the hunter chase at that same Kilbeggan fixture gave a clue to a still more likely winner in the shape of the joint top weight Irish Reef.

There was an odds-on favourite, An Oon Iss An Owl, and while he had to fend off the attentions of a loose horse when making his chance, he came good to beat Irish Reef by three and a half lengths.

Going up to handicap class at Cork on Saturday An Oon Iss An Owl again started favourite to defend an unbeaten record and justified the confidence of his stable by winning the Bank of Ireland Tracker Bond Chase from Oakler, who for his part had previously won another Bank Of Ireland £10,000 race at Tramore.

Frances Crowley, a star amateur rider who then became an apprentice on the flat, has started the 1998/99 National Hunt season in yet another new role, that of trainer, and winners have quickly come. Her Tuska Ridge looks a readymade winner of the Coola Mills National Hunt Flat Race, for after finishing fourth first time out to a future Cheltenham Festival winner, Alexander Banquet, he was then second to Colins Double at Fairyhouse.

The riding arrangements suggest that Michael O'Brien has his eye on a maiden hurdle double with Lannkala (Norman Williamson) and Carjune (Jason Titley), both of whom were out of the money behind Johnny Brushaside at the Fairyhouse Easter meeting.