Newcastle 28/6/24 - I Think We're Alone Now

Late finish Friday and early start Saturday can only equal short blog so we'll have a quick skip through the hopscotch of the books.

Before we start, however, a brief mention for Simon who couldn't resist pointing out the field sizes. It would appear that we would have chances everywhere. We've read the Plate Meeting book and seen the Plate Meeting film so many times before that we know the ending though. The last 3 meetings combined have added up to winning the price of a curry. Without than naan.

1 ) Favourite Humble Spark was a last to first, easy winner job and we got half to a half max loss. The second horse was much the same- we were without a chance.

2) Second race, same as the first. Except this favourite was a small winner and places were kind. We were level in the book with just the 1600 quid to go to get the weekend's expenses. Double jolly to start.

3) Respite as race 3 was merely the 2nd favourite in a list of 13. Fortunately we steered it, having laid favourite Prince of Zenda and 3rd in Thunder Moor for the max along with the bottom 3 in the market. Solid win, slightly clipped by bad places but we knew we we'd dodged one there.

4) Tiffany- smashed up into favouritism and hosed up as was to become a theme. I messaged Simon on the other pitch to ask him how the big field thing was playing out. He responded that every bet on the winner he accompanied with "you're not alone on that one". I felt a bit like how Yoda must've felt when teaching Luke. We still lost the max though and our hokey cokey day was on the "out" step again.

5) Perfectly Timed shoved in for a max along with most of the bottom of the market and our left foot went in for another solid win on Cheshire Dancer, and another terrible terrible place result courtesy of Johnny Ringo, presumably from a ring full of punters called Johnny or fans of 1970s reconstituted potato starch snacks.

6) Best result of the day on favourite Germanic as laid Thewind Cries Mary to a multitude of folk who told me it was a Jimi Hendrix song. Fortunately it was also a 2nd placed horse and, despite a rotten place book, we largely missed the big ones and even got a small positive there.

7) Smashed up, hosed up, another favourite but, this time, there was to be no avoidance. Max loss slightly tempered by avoiding 4 big red numbers in the place market to take away some of the pain. But only some.

8) Smashed up, hosed up, max loss on yet another favourite and this time places compounded, rather than eased, our misery. Simon was getting an object lesson in the nature of big fields at this meeting and we ended our evening taking the right foot out.

6 favourites, a 2nd favourite and a 3rd favourite and we were relieved to get out with a smallish win in the book.

Saturday to come where Simon tells me the field sizes are massive. Ah, young padawan, you still have much to learn. Until then...