Pip: The Curragh, Roscommon, Wexford, Naas, Ballinrobe, Down Royal, Limerick, Leopardstown — Brendan has been busy enough this week to make a racecourse timetable look like a light schedule.
Mara: Busy is right. This episode covers horse racing selections across nearly a fortnight of Irish racing, a deep dive into Meath's All-Ireland exit and the bigger football picture, and a segment on community tributes and the people behind the sport.
Pip: Let's start with the selections and who Brendan likes this week at the track.
Picks, Patterns, and Each-Way Angles
Mara: The selections span a packed stretch of Irish racing — from Leopardstown and Limerick in mid-June through to Wexford and Roscommon at the end of the month, with the Curragh getting three separate cards across June 26th, 27th, and 28th.
Pip: The Sunday Curragh card is where the most quotable note lands — on Christmas Day in June, essentially: "It could be Christmas Day again for Ronan Whelan at The Curragh on Sunday."
Mara: Whelan is on Christmas Day each-way, trained by Aidan O'Brien. The same card has Alpha with Ryan Moore for O'Brien, Purview with Colin Keane for Dermot Weld, and Zodiac Bear with Ben Coen for Johnny Murtagh — a strong book across nine races.
Pip: Keane is doing a lot of heavy lifting across the week — he's on selections at Naas, Ballinrobe, and both Curragh cards.
Mara: The Ballinrobe note singles out Colin Keane directly: "The Champion Jockey can give Meath a better night in the land of green and red than Saturday night." That card runs from Femme Beauty to Switch From Diesel across seven races. Over at Naas, the tip with the sharpest aside is Saliba for Jessie Harrington — "Any Arsenal fans could do worse than have a punt on the Harrington horse."
Pip: Wexford gets a different kind of wit — Costacurta named after the Italian defender, and the note that "punting on the former Italian star would be good defending of your profits for the day."
Mara: Roscommon on the same evening has seven selections, and the note there is pointed: "Andy Slattery's horses are in flying form" — relevant given Nermal runs for Slattery at both Ballinrobe and Roscommon that week. The June 26th Curragh card closes with a warm word for Jack Foley: "Formerly a talented jockey himself, Jack Foley has made a fine start to his training career."
Pip: Down Royal gets two separate cards — June 19th and 20th — with the earlier one tipping Castletown's Jack Kearney to make his mark on what could be a bountiful evening for the Meath racing fraternity. Limerick the same night hopes Charles Byrnes can be among the winners at his local track, just to "sicken the begrudgers another bit."
Mara: The football fallout is never far away, even in the racing notes. That brings us to the county itself.
Meath's Exit and the Bigger Football Picture
Pip: The match report from Castlebar is one of those pieces that starts as a result and becomes something more — a reckoning with a pattern that had been building all summer.
Mara: The post titled "A heart breaking gut punch but has it been coming?" opens the account plainly: Meath led by seven at half time, 2-08 to 0-07, and still lost. The analysis is direct on the red card — "Yes, the sending off changed the game. I know that, you know that and whatever dogs were on the street in Castlebar know that too."
Pip: And yet the argument is that the sending off wasn't the whole story. Mayo had already wrestled momentum back before Ronan Jones was dismissed — and Sean Brennan's saves were the only thing keeping the deficit manageable.
Mara: The follow-up piece, "An ongoing journey of development — to be continued," pulls the lens wider. Against Louth, Tyrone, Westmeath, Cork, and Mayo, Meath built considerable leads only to see them "wiped out with frightening rapidity." That's the pattern. But the piece insists the season must still be read as one of positive progression — the NFL title, the minor and under-20 teams both competitive, and a conveyor belt of young talent still turning.
Pip: The names of players expected to push into the senior panel — Cillian Yore, Finn Moore, Sam Jordan, and others from this year's under-20 group — are listed with genuine investment, not just filler.
Mara: The club dimension runs alongside all of this. "Hark the shooter who delivers when required" covers Dunboyne's narrow win over St Peter's, with John Harkin's two-point free in stoppage time securing Div. 1 FL status — a result that matters more because the earlier piece, "Dunboyne left glancing over their shoulder," had left them dangling above the relegation line after a fifth defeat in nine games.
Pip: Jack Kinlough's ACL rupture — his second — sits in that earlier piece too, with a note that carries real weight amid all the tactical analysis.
Mara: "Criticism of Ulster duo is irrational" steps back to the All-Ireland semi-final picture — defending the idea that Jim McGuinness and Kieran McGeeney can adapt, while noting both counties face a depth problem that no tactical evolution fully solves. Andy Moran's Mayo and Ger Brennan's Louth get extended treatment as the sides who have genuinely illuminated the summer.
Pip: And the World Cup gets a cameo — "Bombshell result or tactical downtime?" wonders whether Germany dropping points to Ecuador and the US losing to Turkey were tactical choices or something more embarrassing, before concluding that France may have to be given way to regardless.
Mara: The football and the tributes are often closer together than the fixtures suggest.
Remembering, Advocating, and Calling It Out
Pip: The tribute to Trevor Dietz is quiet and personal — a college classmate from Ballyfermot, a music industry figure who managed Fontaines DC, gone recently in Brighton.
Mara: The connection is warm and specific: "through his warm, engaging and helpful personality, we found our common ground from Queen to Bon Jovi to Phil Lynott." The Bohemian FC link — Fontaines DC's name on the jersey, the club nearest Dunboyne, the club of Brush Shiels and Luke Kelly — lands as a small, beautiful coincidence discovered too late.
Pip: The tribute to Paul Clancy covers different ground — a former Galway forward, dead at 49, whose role in the 2001 All-Ireland win over Meath is recalled with the kind of detail that only comes from someone who watched closely and remembered carefully.
Mara: The piece on Joanne Cantwell and the broader RTE punditry question is less a tribute and more a verdict — the argument being that the anchor chair has been filled by someone whose questions range from clueless to condescending, when Jacqui Hurley, Marie Crowe, or Damien Lawlor were all available options.
Pip: And then there is the mobility scheme piece — which is the one that carries the most practical urgency of the lot.
Mara: The proposed government change would collapse existing exemptions and rebates into a single flat-rate payment. The post puts it directly: "Essentially the scheme which is currently in place works perfectly well if only it was policed properly." Replacing it with a flat rate punishes legitimate claimants to fix an enforcement failure.
Pip: The podcast episode on the same subject extends that argument further — and the call at the end is unambiguous: anyone with influence should push back, early and often.
Mara: A season of progress that ended in Castlebar, a racing week that stretched from Down Royal to Wexford, and tributes to people who shaped things quietly — that's the territory this week.
Pip: Next time, hopefully more winners at the track and fewer gut punches in the west. We'll be back.
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