Originally Posted by
triplev123
I'll hazard a guess Buster & say that the reason you don't do much form for Sydney anymore and think it's a waste of time is because you're having no success there. Further to that, I think that is due to you having grown up Handicapping tight half milers with short home stretches. Skunks can & do leave fast enough to hold then they'd walk, walk and zip home to win. Melton is 200m bigger than HP but it still has a pretty serious front-end bias. As a Punter a leader bias is predictable and predictable is good punting. No issues with that. But Menangle? You need to change your entire Handicapping mindset on a 1400m track otherwise you'll just go out backwards. You need to pay WAY MORE ATTENTION TO CLASS & TO BACK CLASS.
In climbing into David Thorn's recent successes you and a few others also don't seem to have noticed a crucial aspect to this...the very thing a lot of people, notably including myself, used to absolutely climb all over Thorny for when he drove at HP, i.e. his extreme...and by that I do mean extreeeeeeeeeeeme...patience, is the thing that is working for him BIG-TIME when he drives at Menangle. I freely admit that I've gone down to the fence on more than one occasion at HP and absolutely given it to Thorny for one of his drives. You ask him. It used to drive me nuts at times. Cost me a bottle of Black Label Johnny Walker one night actually. However, at Menangle....credit where it's due. "If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs..." for want of a better way of describing it. He drives that track superbly well. His timing is excellent. Add that to the fact his horses are trained there on the track, they're super-fit, healthy, they're mentally sharp and they're being exceptionally well placed. No big surprise to me that success follows.
On top of that again, success breeds success. With the imminent increases in prizemoney at Menangle existing clients are shelling out good $ to keep the stable supplied & a string of prospective new clients would no doubt be rining every day to get their horses into the stable...so he's going to be getting more & better horses as he goes...& what happens? Surprise, surprise. More success. To hark back to a very, very old Tv ad. for Cousins Imperial Leather Soap...."Roger, Tahiti looks nice" "Hmmm, Simon...Tahiti". :cool::cool::cool::cool::cool: