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IT IS essentially the final round of real trials before the Cheltenham Festival this weekend and Newbury takes centre stage. Although the amount of real festival players for the second week of March remains questionable, it was the Dublin Festival seven days ago which unearthed the real goodies.

Aside from the graded races, the feature betting event is the Grade 3 National Hunt hurdle race (3.55) but with £150,000 up for grabs the final entry of just 14 is massively disappointing to say the least.

If the Paul Nicholls yard were in better form, then Knappers Hill would have been a strong selection especially as at the time of writing he has eased to a top price of 7/1. For what he has achieved a mark of 135 looks very fair and you could probably upgrade that level as his run behind Jonbon at Ascot was better than it looked, as it merely turned into a three furlong sprint which certainly wouldn’t have suited this son of Valriann.