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Our efforts to get a last win of 2017 continue tomorrow but, after Indian Tom tonight, we may struggle. He finished out his race fine but as often happens with him he was trying to get involved from an impossible position after missing the break.   Alcatraz runs in the 1 mile apprentice race. It’s his first run for us and I’m looking forward to seeing him start. All mine improve for a run despite my best efforts and I expect him to be no different. I quite like him and even though he has a terrible win record I’m hoping he’ll be an important horse for us in 2018. He has recently been running over further, rightly or wrongly, I expect this to be his trip. Gary Halpin rides and he’s as good as you’ll get. Frank Lynch and Mick Hartnett own this guy and he’s our first runner together. Fingers crossed we can be lucky.   Beach Bar runs in the red hot 7f feature handicap later on the card. His last run was frustrating as nothing went his way after he missed the break. It emphasised how vulnerable he is in terms of run style. If he gets daylight and they put him on his head or he can go forward, rather than burning energy, then he should give his running. Whether that’s good enough against these, I don’t know. When the turf season starts he may be better trying to bully lesser rivals. Wayne rides, a great result. I ring his agent regularly looking for him and you need a fast one, or to get lucky, to get him. We’ll see.   That will complete 2017, a year to the day since our first runner and 12 wins later I couldn’t have wished for a better start. It has been a mad year but I’ll elaborate on that sometime over the Christmas break. Happy Christmas all.