Matt Chapman is not resting on his laurels as his London and The South team head into Newcastle\u2019s penultimate Racing League fixture at the top of the table.<\/p>\n
The team have a 95-point lead over The East after a fruitful evening on home soil at Windsor last week, where they gathered 202 points through winners and placed horses.<\/p>\n
Chapman said: \u201cRacing League is one of those competitions where you would be lying if you said you did not want to be in front, but we know from our performance at Windsor last week, and on a couple of other occasions in the past, that teams can get 200 points or more in a night.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere could be a huge swing at Newcastle towards one of the other teams, so by no means is this over.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the other mischievous team managers will paint the picture that this is London and The South\u2019s to lose but maybe that means mathematics is not their strong suit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of specific runners he feels could gain more valuable points for his team, Chapman added: \u201cI am really looking forward to the two we run in Race 31 \u2013 Bragbor for George Scott and Telepathic for Simon and Ed Crisford. George thinks Bragbor has huge promise going forward, while Telepathic finally learnt how to settle last time when winning at Doncaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe only had one entry in the five-furlong sprint, Race 33, but thankfully within 10 minutes we were able to bring in Jessica Macey\u2019s Jenever, who goes well at Newcastle.<\/p>\n
\u201cRichard Hannon sends three talented horses, headed by Witch Hunter in Race 32, who is basically Group class over seven furlongs. Al Rufaa is also worth a mention in Race 34 as he was just beaten off the same mark at this meeting last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll in all, I would be very disappointed if we do not notch between 70 and 100 points, which should keep us top of the table. If we don\u2019t do well, I would obviously rather the bottom teams have a better night than Charlie Fellowes and The East.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charlie Fellowes, team manager for The East, accepts the task ahead is a significant one but retains faith that the gap can be closed.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201c95 points is a lot but, as we have seen with this competition in the past, it is not over until it is over. We hope to give it a good go because we are sending a strong team up to Newcastle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just have to hope that Chapman\u2019s team stumbles and lets us back in. If we can be within 40 points heading to Southwell, we will have a shot because I expect us to be very strong there as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scotland is a further 40 points behind The East in third and is able to call upon Paul Mulrennan, who has been the leading jockey at Newcastle over the last five years.<\/p>\n
Team manager Alex Steedman said: \u201cI am looking forward to Newcastle, given the depth of squad we have compared to recent weeks. It has been a different challenge for me because, in five of the seven races, we had at least seven entries. That meant I had to let a lot of trainers and owners down, which was unfortunate because many of those horses would have had genuine chances.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt Chapman is not resting on his laurels as his London and The South team head into Newcastle\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-80341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}