Cracking final day for me with 5 winners, three of them coming on the flat, a rarity for me.

Dead Red Demon won the G1 TJ Smith, her first win after running close many times but in a G1 against the 3yo’s this is an impressive display. An even greater shock came as Master Class came home for the Irish Derby, ruining the Rhodes double in the process. Had written him off largely after poor performances all season. So very pleased with him. They alone mark this as likely my best ever day on the flat, and only my second 3yo G1 win ever. The Hurricane stormed home for handicap to round it off.

On the NH a maiden win from The Right Stuff who will now head to the graded races, and a G2 rather hollow win for Battle At The Hot Gates, but after his run of bad luck i’ll take any confidence boast I can get.

Well done Josh on winning the Irish Derby won fair and square your horse was very game and my fella
just ran out of gas late on. Days like that make the hard work worth while well done again.

Well colour me pink and call me paraffin!

Finally picked up my 2nd flat win of the season (the worse in living memory) with Bop it, the three 2nds, two thirds and a fourth sums up the week. The hunt just as dire, without the winner

As a long time player, I can see how the newbies would drop out within the opening 2-3 weeks, I have had 2 flat wins in 147 rides & took to week 4 for the first.

I wonder more of the time what is the point, even with trying to accommodate all with the schedule, I am testament to the fact it doesn't matter how many low rated handicaps we have, it will not fix the problem of keeping new players with just purely the schedule it must be deeper ?

I don't know the answer and not sure there is one. Maybe some lower trainers could comment on what they feel regarding it. Yes taking part is fun but no one enters the league not to win, whatever they say

Well done to all those who take part & the team who make it all happen.

I throughly disliked my first season of getting soundly beaten with my all conquering G1 game monsters. By the end of it I was hardly even watching the races, so I agree it is no fun. But you get out what you put in, and there is no other answer. Players will either take up the challenge and breed for better now aware how far it can be taken, or they will walk. I personally think keeping one rookie in four is a decent hit rate. Never going to keep those who just turn up and expect to win.

I agree, but there has to be somewhere for the casual player, we have said many a time that not all share the desire or indeed even have the time to spend hours breeding whoever with whatever to increase this bar and that, yes we all have the information to do this as many of you have kindly posted.

Basically we are saying that if you don't have time, enter the league but you prob will not win. hardly inspiring.

Maybe Doug's original idea of divisional leagues is the way to go ?? although again I know this is not popular, but with maybe 2 more seasons to go on S06 we look at changing the format rather than continuing down the well worn path of the past 8 seasons and beyond, to see if it works ?

But I also know with maybe only 2 more seasons before we get our hands on S07 why change, it would require alot more work on peoples behalf.

Lets not let this get into our usual nit-picking, I am obviously having a sour grape day but cant keep quiet sometimes (I know people will be saying please shut-up lol) but just throwing ideas about and forever the optimist that we can change things for the good and please all.

First you need to decide what good looks like. Is it more wins for rookies or more wins for casual players? If you split the league all that will happen is the low existing tier will win more, the rookies will be beaten and likely still walk away. Could maybe have a hybrid of this idea and for the first 5 weeks up to the window have a small number of rookie races and those with say less than 5 wins from the season before? After which mix it up and the window allows for changes. Would have to add maybe 5 new flat races for these weeks with restricted entry, but not a massive overhaul or amount of work.

If things need changing then they need to change before the new game comes out, whatever the plan is we need to come up with it now and to see it through.

Here goes a idea a league with just game horses No breeding just horses you acquired by buying this will end all the chat about how long you have to breed and different leagues you either have the league we got or a new league where everyone is on the same level.


Gray

We could make some races for the Dual Championship classes, maybe this brings more rivalry into these classes too, maybe a table just with wins from these races!?

Yep tricky to decide what is good.

Rookie races is a good thing & should be added as a quick fix for those new trainers to keep on board, but maybe we could still look at a divisional split come week 5/6 on an average of your rating on your stable, something similar to what Sirus does end of season and this would benefit the casual player, lets have a division 2 Derby, why not? the casual player then gets the same kick out of the game as the top lot & of course a rookie would be in there too.

Tho again this is a little more work for sched makers (Doug, Martin, Gray) as well as a little more work come nominations although the more I think about it, could be too difficult to implement & really would need to put more thought to it.

John, agree with your sentiments about getting it in place for S07 but we prob have 2 more of 6 to contend with and no one really knows what 7 will bring as in leveling the playing field.

Maybe the last season we went this way as a finale to S06 ???

Shocking day for me on the final day, thought at least 4 had very good chances, practically everyone of them ran at least 6 wide the whole race. I know it's been mentioned before, but this is a major floor in the game as a whole for me.

Watch The John Smiths Cup. Seems like a pretty pointless race to me that. Then the Eclipse, my two, Wuchang Gladius an Gratulor ran on the outside rail the whole way round the track (about 12 wide at least), made no effort ever to slow down or speed up to get inside an give themselves a chance. Neither would have won anyway, but don't think top 5 was out the question. Pointless having fields that big on a track like that

A game breed only league with the home breed league will just equal two small and failing leagues. All game breed is interesting but bad for those on the journey to the top as they will never get the shot. Also not sure I am a fan personally.

A full split with a tier two derby type approach is for me a bit of a nonsense, and a bad idea that will just cheapen both races in the process, and leave a lot of 5-8 horse races etc.

And really we do not have to sort this out for SO7, as we do not know what SO7 will be like, play like, breed like or even if there will be a racekit inside the first year of release. Whatever we do has to be focussed on SO6.

How about 10 races every week has to be for gamebreds ( everyone is equal chance) and the last week we have a gamebred championship.