Jef­frey Ross

Week­end Of­fend­er is pre­ferred to Con­stan­ti­no in di­vi­sion two of the 2-y-o Maid­en Stakes over sev­en fur­longs of 'good to soft Ayr to­day, on ac­count of jock­ey­ship; Gra­ham Lee rides the for­mer and Paul Hana­gan is aboard Richard Fa­hey's charge.Paul rides a lot of win­ners but, there again, he's con­tract­ed to Ham­dan Al Mak­toum on the back of two cham­pi­onships which he se­cured when with Fa­hey; that's sig­nif­i­cant!

Dur­ing those hal­cy­on years 'The Boss' left Hana­gan in no doubt about what he want­ed, tac­ti­cal­ly; to all in­tents and pur­pos­es his jock­ey was a ro­bot and they plun­dered the North­ern cir­cuit.When giv­en firm, un­com­pli­cat­ed, in­struc­tions Hana­gan is fine but if iso­lat­ed, and has to think, strate­gi­cal­ly, he leaves a lot to be de­sired; Lee, on the oth­er hand, is a nat­ur­al and you can ac­tu­al­ly watch him plot­ting as a race un­folds.

On our jock­eys' hand­i­cap there is no com­par­i­son; Gra­ham is in a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent league, al­ways seems to be in the right place in readi­ness for a fin­ish, should it arise.Week­end Of­fend­er fin­ished a neck in front of Con­stan­ti­no when they oc­cu­pied sixth and ninth plac­ings be­hind Beau­ti­ful Morn­ing in the 'Con­vivial' over a sim­i­lar dis­tance at York last month, beat­en just over four lengths.

Due to the book­ing of Lee I'm con­fi­dent Kevin Ryan's charge will con­firm plac­ings de­spite be­ing drawn much wider; what will Hana­gan do from stall one?Pity they weren't de­clared in dif­fer­ent di­vi­sions, that would have giv­en us prospect of two 'certs!'As it hap­pens Paul and Richard team up with Pry­ing Pan­do­ran in the first leg, drawn widest, in stall ten!

Due to that and afore­men­tioned com­ments Pry­ing Pan­do­ra is over­looked in favour of once-raced, Mark John­ston-trained Pen­nock, a promis­ing sixth on de­but to our nap, Force, at Hay­dock when the Piv­otal colt shaped well and should come on con­sid­er­ably for the ex­pe­ri­ence. I'll bet he does!

Run­ning in tan­dem will be 'soft' New­bury where Win­ter Rose is chanced in the five-run­ner Fil­lies' Con­di­tions' Stakes over sev­en fur­longs; a beat­en-favourite un­der top-weight in a New­mar­ket nurs­ery Richard Han­non's charge was our nap. My 'sys­tem' is to al­ways give them an­oth­er crack.

SE­LEC­TIONS

9.30 Pen­nock

10.00 Week­end Of­fend­er

1.00 Win­ter Rose