THE LAST STRAW: The hard-hitting City Comment column in the Daily Telegraph has spared nothing in the effort to find insults worthy of the Bank of Ireland's plan to take over Britain's Abbey National, writes Frank McNally
From suggesting BOI management had "taken the poteen", to predicting Abbey shareholders would tell their suitors to "begorrah off", the column has left no stone unthrown. But it went too far this week when deriding the proposal to part-fund the deal in BOI shares, which it said were "falling faster than horses at the Curragh".
I don't know much about bank shares, but I've exercised a few options in horses over the years, through a respected turf accountant. And I have to say that the ones I've backed have fallen just about everywhere in western Europe except at the Curragh. The thing is that, the Curragh being a flat-racing track, it lacks the features that typically give rise to horse-falling incidents: i.e. fences. True, horses do occasionally trip even in a flat race. But as a general rule, I've found that flat horses tend to reach the finishing line with monotonous frequency; the challenge being to predict the order.
Of course it's possible that the column's analogy is based not on the frequency with which horses at the Curragh fall, but the velocity. And it's arguable that if, say, an Irish Derby entrant fell mid-race, it would fall faster than an entrant in the English Grand National, but only insofar as it was moving faster to begin with. The Curragh has no special properties in this regard.
As the Telegraph must know, the rate of acceleration of a falling body varies only slightly at different points of the earth's surface. Discounting air resistance, the standard value is 9.81 metres per second squared. This is independent of body mass, as Galileo proved, so if a horse at the Curragh did fall, it couldn't be said to fall any faster than, for example, the discarded betting dockets of punters who backed it.
Then again, it's possible the Curragh has unusual forces at work, because twice this year I've been involved in surprise roadside incidents near Kildare town. The most recent was last month when, coming back from Cork on a filthy night, my driver-side wiper broke, reducing visibility to just over nil and forcing me to stop.
It was on part of the Monasterevin road which has no grass verge and is approximately the width of me and two cars. Having no choice where I parked, however, I got out to fix the wiper. The night was darker than a 50-1 horse, and the rain was falling harder than a Daily Telegraph Irish racing analogy. But on the plus side, several articulated trucks roared past, allowing me - once I'd spat out the backwash - to work in the glow of their receding tail-lights.
The other occasion was earlier this year, when I was returning from Thurles greyhound track (regular readers will know I have a 6 per cent share in a dog), and saw a person flagging down traffic north of Kildare.
As always on these occasions, the temptation is to find respectable excuses not to stop: such as the person could be an al-Qaeda agent planning to hijack your car. But after a tense struggle with my conscience, I pulled over. And what do you know? The stranger in distress turned out to be a member of the greyhound syndicate, who had run off the road while swerving to avoid what he thinks was a fox (he's from Dublin 4).
He'd attempted to flag down umpteen other drivers who either (a) hadn't noticed or (b) swerved to avoid him. And discovering that I was a model citizen, even a reluctant one, gave me a warm glow inside which is only now, with the onset of winter, wearing off.
The damage to my friend's car cost about three grand, whereas - apart from a wiper blade - my own experience only cost me a head-cold. But the combined events make the chorus of the traditional ballad - "It's straight I will repair/To the Curragh of Kildare" - sound like an ad for a garage.
I know that what you're really wondering about is how the dog is doing. Well, results have been mixed, and the syndicate's only real hope of making a profit now is a hostile take-over by the Bank of Ireland. But the curious thing is that while the greyhound appears incapable of winning in Dublin, he has become almost unbeatable in - wait for it - Newbridge.
Newbridge, as you know, is on the edge of the Curragh. He was due to run there again last night, in fact, and I'll report his progress next week. I'm just sorry it's too late for you to back him, because we think he was a certainty, barring a fall.