TEAM RULES NEED SORTING

YOU could never tarnish the golden season of Group One glory Aidan O’Brien has had but the sweet has turned sour.

On Thursday, Aidan and his jockeys Johnny Murtagh and Colm O’Donoghue were found guilty of using team tactics in the Juddmonte won by Duke Of Marmalade last month.

O’Brien was fined £5,000 and Murtagh and O’Donoghue banned for seven days each.

There is no doubt the three Irishmen feel deeply aggrieved at what they will perceive as stains on their characters.

WINNER'S ENCLOSURE - Johnny Murtagh congratulates Duke of Marmalade after his Juddmonte win

In the race, O’Donoghue rode pacemaker Red Rock Canyon and having looked around to check the lie of the land, eased his mount out to give Murtagh clear water up the rail.

There are loads of unsatisfactory aspects to this case.

The local Newmarket stewards never addressed the issue of team tactics on the day of the race — and it was only public discussion in the Press that prompted the BHA to summon a higher court.

But, frankly, this whole team tactics rule is a dog’s breakfast.

You are rightly allowed to run a pacemaker and what is that but a set of team tactics? Where does the use of a pacemaker pass from the legitimate to the unacceptable?

The answer is “when the pacemaker causes interference” but we already have more rules to punish those offences than you can shake a stick at.

More damaging is the Irish developing a siege mentality — one of the sillier Irish racing commentators has already suggested the whole business is a plot by the British Press.

The suggestion is the Press are fed up with Aidan coming over and shelling out Group One’s like peas. What garbage. They can be owned by little green men from Mars and trained by whirling dervishes for all I care.

The team tactics rule needs revision or obliteration. There are already enough sanctions in place to punish anything deeply dodgy. And Aidan and the excellent Murtagh — one of the game’s shining lights — should understand nobody thinks any the worse of them.

Paranoid

The BHA disciplinary panel made clear there was no question of cheating but there were heated exchanges between O’Brien and the panel’s QC.

Aidan said: “I’d rather lose a race than anyone think we won one unfairly. I’m paranoid that I must have said about 100 times there is to be no interference or trouble caused to anybody.”

O’Brien’s QC said of his man: “No race in the world is as important to him as his integrity.”

While you could take that remark about many people with a skip full of salt, it has the ring of truth to me.

Read Alastair Down every week in the Racing Post