ON THIS OCCASION, MORRISSEY IS WRONG...

...We like it when our friends become successful.

Goodwill towards one’s peers may not always be the most abundant commodity among those engaged in the competitive world of sports media and journalism – scoop or be outscooped, eat or be eaten (or even elbow or be elbowed, if that footage of Claude Duval getting physical after Frankel’s QE II Stakes win of 15 months ago is any guide).

I’d like to think that racing folk generally score higher than most in terms of kindly disposition towards one another overall, though, and it’s certainly been nothing other than a pleasure to see a pal and former colleague in Katherine Fidler take to her new role as Bloodstock Reporter for the Racing Post with such aplomb - even sharing column space with the likes of Simon Holt and Gordon Elliott in this week’s Monday Jury (good luck with Swing Bowler or and/or My Tent Or Yours this Saturday, Kat).

Already extensively published in the past two years by virtue of bloodstock-driven tipping pieces for Bettrends.co.uk and Pointing reviews for both the Sporting Life and (briefly) Racing Plus, Kat spent most of that period primarily serving as one-third of the indefatigable trio – alongside the also wholly admirable Viv Buckby and Paul Champion – whose management of entries, results, web content and cantankerous old racereaders effectively rendered them the day-to-day heartbeat of the Point-to-Point Racing Company (Weatherbys Chase as was). Her replacement won’t want for work.

She’ll definitely be hugely missed; and one only hopes her decision to leave Wellingborough for the bright lights and cosy warm offices of Canary Wharf wasn’t accelerated by an episode late last April when, as part of her and Viv’s occasional deputising for the Midlands Area Public Relations Officer, Kat stepped into the coldest, wettest, muddiest, ghastliest of breaches as my Racing Post Weekender on-course reporter for the Atherstone Point-to-Point at the (ordinarily entirely lovely) old Rugby racecourse in Clifton-on-Dunsmore.

Humble apologies for my part in inflicting that particular brand of Purgatory upon you, Kat – I owe you one even now. I also understand that the trenchfoot won’t prove irreparable.