BROWNIE'S BLOG: ABOUT HARDLINE, AWARDS AND MAYBE AN UNEXPECTED TREAT ON MM DAY

By Damian Browne | Friday, October 16, 2015

Damian Browne is rated right up there with the best jockeys in Australia. After severe injury setbacks this multiple Group 1 winning jockey has fought back against the odds to establish a solid reputation both as a person and as a rider, where he has built an enviable race record largely courtesy of his exceptional expertise as a horseman. Damian’s column, ‘Brownies Blog’ appears exclusively on HRO

Hardline’s performance will be of particular interest tomorrow. All being well Liam Birchley plans to take the horse to Flemington for the Group 1 Coolmore Stakes on Derby Day.

Hardline has won four out of five starts and I’ve ridden him on each occasion. Obviously he would want to win pretty impressively tomorrow again to warrant going to the Coolmore, but everything we been asking him to do he seems to be doing well and doing it pretty easily.

Hardline has won both starts since resuming so he is on schedule for that planned Group 1 engagement.

Tomorrow will tell us more.

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I’ve stayed committed to Hardline even though Peter Snowden has been after me for the last couple of weeks.

He wanted me at Randwick tomorrow but I couldn’t go because of Hardline running up here ... and the same happened a couple of weeks ago when he contacted me, but again Hardline was running so that didn’t work out.

That said, it is good that the phone is still ringing and know Peter is thinking of me, which is the main thing, so hopefully that option remains open.

Other than that, there are not a lot of other trainers I’m talking to for rides down south.

I’ve done a little bit of riding for Mike Moroney and he said whenever I’m coming to ride down there I could give him a call, but I not really concentrating too much on going down there this year.

I want to try and get things rolling a bit more in Brisbane.

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As far as awards go it was nice to be recognised up here and have my season acknowledged with the Queensland Jockey of the Year award, which I received at a function at Doomben on Monday night.

It’s a fact of life that sometimes a person’s accomplishments are given more recognition away from home than locally.

At times, I must admit, I probably did think that was the case with me.

It has always been great getting the support from all the people up here when I’ve gone down south, and now to get official recognition for what’s been achieved ... it is quite special in its own way.

I did have a little bit of an inkling that I might be on the mark for an award this time.

When the organisers keep ringing up, making sure I was coming ... and then when they were pretty happy when I arrived, I had a fair idea that there might something in the pipeline but, you never know for certain until your name is called out.

Not that an award changes anything. It’s all business as usual, but it was a very enjoyable evening.

I was obviously also there at the awards night for Buffering again. I don’t think any horse has been Horse of the Year four times and he is possibly on his way to maybe even get to five the way he has started off this season.

It is always nice to be out with the connections of Buffering and it was good to be with them when they were celebrating what he has done.

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A huge number of nominations have been received for the Magic Millions raceday.

At this stage I’m not that paying that much attention to what is happening there. Just going on past experience it is only in the last three or four weeks that the race really starts to take shape, although you obviously do take note of horses showing up early.

I know Kelso Wood’s horse was very impressive the other day and Peter Snowden had one a couple of weeks ago that caught the eye so, as always, there looks to be a couple of nice ones coming through ... but it’s a bit early to make any call.

It is pretty hard for a two-year-old to go right through from now to then so the management of any contender’s schedule is important, given the fact that the trainer also has to make sure he qualifies his runner for the race.

So, at the moment, I’ll just watch how things unfold. As I say, it’s those three to four weeks before the race that we really get down to it.

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Whoever else gets there, Magic Millions day might hold a special treat for racegoers.

There is a possibility we might even see Buffering here for that. If so, that will be exciting.

There is a $1 million, QTIS race over 1300m on Magic Millions day. I think Rob Heathcote and Buffering's connections are tossing up between that race and Perth.

I don’t think Buffering can really do both ... so we’ll wait to see which way that call goes.

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