Australia are spoiling for a fight and desperately hoping England will be the team to give it to them. I had to raise my game against Martin – but in the end it wasn’t enough,” said the 31-year-old who has been playing darts for only five years.”I was only an inch away from hitting a winning bullseye – but that’s darts It was a great experience for me.”. He will have learned a lot from this.”Henderson insisted he had not been keeping track of his 180 count and admitted he was disappointed the record had proved to be in vain.”I’m pleased with the way I played. If you keep playing your game it can suddenly click and you can win leg after leg.”John will be back – there’s no doubt about that. I didn’t even know the score – I just kept throwing and waited to see who the referee said had won at the end.”King revealed before the tournament that he had not been playing well in practice, and that was borne out tonight.”I didn’t play – I should be able to average 31 per dart with my eyes closed, and the fact my average was 29 is a bit of a joke,” said King.Earlier, Martin Adams had to call on all his years of experience to avoid a shock second-round defeat.The 48-year-old from Peterborough, who has just notched up 10 years as England captain, came under a barrage of high scoring from Scottish qualifier John Henderson before edging through 3-2.Henderson, from Huntly, set a new championship record of 12 maximum scores of 180 in a five-set match. The Royal Bond Hurdle winner pleased connections in a workout yesterday morning and, having scoped clean, has been given the all-clear to go for the Tolworth.But Meade warned last night that rough seas were causing a problem: “If we can get him over there, he will run.

But that would be it, because if he didn’t get on a boat tomorrow it would be too late.”Meade added: “I think the Sandown hill would suit him well and he should handle the ground all right.”. If we are not able to go out tonight, I’m not sure he’ll travel, though I suppose we might give it a shot in the morning. We are waiting for confirmation from the shipping agent whether we would be able to get out tonight. Pipe’s charge is also entered in the Ladbroke Handicap Hurdle on the same card – but will bypass that race despite the fact it carries double the prize money.Marcel is an eight-time winner already this season and is vying for favouritism at around 12-1 for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in March with Wild Passion, who is also an intended runner in the Tolworth.However, Irish trainer Noel Meade is hoping that stormy weather does not disrupt his plans to run Wild Passion. The rider was named as Mattie Batchelor, a regular on tracks in the south of England.
The Jockey Club also confirmed that Marcus Foley – who rides for the powerful Nicky Henderson stable – has been cleared of any wrongdoing over the running and riding of Tollbrae at Leicester 11 months ago.The race at Leicester in February last year was the subject of a Jockey Club investigation after Tollbrae, the even-money favourite, came from a long way back to finish second to Venn Ottery in a 12-runner maiden chase.Explaining the situation, John Maxse, the Jockey Club’s director of public relations, said: “There are two sides to this. On the one side there is Marcus Foley, who has been spoken to this week by our officials just to let him know that he is no longer involved in our inquiries.”But Mattie Batchelor is, and we have written to him and told him he is required to attend a disciplinary panel inquiry, which I hope will be held within the next six to eight weeks, where it is alleged that he deliberately misled or sought to mislead the Jockey Club officials conducting the investigation.

A well-known jump jockey is to face a disciplinary inquiry after an examination of telephone records, the Jockey Club said last night. The Duke of Westminster’s estate at Abbeystead, within the Forest of Bowland, is among those that have refused to back the “heavy-handed” police operation. The Duke’s estate manager said a police visit had been unnecessary because his staff already worked to protect the hen harrier.. “Even sightings where only one wing tag is seen is useful,” he said.