looks like a WEAK cup this year
will they even have 24?

A weak cup and a bad betting week.

They should have moved the flemington carnival to Sandown this year to give all the horses a fair chance on a stable track surface.

Flemington will be a shifting track, very biased and over-watered. Anyhow, it should be a good track by next spring after the surface settles down. Something to look forward too.

My top four
Master Oreilly
Purple Moon
Blue Monday
Maybe Better

Best Roughie
Scenic Shot currently @ $81

Its going to be a hard race to pick this yr (nothing new) hard to leave out horses like Gallic, even Efficient and Zipping who will be much better suited to the trip.

Scorpion is out. It is official.
Crash is right on the money about the track.

I dont understand how you can say there was a bias, sure the inside was a no go zone last time, but horses won from everywhere. Horses that have won or raced well at flemington did so and horses that generally dont perform did the same. Is it the fact that we have got so used to Caulfield and Mooney Valley racing that we have forgotten what its like on a big track with a nice long straight, that the same horses winning at Caulfield at Mooney valley arn't necessarily going to be suited by the different track and therefore we need to adjust to something we havnt had for almost a year? Its not like the form hasnt stacked up, The Fuzz ran 2nd, Vormista clearly an in form horse won like it should have, Serious Speed massive run for 2nd has since franked its form, the Turnbull had some great runs in it and for those that didnt run well the trainers all blamed the track, yet the only horse that improved off its turnbull run won its next race, and its still a maiden at flemington. [END RANT]

Currently some very interesting examples of market efficiency in the MC futures market with the aptly named Efficient.

He was unloved in the market 24 hours ago, until I heard a 2KY piece about his trackwork.

Nothing much changed for 20 hours until this piece ended up in the next morning newspapers.

To me, schooling disinterested horses over jumps doesn't appear that newsworthy or significant but its newspaper reporting has been enough to arrest Efficient's slump from $25 into $14 on Betfair.

My bet is this is a great lay for the moment.

lol. lol.
I'll stick to the horse's known form ...lousy [40/1].

Trainers hype up their horse's chances to keep in good with the owners [to keep training them]. Jockies do it to to keep sweet with the Trainers.

Eskimo Queen ew @ 20/1 deserves a change of luck
Master O'Reilly could easily add his name to the CC / MC winners list
Overseas invaders Mahler & Tungsten Strike a chance if any ability, against one of the weakest MC fields in ages

gone are the days of great horses racing in the melbourne cup. seems the last 10 years every year we discuss the lack of quality entered in the race

Mahler is really only a 3yr. old and was only here to sacrifice itself to set up a decent pace for Scorpion and is a very uptight horse, especially now her stablemate is stuffed.
Eskimo Queen didn't fire a shot in the Cox, despite being unnecessarily flogged to death by Newitt. Horses usually produce a very ordinary run after that sort of treatment.

Master O'riely still looks the goods I think. Gallic ran a fast race last week in the M.V Cup for a nice win and Scenic Shot did a big turn-around in form in the Jayco Mile after being ridden back, so I'm not sure what to make of that[?]