CHARLES SALE: Newmarket Two get the brush-off

Updated: 19:01 EST, 7 December 2009

A dignified protest against plans to build 1,200 new houses in Newmarket was made by two trainer’s wives at horse racing’s showcase Derby Awards lunch in London on Monday.

Trainer John Gosden with his wife Rachel Hood, who organised a protest at the Derby awards lunch on Monday

John Gosden’s wife Rachel Hood and Jacko Fanshawe unfurled their ‘Stop The Hatchfield Farm Development’ banner as event patron Lord Derby, who is proposing to sell his inherited land to developers, was beginning his welcome speech.

‘I thought I might see my friends here,’ he said, before carrying on regardless.

There is united opposition in Newmarket, from Sheik Mohammed’s Godolphin operation downwards,
at the attempt by Lord Derby, who has a stately home outside Liverpool and a
mansion in Chelsea, to increase his vast wealth through a deal that will add 33 per cent to Newmarket’s population and greatly increase the traffic in a small rural town where around 3,000 racehorses cross the roads daily.

Yet despite this serious threat to the headquarters of racing, the expected heckling of Lord Derby did not materialise and some table hosts removed the ‘Save Historic Newmarket’ literature placed by the protesters.

Will Hayler, president of the Horse Race Writers, did himself no favours by mockingly describing the Newmarket Two as ‘Trinny and Susannah’ in his address. And it was left to John McCririck to interject that they were ‘brave women standing up for their rights’.

Manchester United, having set up a secretive London office from which to run their sponsorship operation, are now calling staff ‘global’ executives, such is their worldwide hunt for new backers. The club were close to agreeing a new endorsement of ‘season backer’ - as in: The 2009-10 campaign brought to you by... - with Russian energy giants Gazprom.

England manager Fabio Capello left Cape Town after the World Cup draw last Friday as soon as possible. But other teams in Group C decided to soak up more of the atmosphere - especially Slovenia, whose whole delegation took the cable car trip up Table Mountain the following day.

Meanwhile, perfectionist Capello, who wants work done on the training pitches at England’s prospective Royal Bafokeng base, won’t think much of the state of the pitch in Port Elizabeth, where England play Slovenia in their last group game. According to those being shown around by FIFA this week, it has patches of mushrooms growing on it.

A Sportsmail reader, keen to watch the Amir Khan fight last Saturday, checked on the Sky Sports website link providing round-by-round updates at 10.46pm to find it clearly stating that the fight had yet to start. So the fan spent £14.63 on the pay-per-view deal only to tune in to see Khan doing post-fight interviews having completed his victory 70 seconds into an opening round that started at 10.33pm. Sky Sports claim there had been no technical problems and could not explain what had happened. But it needed Sports Agenda’s intervention before a refund was forthcoming.

ESPN £35m Cup deal

ESPN, who have suddenly woken up to the fact that they need more content, have agreed an FA Cup TV deal that was given the go-ahead at Monday’s Wembley FA board meeting.

As revealed by Sports Agenda, it will be for the next two seasons and the price of around £35million will fill half the hole left by the demise of Setanta when the rights are returned to the FA. ITV Sport, co-partners in the Setanta contract, will show more FA Cup games for the rest of this season, with the other Setanta slots taken up by coverage on the internet.

ESPN are also competing strongly for the next three seasons of live Guinness Premiership rugby handed back by Setanta.

Sunderland chairman Niall Quinn stayed in London yesterday after his team’s loss to Fulham to attend the Derby Awards backed by Sunderland’s shirt sponsors Boylesports.com, whose name is not certain to be on the kit next season because of the cost.