betHQ Editor
September 27, 2026
The Ballymore Group Irish EBF Kilbegnet Novice Steeplechase goes off at 16:30 on Monday 28 September at Roscommon, a Grade 3 novice chase over two miles and 107 yards worth €42,000, run on yielding ground. Grade 3 is the bottom rung of jump racing’s graded ladder. Five go to post, one of them at 2/7 — a price that says the race is already over. We do not think it is.
Who’s Fancied — and Why
Daddy Long Legs heads the betting at 2/7, a seven-year-old trained by W P Mullins and ridden by Paul Townend. He won on his most recent start, and he holds the best Racing Post Rating in this race by eight pounds. Mullins has taken this contest twice in the last three runnings.
Wild Bill Hickok (IRE) is next at 6/1, a four-year-old for Ciaran Murphy ridden by the amateur Eoghan Finegan. He has won over this course and this distance, and he is the fastest of the five on Topspeed, the Racing Post’s measure of how fast a horse has actually run. He is the one we want.
Femme Magnifique, an eight-year-old mare for David Harry Kelly, is 8/1. She won last time out, and she has won over fences before.
Two bigger prices have something to recommend them: A Snow White Park, a five-year-old filly for Margaret Mullins, also won on her latest start and is 20/1, while Miss Fourie, a nine-year-old mare for Gordon Elliott, is 22/1 and has been placed three times at Roscommon.
Our Read
We are against the favourite, and there is no soft way to put it. The betting makes Daddy Long Legs a 2/7 chance; we think Wild Bill Hickok is the better horse. No runner in this field carries a higher official rating than he does, the official rating being the handicapper’s own measure of a horse’s ability. He is the quickest of the five on the clock. And he has already won over this course and over this trip.
The favourite’s case deserves making properly. He has the best Racing Post Rating in the race, eight pounds clear of our selection, and he won his most recent start. He has no official rating published at all, and a horse cannot be fairly judged on a single figure, so our reading of his class comes back unknown — a statement about our evidence, not a verdict on him. He is short of a rating, not short of ability.
Where the two separate is the clock, and that needs a caveat as loud as the claim. On Topspeed the favourite is the slowest of these five and our selection the fastest. But this is a novice chase, and several of these have raced far more often over hurdles than over fences, so a clock figure may be measuring a different kind of race from today’s. It is a reason to prefer Wild Bill Hickok; it is no evidence at all about how anybody jumps.
Against our own selection: he was out of the places on his latest start, the one thing today’s conditions record against him, and a live objection when the horse he must beat won last time. The two halves of this argument measure different things, which is why both can be true. The ratings and the clock say how good these horses have been and how fast they have gone; the objection asks whether that travels to a novice chase on yielding ground, where the jumping settles races and no figure sees it coming. Back him and you are trusting the figures ahead of the most recent page of the form book — reasonable, but not free money.
One bet is all this race justifies. We looked hard at the one other horse both we and the market rate near the top, and on the published figures she has a good deal to find on the front two. A tip added to fill a space is not a tip.
How to Bet This Race
Wild Bill Hickok is Our Selection at 6/1, and the bet is a win single. Confidence is Strong — no horse here carries a higher official rating, none has gone faster on the clock, and he has won over this course and distance; the one thing recorded against him is that he was out of the places last time out.
A £20 win single returns £140 if he wins, a profit of £120. If he does not, the £20 has gone.
Five runners is the smallest field in which a place is paid at all, and the terms are tight: two places, at a quarter of the odds. A £10 each-way bet costs £20, half for the win and half for the place. Finish second and the place half returns £25, so you are £5 up without the horse winning; win the race and that same £20 each-way brings back less than it would straight on the nose. Second is a realistic outcome in a field this size, so it is a genuine choice. We lean to the win single.
A 6/1 chance opposing an odds-on favourite can drift a long way before the off, and Best Odds Guaranteed from bet365 meets that exactly: it settles at the bigger starting price when a price you took goes out.
bet365 Best Odds Guaranteed
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The prices above are not identical everywhere, and on a 6/1 chance a fraction either way is real money, so it pays to shop around.
What Other Tipsters Are Saying
We gather the newspaper and online tipsters’ selections each race-day morning, and any for Roscommon 16:30 appear below once published — all their selections, not only their headline fancies.
| Nap | 
Time
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Racecourse
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Tipster
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Best odds |
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Indicated odds were updated on 2026-10-16 4:38:03 UTC. Please note that
odds are subject to change.
Tips cannot guarantee betting success. Review tipsters performance and bet responsibly.
Tips cannot guarantee betting success. Review tipsters performance and bet responsibly.
How to Watch the Kilbegnet Novice Chase Live
If you would rather watch through a bookmaker, bet365 stream At The Races and Racing TV live to anyone with a funded account, this race included.
Watch at the races and racing TV live
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On television the Kilbegnet Novice Chase is on Racing TV, a premium subscription channel. Free-to-air coverage had not been announced for this race at the time of writing.
The Verdict
Wild Bill Hickok at 6/1 is Our Selection and takes a win single. Confidence is Strong — no horse here is rated higher officially, none quicker on the clock, and he has won over this course and distance; the risk is that he was out of the places last time.
Daddy Long Legs is 2/7 and we are taking him on. He has the best Racing Post Rating in the race and won last time out; if he is as good over fences as that figure says, our selection will not get near him. The missing official rating is a hole in what we know, not a mark against him.
There is no second tip. One bet is what this race justifies, and if a 2/7 favourite is enough to keep you out of a five-runner race, that is a defensible reading.
Odds correct at time of writing, 2026-09-27 17:38 UTC. Prices change — always check the live table before betting. All tips and opinions here are our own. No bookmaker mentioned in this article has endorsed them. 18+. Please gamble responsibly. GambleAware.org
How we pick our tips
Every preview on betHQ starts from the betting market, not against it. The price a horse is trading at is the single best guide anyone has to its chance — it reflects the form book, the money and the opinion of people who do this for a living. So our first question is not “who wins?” but “does our own reading of the form agree with the market, and where doesn’t it?”
We rate every runner on five things: its Racing Post Rating, its Topspeed figure, its Official Rating, how it has run in its last three starts, and how it has fared against the other horses in this race when they have met. We then compare that order with the betting order. Handicaps work differently, because in those the official handicapper sets each horse’s weight from its official rating — so there we adjust the ratings for the weight carried on the day and leave the official rating out, rather than counting the same thing twice.
Most of the time we agree with the market about the likeliest winner, and we say so — across British and Irish racing the favourite wins roughly a third of all races. How often varies a great deal by the type of race, though. Favourites win appreciably more often in conditions races, where horses run off set weights, than in handicaps, where the handicapper’s whole job is to give every runner the same chance; and in the biggest fields their strike rate falls away sharply. That is our first tip. Where we differ is usually further down the betting, and if a horse looks better to us than its price suggests, and is good enough on ratings to be a realistic winner, it becomes our second tip. Some races only get one tip. That is fine.
We also tell you how we would back each one, because the bet you place matters as much as the horse you pick. A short-priced favourite and a 12/1 outsider call for different approaches, and the right bookmaker offer can improve either.
Two things to be clear about. The weightings above are our judgement, not a proven formula — we do not claim to beat the market over time, and nobody should treat our tips as a way to make money. And the prices we quote are the ones showing when we write, the evening before racing; they move, sometimes a lot, so always check the live table before you back anything. Please bet responsibly.
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