Grand National favorite’s unlikely hyperlinks to notorious Roy Keane scrap and legendary drink
Intense Raffles has been well-backed in the build-up to the Grand National but its unlikely link to an infamous Roy Keane scrap makes for a bizarre tale
Intense Raffles is set to be a big player in the Grand National, with the 12/1 shot well fancied in Aintree’s showpiece race.
The 7-year-old will run for owners Simon Munir and Issac Souede. The 2024 Irish Grand National winner is the latest hope for Double Green in the famous race.
Munir had owned horses before striking up the partnership with Souede, with one longshot winner at Cheltenham paving the way for the two’s success.
Speaking to Sporting Life, Munir explained how his horse Une Artiste’s 40/1 win in the Fred Winter at Cheltenham in 2012 became the centre of discussion during a pivotal lunch in Singapore with Souede.
Their meeting sparked the Double Green partnership, which Intense Raffles will sport the colours of in the National on Saturday, and the name was also a source of inspiration.
Munir said: “Une Artiste also brought about the Double Green partnership as the following week when I had a business lunch with Isaac at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, when he asked me what I had been up to, Une Artiste was very much front of mind.
“By the end of lunch we had established a joint love of horses and agreed to buy a racehorse in partnership – the rest is history!
“The lunch venue also meant that when we started breeding racehorses we would have the word Raffles in all the horse names bred by ourselves.
“Intense Raffles being an AQPS bred horse in 2018 had to be named with a word starting with the letter “I” hence the name Intense Raffles.”
The Raffles Hotel’s famous Long Bar is famously the home of the iconic cocktail, the Singapore Sling, which was developed in 1915. And is also the scene of one of Roy Keane’s most infamous moments at Manchester United.
Two of the biggest personalities and leaders in the Old Trafford dressing room came to blows on a pre-season tour of Singapore as Keane and Peter Schmeichel were involved in a physical altercation.
Speaking of the incident of a previous episode of SkyBet’s Stick to Football, Neville asked Keane: “When was the last time you had a fight, was it with Schmeichel in the corridor in Singapore?”
A coy Keane admitted: “Yes – he started it! It was self-defence, but yeah it was a proper fight. There was obviously drink involved and a bit of jetlag. I think Peter had a black eye. But we trained as normal the next day.
“Peter took it well. You fight with lads sometimes. But me and Peter had been brewing for years and there was a bit of tension.
“He didn’t apologise, but he said he would have changed things. There was a bit of needle, I was coming back from injury. The captaincy, we were away in pre-season, there was drinking involved, and a few comments were made.”
Keane explained he was in a taxi heading to a zoo with Nicky Butt before they got a phone call to meet the lads in the famous Long Bar in Singapore.
He said: “We planned to go as a diversion for a while, but we never made it to the zoo. We stayed there all day and night. If I had just made it to the zoo, that would have never happened.”
Intense Raffles will be vying for history as a rare 7-year-old winner of the National. However, last year’s winner I Am Maximus has emerged as the favourite for the race as he looks to defend his crown.
