Anthony Honeyball enjoyed a first career treble at Fontwell on Sunday. Pic Steve Davies/ Racingfotos.com

Trainer Profiles: Anthony Honeyball

In this penultimate article in my Trainer Profiles series, I will examine the record of Dorset handler and geegeez-sponsored yard, Anthony Honeyball. I will be sharing ten years of UK racing data from 1st January 2013 to 31st December 2022, the majority of which can be sourced by members using from the Geegeez Query Tool. All profits / losses in this piece have been calculated to Industry Starting Price. Of course, we should be able to significantly improve upon the baseline figures of SP using exchanges or Best Odds Guaranteed, and I will share Betfair SP data when appropriate.

 

Anthony Honeyball Brief Bio

Anthony was an amateur under the tutelage of Richard Barber before signing up as a conditional jockey for Paul Nicholls where he rode 45 winners. In 2006, he switched his attention to training horses which he did initially from his parents’ Quantock farm in Somerset. In 2012, Honeyball moved just a few miles up the road to Potwell Farm where he has been ever since. For more information on the horses currently in the year, check out this excellent stable tour Matt published in October.

Your first 30 days for just £1

 

Anthony Honeyball Overall Record

To begin with let's break down Honeyball's win record down by year:

 

There have been three years where he exceeded a strike rate of 20% (2017, 2019 and 2020) and, although the last two years have dipped under that mark, SP losses have still been small. Indeed the last three years have all individually been profitable if betting to BSP. Overall, six of the ten years have been profitable to BSP and in the ten years he has basically broken even to that metric.

Time to dig a bit deeper.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance by Race Distance

Let’s look at race distance splits. Previous articles have highlighted that some trainers perform better at specific distance bands. What about Honeyball?

 

 

There seems to be a slight bias here against the shortest distances (2m1f or less) – both the strike rate and returns are worse with this cohort. Honeyball has actually made a profit to Industry SP in the longer races of three miles or more, although this is essentially down to three of his runners that won at prices of 20/1, 25/1 and 28/1. I do, however, want to examine his three mile-plus record in a little more detail.

Anthony Honeyball Performance in 3 mile+ Races

Let's split these longer races into handicap and non-handicap races first:

 

 

The vast majority of runners at this range have come in handicaps with the non-handicaps  providing significant losses despite the relatively small sample and decent strike rate. It makes sense to further split the handicap data into 3m+ handicap chases and handicap hurdles:

 

 

We now see a lower strike rate in handicap chases, but both have similar profit profiles and A/E indices; these long distance handicaps are definitely a positive area for Honeyball.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance in Races of 2m1f or less

As we saw earlier, these races provided the lowest strike rate from a distance band perspective. Let’s split non handicaps and handicaps as we did for the longer races earlier:

 

 

These are very unusual stats: it is extremely rare for handicap results to have a better strike rate than non-handicaps. In this case the margin is a comfortable one, too. In terms of returns there is a huge gap with handicaps providing 52p in the £ better results as compared to non-handicaps.

In fact if we look at non-handicap races as a whole (all distances) there have been losses of over 28p in the £; in all non-handicap hurdle races this goes up markedly to over 46p in the £. Handicaps are the place to concentrate on, it seems, and that is where we're going next.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance in Handicap races

We have already seen that Honeyball has performed well in certain handicap races. Here is a price breakdown across all handicap races:

 

 

The yard maintains a very good strike rate with shorter priced runners, but thereafter it is not the normal sliding scale we expect to see with price data. Although the dataset is a little limited, which could partially be a reason for this, all price bands have had more than 100 runners. In terms of profits, the majority of profits have come from the bigger-priced runners as the graph below clearly shows:

 

 

Blind profits have been recorded in three of the price bands; the 9/1 to 14/1 group have virtually broken even; but the 3/1 to 11/2 bracket have shown surprisingly steep losses. I’m not sure what to read into this but the 3/1 to 11/2 group did have 246 qualifying runners which is a big sample. What is clear is that Honeyball is a trainer to keep an eye on in handicap races and don’t be afraid to back his bigger-priced runners if you have found a good reason to.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance by Class

Onto class of race next. Below there is a comparison of win and each way strike rates across the classes:

 

 

There is a definite pattern and correlation in the data here: much lower strike rates in the higher class races, which is perhaps to be expected and is typical of many/most yards; meanwhile in the two lowest grades (5 and 6) Honeyball has made a profit in each. These Class 5 and 6 races have shown similar results when we split the ten-year time frame into two, as the graph shows:

 

 

It seems therefore that these lower class races are ones to look out for.

While we are discussing ‘class’ there is a difference when it comes to comparing horses that have dropped in class compared to those who have not:

 

 

Class droppers have clearly out-performed horses that are racing again in the same class as last time or horses that have been upped in class. Class droppers also would have secured solid returns of just under 7p in the £ to SP; 24p in the £ to BSP.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance by Course

With fewer overall runners than other trainers we have looked at so far, course stats are going to be less substantial. Hence my first port of call is to look at all race course data. Courses with 50 or more runners in total are shown in the table. They are ordered by strike rate:

 

 

Fontwell has been where Honeyball has saddled the most runners of any course in the UK, and he has had the greatest success there, too, both in terms of win strike rate and also return on investment. Exeter and Taunton has also proven profitable to Industry SP. Not surprisingly perhaps the three most profitable courses have all produced A/E indices above 1.00. Concentrating  on Fontwell, here are the strongest stats I found when breaking the results down:

  1. Seven years out of ten have seen a profit to Industry SP which shows good consistency. To BSP there have been eight winning years, with the two losing two years seeing losses of just 5p and 6p in the £ respectively
  1. Honeyball has been successful in both handicaps and non-handicaps as the table below shows:

There is a slightly higher strike rate in Fontwell non-handicaps, but the returns to SP are virtually the same; A/E indices are exactly the same! To BSP, non-handicaps edge it by 31p in the £ to 27p.

  1. In Fontwell Class 5 and 6 races only, Honeyball has seen 26 of his 60 runners win (SR 43.3%) for a profit to SP of £32.96 (ROI +54.9%); to BSP this increases to +£38.58 (ROI +64.3%)
  1. He has recorded 15 wins from 32 runners (SR 46.9%) in National Hunt Flat races at the Sussex track. Returns of 53p in the £ to SP, 63p to BSP.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance by Running Style

As regular readers will know, run style data is something I believe can be an important piece in the betting puzzle; certainly in a good proportion of races. To begin with let us see the proportion of runners that fit a specific running style. Geegeez breaks these running styles into four: Led – front runners; horse or horses that take an early lead; Prominent – horses that track the pace close behind the leader(s); Mid Division – horses that race mid pack; Held Up – horses that race at, or near the back of the field early.

Here are the splits for Honeyball:

 

These figures are relatively ‘normal’ although the front-running percentage is slightly higher than the 'all trainers' figure; commensurately, the midfield figure is slightly lower. Below is the success rate with each run style as far as win strike rate goes:

 

 

We have seen this pattern time and time again in this series of articles: horses that go to the front and lead early (L) win a far bigger proportion of their races compared to the other run styles. Prominent racers have also done well for Honeyball, hitting just over one win in every five races, but horses that raced mid-pack or at the back have relatively poor records. Looking at the potential returns for each group, it should be noted that the front-runner and prominent racer groups would have secured an SP profit; midfield runners would have lost 27p in the £, and hold up horses fared a little worse at 33p.



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

I want to look at favourites now and specifically their success rate in terms of run style:

 

 

We see exactly the same pattern here with early leading favourites having an excellent record. If you had backed all Honeyball favourites that ended up racing early in mid-division or at the back, it would have cost you a whopping 31p in the £ to SP.

Before moving on, let us split the front-runner data by race type. Potential returns are shown (obviously requiring your crystal ball to have been working perfectly to have identified those racing from the front before the races took place!):

 

 

These stats are highly unusual when comparing them to all trainers. Normally front runners do best in chases when comparing the three main race types; here, the yard's front runners have excelled in hurdle races. The average win percentage across all trainers for front running hurdlers is around 20%; Honeyball is close to double that. Clearly, any potential front runner from the stable in a hurdle contest is a horse to be seriously interested in.

 

Anthony Honeyball Performance by Jockey

Onto some jockey analysis now and, specifically, a look at any jockey who has ridden at least 50 times for Honeyball since 2013, with the proviso that they had at least one ride for the stable in 2022. I have ordered them by number of rides starting with the most:

 

 

David Noonan and Ben Godfrey have produced a blind profit but a 20/1 winner for Noonan and a 40/1 winner for Godfrey are the simple reasons behind this. Both Aidan Coleman and Rex Dingle have decent records when riding favourites – a 44% and 43% strike rate respectively, with both pilots making a profit to SP and BSP. They also improve upon the overall stable win percentage on front runners – Coleman stands at an impressive 37%, Dingle just under 34%.

 

Anthony Honeyball Extra Facts and figures

With the main body of the article complete, here are some extra stats or nuggets that may be of interest:

  1. Honeyball's longest losing run over the past ten years stands at 39. He has had 30 or more consecutive losers on three separate occasions;
  1. Between 15th December 2017 and 17th February 2018 he had 19 winners from 47 runners equating to a strike rate in excess of 40%; between 28th November 2019 and 6th February 2020 he had 18 winners from 45 runners (SR 40%);
  1. There are punters around who occasionally back their favourite trainer or favourite jockey and put their selections in doubles, trebles etc. Hence I thought I would look at what would have happened if you had backed all Anthony Honeyball runners in trebles on the days when he had exactly three runners. He has had exactly three runners running on the same day 100 times; the treble would have been landed just twice. However, despite just the two wins, if you had placed a £1 win treble on all 100 days you would have made a profit of £281.38 from an outlay of £100. Not such good news if you had attempted the idea with doubles on days when he had just two runners. In this case you would have lost £109.19 from your outlay of £218;
  1. Last time out winners have won nearly 21% of the time, but they have been poor value racking up losses of 32.6% to SP, 29% to BSP;
  1. Horses that failed to complete the course last time have proved profitable albeit from a relatively modest strike rate of 12.6%. To BSP this would have seen a return on investment of 40.7% (nearly 41p in the £). You would have made a profit on these runners in six of the ten years;
  1. Horses that have raced before and which are making their seasonal debut have an excellent record – 57 wins from 297 (SR 19.2%) producing profits to both SP and BSP; BSP being £87.46 (ROI 29.4%).

 

Anthony Honeyball – Main Takeaways

 

Anthony Honeyball is a trainer that should be on all of our radars as punters. His runners exhibit plenty of positives and I hope some of those have come out in this article; and that further yields can be derived from his Potwell Farm team this year and beyond.

Good luck

- DR

Other Recent Posts by This Author:



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Your first 30 days for just £1