Today's Hennessy Gold Cup meeting is a case in point.

Arguably the best days jumping of the whole year, Leopardstown hosts a brilliantly-balanced card, perfectly positioned in the calendar for Cheltenham aspirants, and generously embellished with the guts of a million euro in prize money. The main event is preceded by two mouth-watering novice contests, and the rest of the card is equally compelling. Yet the sum total of English raiders this afternoon is a big fat zero.

Nada. None.

This may be welcome news for the bank managers of local trainers, but in reality it just continues to highlight the growing role of the Cheltenham festival as the only source of truth in the crowning of champions.

It's not only the weight for age and conditions races that have been impacted; the top Irish handicaps are being ignored in equal measure this year. There have been three handicap chases worth over 100,000 run here since Christmas, but not one of them attracted an English challenger, and only Cherub from the Jonjo O Neill stable came over for the Pierse Hurdle in January.

Senior NH Handicapper Noel O'Brien is convinced that there isn't a problem with the local handicap system and that parity and consistency have been established for British-trained horses running here. "If I thought they weren't coming because of my handicapping I'd be disappointed, but I don't think it is that. If a horse is rated 90 over there that's what he is likely to run off here.

"Anyway, there was only one English runner in a handicap at Leopardstown's Christmas meeting, Buck Whaley, and he skated in. Two years ago there were two English entries in our Grand National, and one of them won it. Yet, the following year they had no runners. When we started winning the national over there again, every year after had a record Irish entry."

The most worrying aspect of the current trend is the apparent lack of interest shown in Irish racing by Britain's two most successful trainers, Paul Nicholls and Martin Pipe. They turn out over 1,000 runners a season, yet between them sent only one runner to post in Ireland in 2005. Pipe's principal owner, David Johnson has a huge string of horses, yet hasn't had a runner over here in the last five years.

A spokesperson for the Pipe stable explains the logic. "The main reason we do not run in Ireland very often is that the prize money does not go towards our championships.

Mr Johnson wants to win English prize money towards the owner's championship." This is the strategy that makes Plumpton a more immediate priority than Punchestown.

Leopardstown General Manager, Matt O'Dwyer, admits to being disappointed by this travel aversion. "I don't know why they don't come to this meeting. We always try to look after our visitors. I have spoken with Martin time and time again and he tells me that he will take a look at it."

There was a time when the pattern was very different.

Irish breeders would sell their best young horses to Britain and they would be back on the next ferry to win back the purchase price in prize money.

The robust economy has meant that more good horses are staying home. This is probably the biggest reason for the 'chicken out', but there is no doubt that the card at Leopardstown today would be even more intriguing with the presence of some overseas raiders. Maybe we should exact our revenge by withdrawing all our entries from Cheltenham and Aintree and see how they like it. Well, maybe not.