I think I am beginning to drive my wife Penny mad – I’m spending every night on the computer trawling through the internet looking at different stallions in Australia! It has taken a few years, but our homebred horses are starting to hit the mark, which is really exciting. However, breeding horses is such a long term and unpredictable game we have held off breeding from many mares over here as it is so expensive to keep horses in the UK. So we have decided to take the plunge and start to do things properly in Australia instead!

I consider my father one of the best judges of a horse. For example, a few years ago he picked out a little two year old filly called Doondi Sapphire at the biggest Australian Stock Horse sale (the Dalby Sales) and paid just AU$2,000 for her. She was out of a Thoroughbred mare (Dad is fairly obsessed with Thoroughbreds and racing) by a son of what is turning out to be the most influential Australian Stock Horse sire of all time, Warrenbri Romeo. I must admit that I didn’t think a lot of her as a young horse, but four years later she was crowned Champion Polocrosse Horse at the Australian National Championships when ridden by my sister, Sandra. It turns out this was no fluke as her full sister, Doondi Diamond, has turned out just as good. What a tragedy that both of the horses have recently suffered leg fractures in freak accidents that have ended their ridden careers (although both were saved).

However, it does present an opportunity to breed from the best… hence why I have been obsessing over stallions for the last couple of weeks! The idea is to take embryos from these mares and improve the existing breeding programme on the family property, Silver Hills. We are definitely aiming for the old saying "breed from the best to the best, and then hope for the best"! You never know, one day these little embryos may be playing in high goal polo and international polocrosse…

The photos are of some potential dads. Like my stallion over here, Risebridge Diesel, they are all Australian Stock Horses – my breed of choice for producing top class polocrosse horses, especially when crossed with Thoroughbreds. They are amazing little horses and make top athletes in any sphere – for example Ringwould Jaguar was part of the Australian Olympic silver medal winning eventing team in Beijing!

We had a fantastic time with friends and family over Xmas and it was quite nice to have an enforced break beforehand due to the snow – I even had time to have a ‘spring clean’ of all the tack rooms and sheds – it's amazing how much junk I have accumulated over the seven years I have been here!

Now 2009 is over, and I have duly reflected on the last 12 months and it feels like a real turning point. With the threat of the credit crunch looming over us, we went ahead anyway with our plans for new facilities and staff and it paid off with our most productive and successful year. I also made a return to playing top level polocrosse after gaining my British Citizenship and played for the UK against Australia, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland. I was also lucky enough to play for the ‘Renaissance’ team in the Zimbabwe Open. I won’t lie and say it didn’t come without a fair bit of blood, sweat and tears, so it was interesting to do some number crunching! 112 was the number of clients horses broken in or retrained in 2009; 12 was the number of my own horses I worked on and 12.1 is the average number of horses I trained every working day of 2009!

Considering that the majority of these horses were young or have behavioural problems and I sat my fair share of rodeo performances, so it is no wonder various joints in my body are starting to feel the strain! Other 2009 highlights included performing on Diesel at Your Horse Live, having the polocrosse test matches against South Africa televised on Sky, teaching Mike Bushell, the BBC Sports Presenter how to play polocrosse for his slot on ‘Breakfast’ and of course, writing for Horse Hero!

I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but I do have a bit of a wish list for 2010, so here goes!

• Have a happy and healthy family and friends
• Have a summer holiday and have next Christmas in Australia
• Employ a fantastic rider to share breaking in duties
• Put all our business plans into action (some of these plans date back to 2002!)
• To learn to enjoy going to the gym!
• For the exchange rate between Australia and UK to improve so I can afford to start an embryo transfer programme out there!
• Get good at golf and polo so I can have something to do when I win the lottery!

Whatever your resolutions and wishes are, I hope you have a fun-filled and successful 2010!