Paul Kealy tipped I Am Maximus at 40-1 in his weekly newsletter in February - read his latest missive here

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After spending half of Saturday scrolling through X (which I have to call it now instead of Twitter apparently) and seeing people bleating about the Grand National, I was going to pen a piece saying how wonderful I thought the race was, but that seems to have been done by plenty.

Suffice to say I thoroughly agreed with our own Lee Mottershead in that I thought it was a fine advertisement for the race itself and for racing, and I'm sure I'd have said that even if I hadn't just had my first decent win in the race for the best part of 40 years.

Those moaning that too many horses were in contention in the closing stages obviously don't watch racing for the same reasons as me.

It seems plenty tune in to see the sort of carnage that used to unfold, and I don't get that one bit.

Fences like the old Becher's Brook belong to a different era and would bring about a rapid end to jump racing if still allowed now. There was nothing fair about a huge fence with a massive drop that the horses couldn't see and for which they were totally unprepared.

The race has been massively improved, but if there are now ways to improve it still surely one would be to make sure all the right horses are running in it, which palpably wasn't the case on Saturday.

Paul Kealy tipped I Am Maximus at 40-1 in this newsletter in early February - as well as tipping the one-two in Saturday's Racing Post

Having been accused of bitterness on X by someone after suggesting that some of the horses from the big stables were there purely to keep other better-handicapped rivals away from their big guns, I would first of all like to declare that I couldn't care less if Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott ran 17 horses each as long they all deserved to be there. But some of them didn't.

I know my Irish colleague David Jennings doesn't think there should be a qualification process for the Pertemps Final at Cheltenham, but I think there definitely should be for the Grand National.

The Pertemps is essentially just a run-of-the-mill handicap that just happens to be run at the Cheltenham Festival, whereas the Grand National is the most valuable race in the jumps calendar and warrants a qualification system that ensures we get the right contenders and most competitive race possible. Entry by handicap mark alone should not be enough.

Let's just take a couple of the rags from Saturday, one trained by Elliott and the other by Mullins, as an example.

Minella Crooner went off at 125-1 and was 455 on Betfair. He once won a 3m maiden hurdle at odds of 2-5, but his form figures after that beyond that trip were PPP3P, with the third in a four-runner race and a beaten distance of 25 lengths. He added another P on Saturday, having weakened around a mile from home.

Then we have Janidil, who was also a 125-1 shot and went off at 335 on Betfair. He did have some useful form at 3m two years ago, although had pretty much advertised the fact that he didn't really stay, and his only run over as far as 3m since pulling up in the 2022 Punchestown Gold Cup came when he beat one horse home in the Pertemps Final last month. He had never run in a staying handicap chase, and if there was one sorry sight from Aintree it was seeing him clamber over the last, at which point he was so tired that his rider thankfully didn't even ask him to finish the race. I reckon he'd have been 100-1 even if he was carrying 8st rather than 11st 6lb. So what was he doing there?

Janidil: was he a worthy Grand National contender?Credit: Patrick McCann

You could certainly pick out some more, but Janidil's presence, and that of Minella Crooner, denied runs to Malina Girl and Desertmore House, two horses who would have had their followers.

Malina Girl had won the Ulster National over 3m4f the previous season and a 3m3f handicap chase at Cheltenham this season by ten lengths from a former Coral Gold Cup winner.

Desertmore House had won two 3m handicap chases in the summer, including the Kerry National. He'd been out of form since, but was still far more deserving of a run than the two mentioned above.

I don't know what the answer is, but I wouldn't mind seeing a points system based on runners and finishing positions in valuable chases over 3m-plus throughout the season, with those reaching a certain number of points, perhaps any at all, being given preference over those given campaigns over hurdles or obvious non-stayers who would never normally attempt those kind of trips.

It was pointed out to me when I suggested something similar on the Coral-sponsored In The Know show last Friday that several recent winners would not have got in, which would be absolutely true. But then again, if a qualification system had been in place, perhaps they would have been given different preparations in the first place.

It's surely worth looking into and is certainly a far better idea than looking to limit how many horses any individual trainer can run. Let's instead kick out horses who wouldn't normally go near a staying chase or who have barely managed to raise a gallop for the past 12 months.

Read this next:

Red-hot Paul Kealy is back in the tipping hotseat after 20-1, 9-1, 8-1, 7-1 and 5-1 winners at Aintree 

Chris Cook: has the Grand National been turned into another cross-country race? 

Lee Mottershead; the Grand National has changed for the better - and how anyone can moan about Saturday’s race is beyond me

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