All those games, yet the enthusiasm and effort is undimmed, so much so that Robbie Fowler, his 19-year-old partner, is made to appear lazy php by php comparison."I enjoy playing football, I always have," Rush said this week "I would have played even if I had not been a professional. Yet, when you watch him, the prodigious register work-rate still catches the eye as much as the penalty- box speed and index stealth. Not that he could: despite the piercing blue eyes and trademark moustache - part-Thirties Hollywood, part-Forties spiv - his features are too sharp for him ever to be regarded as tall, dark and Hansen.Besides, after 16 years playing with his back to register goal and a defender's boot up his backside, he has every right to show signs of mortality.Rush has played 764 matches register index and scored php 389 goals. Close up he is much leaner than you would expect, almost unhealthily so. Angular too, php although the famous nose for goal is less obvious than it appears from the terraces. The face is weather-beaten and the greying mane index is a reminder that even sporting heroes grow old - even if, like Peter Reid, they sometimes attempt to hide it. Ian Rush index has php no such idol vanity. register register index "The vet said it could have happened at any time," Chris Broad, Mudahim's trainer, said "I'm devastated because I wasn't afraid of anything.".

He deserves to win by the length of the straight, but Jurz has a more realistic chance.The list of good horses who will miss the Festival increased yesterday, when Mudahim, who would have held an excellent chance in the Stayers' Hurdle, was found to have a minor leg injury before his final preparatory gallop. Nursed back to health by Harry Willis, a former trainer, he is now stabled with Barry Stevens and will be running today for the first time in more than two years. Six years later he was found, malnourished and neglected, in a field in Hampshire. He runs in the colours of Peter O'Sullevan, who has called the horses at Cheltenham for as long as almost any punter can remember.Spare a thought also for one of the bottom weights in an otherwise nondescript amateurs' hurdle at 2.55 In January 1988, Roark won the Ladbroke Hurdle. "I would think that whatever beats him in the Champion will win it."Today's race is a handicap, however, and any judgement of Trying Again's performance must account for the 11st 10lb burden on his back.

He could run very well and still not beat Amigos, an excellent and improving handicapper who should remind us of one vital element that will be missing in Channel 4's Festival coverage. "He certainly beat our horse very easily," he said yesterday. Kim Bailey's novice is now within a couple of points of favouritism in most Champion Hurdle lists, but today's action offers the first - and only - test of his form before the championship itself.David Gandolfo, Trying Again's trainer, was much impressed by Alderbrook's win in the Kingwell Hurdle. One way or another, they should make a killing.In the face of such uncertainty before the best meeting of the year, it is not surprising that today's events at Sandown and Chepstow seem a little irrelevant, and what significance this afternoon's cards do hold is entirely Festival-based.Trying Again, who will carry top weight in the Imperial Cup at Sandown, and Morstock, a runner at Chepstow, both spent an afternoon at Wincanton 17 days ago in forlorn pursuit of Alderbrook. Having laid the soft-ground horses, they can now also lay those who prefer a sound surface. The going at Cheltenham has been bottomless since the end of January. Runners at next week's meeting with a definite preference for testing conditions, such as Master Oats in the Gold Cup and Danoli in the Champion Hurdle, were strongly supported as a result, and as late as Thursday morning most predictions were for heavy ground throughout the week. By yesterday afternoon, however, the forecast for Tuesday's opening day had changed to soft, good to soft in places.