Curragh grounds manager preparing for bumper weekend with Derby Festival and his son’s U-20 World Cup game

Yes, it will be the middle leg of the Dubai Duty Free Derby Festival, with the Irish Derby itself to come the following day, but while Brophy will be focused on his job, his thoughts will invariably drift.

It will be a proud day for the Kildare man, born just over the road in Two Mile House, as his son Tadhg is part of the Ireland rugby squad that get their under 20 World Cup campaign under way with an afternoon kick-off against Italy in Cape Town.

Brophy Jnr earned three caps as a replacement scrumhalf in the team’s unbeaten Six Nations campaign and is determined to establish a career as a professional. He spent many a day repairing divots out on The Curragh with his dad. Richie’s passions are “the two Rs – racing and rugby”, but watching Tadhg play for Ireland was another level.

“It is fantastic for him,” says Brophy with a broad grin. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t go this time, I have a job to do. But I might just have the game on the phone. Hopefully it goes well but it’s very exciting. He has worked very, very hard.”

Brophy is acutely aware of the history that surrounds him as he goes about his job every day and the responsibilities that come with overseeing what is renowned globally as one of the best and fairest galloping surfaces there is.

​Though he made it here the hard way, via the now-defunct Warrenstown Agricultural College, the Irish National Stud course and a variety of jobs in Ireland, America and Saudi Arabia, where he went for six months to break horses but stayed nearly nine years and met his wife Lorna, it was fitting he would end back here.

His great-grandfather, William Brophy owned the winner of the 1880 Irish Derby, King of the Bees, and holds the distinction of completing a unique double that year, with Controller triumphant in his colours in the Irish Grand National just a few months earlier. Astoundingly, the pair were half-siblings, out of the same dam, Winged Bee.

William’s son, Ned, was a founding member of Naas Racecourse, so the sport is indelibly woven into Brophy’s fabric. His involvement now though, is to ensure that the surface is in mint condition.

“What you have to do is have it safe for horse and rider and that’s our priority. Brendan Sheridan is brilliant. He’s the most experienced clerk of the course in Ireland. We’d walk the course and discuss what we might need to tweak and change.”

Climate change has made it very difficult. The Curragh was always unusual in that it had its own peculiarities, given its vastness — around 1,500 acres, taking in all the gallops surrounding the track. But now, with more rain but also more wind, you tend to have to react rather than stick to a plan.

“I remember the first year I took over, being down at the six-furlong start two days before the Guineas pumping water off the track so we could race. If you’ve a choice, you’d prefer dry conditions. You can put the water out on the track but it’s very hard to take it off. But it’s our job to provide a consistent, safe surface. And for flat horses that’s good ground, good to firm in places.

​“The climate is so unique because of the openness of the place. I’ve seen at times where it’s been raining in the stable yard and it’s bone dry at the mile start. It changes rapidly.”

There was an average of three inches of rain a month between October and March and it’s only now that the grass is beginning to grow. Drainage is helped by an aquifer underneath The Curragh — a type of underground lake — that pumps water into surrounding rivers in dry spells while drawing it in during times of heavy rain.

There is an on-site reservoir for watering thanks to the Briggs irrigation system, and with valves all the way round the different tracks courtesy of the support of Moyglare Stud, Brophy, his assistant Darragh McDonald and his team can be very specific in terms of how much water they use and what areas they put it on.

“It’s brilliant in its accuracy. Myself and Brendan will walk around and get a feel for what’s needed. Met Éireann are a great help to us, and we’ve a direct line to them.”

He has a staff of around 18 at this time of the year, many of them students. That is reduced by two-thirds in the off-season, though this is when preparation begins to get the track in order for next weekend, when it will be used for the first time this year.

Renowned agronomist, John Souter comes once a year to walk the track and offer advice on different treatments, from putting in sand slits for softer ground to drawing up a nutrient programme for the year.

“We use mostly 7-6-17 and before the bigger meetings, we’d always use liquid seaweed, which gives the grass that lovely flush of turquoise green. It really brightens it up. John is a great help. He’s a mine of experience. He’s done pitches all over the world, like Man United, for example.

“The first thing John Souter would say when he digs with his little shovel, he loves to see worms in it. Worms keep the whole ground open and aerated. When they digest the sand we put on, it filters down into it the soil to aid drainage. Rather than a compacted surface, you get a surface with a cushion.

​“To start recovery, the track will be walked in by hand with forks, each divot put back in. If you’ve had a really wet time, the divots are way bigger and there’s a lot more work. If it’s drier, you mightn’t have done as much damage to your track.

“We’ll use a very light ring roller after we’ve walked it in. The less rolling you can do the better because you don’t want compaction, but you will have to roll a certain amount.

“And then we come out with our divot mix on trailers with shovels and put a little bit onto each hole that needs it. That gives us a good opportunity to introduce new seed into it, which we put through the mix.

“The grass would be 50 per cent dwarf perennial ryegrass, a shorter perennial ryegrass for sport that doesn’t grow high. You’d also have creeping red fescues and a stronger chewing’s fescue that crawls across the ground that creates that matting within it.”

The Derby is run over a mile and a half but the area you are covering for this surface alone is considerably vaster.

“Rather than one racing line, you’re minding all of them but you want it all looking well so you have to keep mowing it all the time. But on the Derby Track for example, you’re talking about 70 acres. That’s a lot of ground. The growth has been slower this year so our lives have been a bit easier but once the heat starts to come that we’re expecting, we’ll be clipping away. We keep it at four inches. It’s ideal for flat racing.”

The Derby track was marked out about a fortnight ago.

“For the build-up to a meeting like the Derby, the first thing you’ll do is mark out your track. You put down your pegs, put a line on it and then the lads come along, drop the rail and put it up, getting the bends and everything right.

“The track is there for years so it pretty much marks itself but because it’s a triple meeting, there could be up to two miles of rails to be moved on Friday night for Saturday and then on Saturday night for Sunday. There’s a lot of work in that. People could be here till one o’clock in the morning. You also have the staff looking after the 130 boxes to muck out, power wash, disinfect and bed down for the next day.”

King of the Bees? Certainly busy bees, performing unheralded heroics. Long may it continue.