Joseph O’Brien’s charge had impressed in winning his first two starts over obstacles and looked set to complete the hat-trick in the Future Champions Novice Hurdle at Leopardstown’s Christmas meeting before stumbling and falling after the final flight.

The five-year-old was the 3-1 favourite to reward those who kept the faith for his second attempt at Grade One success and he finished with a flourish in the hands of JJ Slevin to deny the front-running Ballyfad by a short head, with King Rasko Grey only half a length further behind in third.

Slevin said: “I’d say he’s a very good horse. I was a bit worried about the ground coming here but obviously a good horse will go on any ground.

“He has a lot of class and is improving. He was unlucky the last day with Sam (Ewing) and is just a very good horse.

“It’s heavy, winter ground and proper hard work but fair play to everyone that we are racing.”

O’Brien said: “He’s a good horse, obviously, and he got a lovely ride from JJ.

“We were always going to ride him fairly cold today. I said to JJ that we might get beat because of that but we were thinking of the horse’s long-term career.

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“I thought at halfway there was no chance he was going to make up any ground because they hacked around. The second and third sat first and second the whole way and we came from third or fourth last.

“It’s a testament to the horse’s ability and also JJ made a key move to go from in to out to get a smooth passage home, all the way. Ultimately that was the winning of the race for him.

“A few people mentioned that he wasn’t a great jumper but he actually is a very good jumper, he just made a few silly mistakes. I think his jumping was good today and he’s learned from every race.”

Talk The Talk is 5-1 from 7-1 with Paddy Power for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival and O’Brien expects him to be a major player.

He added: “He’s probably going to be favourite now and he’ll have a favourite’s chance.”