GODOLPHIN have been patient with 2012 St Leger winner Encke, who returned at Goodwood in August after an absence of nearly two years.

He finished second to Richard Hannon’s Pether’s Moon in the Glorious Stakes that day, but was well held in Brown Panther’s Irish St Leger and last Saturday proved rather disappointing in the Group 3 BMW Cumberland Lodge Stakes, finishing only third of five to Pether’s Moon despite being 6lb better off this time.

Paul Hanagan went a steady gallop on Encke and tried to kick clear three furlongs from home. He has employed that tactic successfully in the past at this venue but the 6/5 chance was never going well enough to set up a winning lead.

Pether’s Moon (9/4) and Pat Dobbs closed up and went on at the furlong marker but this is not a horse to win by impressive margins and he was being closed down in the dying strides by Jim Bolger’s Parish Hall, who was only a neck adrift at the line. Encke was a further three-quarters of a length away.

The Hannons do not have many horses running over a mile and a half and Pether’s Moon has been a revelation this term. This was his eighth outing - Richard Hughes was on board for the other seven - and his previous success came in the Group 2 International Bosphorus Cup in Turkey.

Winning owner John Manley is thinking in terms of Dubai after a short rest.

“Today we gave most of them 5lb and Parish Hall 2lb and he’s a good horse,” he said. “I think we might be heading for the Sheema Classic; it’s not set in stone but that’s the plan at the moment. He’ll have a rest but not for too long because he’s a big, gross horse and if he gets too big it takes a long while to get him back.”

Dobbs is an underrated jockey who never lets anyone down.

“He is versatile ground-wise and although he can stop in front we’d taken a couple of lengths out of them and that’s what won him the race,” he said. “I always felt we’d hold on.” Manning thought that Parish Hall did well, considering the soft ground.

“He was changing his legs and rolling around a bit,” he said. “He wouldn’t have appreciated it as soft as that.”