TWO Stars shaped like a group horse in the making when beating My Mate Alfie in the Woodlands Stakes in April and Fozzy Stack’s progressive sprinter returns with his favoured rain in tomorrow’s Irish Stallion Farms EBF Abergwaun Stakes at Tipperary.

When asked for his expectations in the listed contest, Stack told The Irish Field: “He’s in good form. He’ll obviously need the ground to soften a bit to take his chance but he’s in good order and hopefully we’ll get enough rain.”

Thankfully, it was only a need for softened ground and not a setback that has kept the five-year-old from the track, and Stack has some illustrious late targets in his sights, with the Flying Five Stakes to the fore of his mind.

He isn’t the only trainer with big ambitions for his runner, as Andy Slattery has never disguised the regard in which he holds Powerful Nation, who placed in a number of stakes races before notching a listed win in June. The three-year-old disappointed next time out in the Sapphire Stakes, but Slattery has reasons to be confident of a return to form tomorrow.

“Powerful Nation is working brilliant; he’s in great shape,” the trainer reported. “We were mystified at the Curragh. The vet said he swallowed his palette coming out of the stalls, so we’ve cauterised his palette and his work has been very good.”

An unknown

Any rain that falls will make tomorrow something of a fact-finding mission for the colt, Slattery admits. “I don’t know about the rain that’s coming, because we’ve never tried him on it. He’s out of a Society Rock mare, I think they went on soft ground, but he’s so fast that you’d imagine rain would blunt his speed.

“He’s in the Flying Five and he’s in the Prix de l’Abbaye, so it’s easier found out in Tipperary than France.”

Johnny Murtagh, meanwhile, is hoping the rain stays away so that Songhai can gain a deserved stakes win, following fine efforts in defeat at listed and Group 2 level. “We’re very happy with her,” Murtagh noted, before commenting on her recent third in Deauville.

“She didn’t get the clearest of runs but we were delighted with the way she finished off. She’s been placed now in group races and listed races, so it would be nice to get some winning blacktype after all that placed form.