LLOYD Williams, a six-time winning owner of the Melbourne Cup, has confirmed what most already knew.

“You are talking to the head trainer here,” he said on radio this week. The response was precipitated by Robert Hickmott’s departure from Macedon Lodge, replaced as the licensed trainer for William’s horses by Liam Howley, a 2009 graduate of the Darley Flying Start program, who has been at Macedon Lodge the past six years.