Full card for Harcourts Daffodil Raceday at Ruakākā Races tomorrow

A race at Ruakaka last year. Photo / Michael Cunningham

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A full card is on show at the Harcourts Daffodil Raceday at Ruakākā Races tomorrow. Photo / File.

The drive north from the Cambridge stables of Murray Baker and Andrew Forsman should not be of concern to world traveller Indigenous Union in the Fell Engineering rating 65 over 2100 metres at Ruakākā tomorrow.

The six-year gelding has only had six starts in his racing life but they have been in three different countries. A winner at his second start at The Curragh in Ireland over 2000 metres, he was transported to Hong Kong for a period that resulted in only one placing over 1400 metres.

Now in the astute stable of last year's leading training partnership of Baker/Forsman who have produced many a quality staying type the Teofilo gelding has had one run in NZ at Manawatu over 1550 metres on a heavy track. One can only assume that the owners and trainers have faith in the horse's ability to continue his campaign here in New Zealand and this looks an ideal race to justify their perseverance.

The local opponent Rocanic, also six-years-old, from the Uretiti Beach based trainer Clayton Stevenson has had a different path with 32 starts. Rocanic has raced in much higher grades than his rating in the last few weeks and will appreciate a significant downgrade in the class of opposition.

The Chris Gibbs and Michelle Bradley training partnership starts the 2018/19 racing season with a bang. The team has accepted with 32 individual horses for tomorrow's meeting, although some are reserves and will only get a run if there are scratchings. Maybe this is the reason that Michelle Bradley is holidaying in Asia before catching up with the Singapore team.

How many races can the Gibbs/Bradley team win? It is likely that the number will be more than half the programme as these five – Hello It's Me, Call Me Murphy, Tavlin, Amazing As and Toy Kingdom – must be very strong chances in their races. The stable also always seem to pop a surprise winner at good odds so it is a good idea to include their runners in your combinations for trifectas.

It has been a year of changes for the stable with the head of Logan Racing, Donna Logan, now concentrating on the Singapore stable with the new Gibbs/Bradley combination managing the New Zealand stable.

Another local change in training partnership is the retirement of Lisa Rae from the Rae racing stables, who will now be a partnership of Kenny Rae and Krystal Williams-Tuhoro.

2017/18 was a very successful year at the Ruakākā track for the trio of partners, with the two jewels of the Ruakaka calendar won by the stable. Prom Queen won the Tavistock Northland Breeders' Stakes last September and Major Tom won the ITM/GIB Whangārei Gold Cup in July just gone.

The new team has five runners tomorrow with the half-brother to Prom Queen, Our Prom King, the most interesting because he showed a lot of potential in his races and trials last year, but his manners were not the best. Now gelded, the stable must be confident his manners are fine as they have not trialled him before he starts in the three-year-old Tavistock at Cambridge Stud maiden tomorrow.

The owners of the three-year-olds engaged in that race will be hoping to show enough form to continue onto the $70,000 Group 3 Cambridge Stud Northland Breeders Stakes over 1200 metres on September 15. The top three with exposed form as two-year-olds are Not Usual Current, Dublin Rose and Simogramor from the leading stables of Gibbs/Bradley, Jamie Richards and Team Rogerson respectively.

Both Dublin Rose and Simogramor have recently won trials and so should be well advanced to prove their capability. For a maiden race it is of excellent quality and reflects the start of the return of the horses, owners have high expectations for in the good races for spring and summer.

On September 1 the Whangārei Racing Club will join with the NZ Racing Board's national racing promotion to raise awareness and funding for the Cancer Society by holding the Harcourts Daffodil Raceday. In our case the funds raised through the Harcourts High Tea, gold coin donations and auctions held on the day will go directly to the Cancer Society Northland.

The higher prize money in Australia has enticed another local trainer to head across the ditch to try their luck. Trainer Kim Knight and owner Karen Connell are planning to head to Geelong to race their consistent performer Spider for a month after the local meeting on September 1.

On the industry front it has been reported that the John Messara industry governance review commissioned by Racing Minister Winston Peters has been submitted to the Minister. The next step is for the Minister to announce what steps he intends to take because of the review recommendations. The NZ Thoroughbred Racing Awards night is on August 26 and that may be a timely vehicle for him to release his plan of actions for the NZ Racing Industry.

It seems that the key action will be either to combine all the codes and NZ Racing Board as one body including the TAB reflecting the Western Australian racing model or remove the role of the NZ Racing Board from racing and leave the codes to manage their own sports with an independent TAB like New South Wales.

Given Messara's NSW background I know which option my money is on. Let us hope it includes the bold step to add more betting operator licences to compete with the TAB to expand the NZ betting market, rather than the betting happening offshore.

The first race tomorrow starts at 12.25pm, with the last race at 5.04pm.