VICTORIAN TRAINERS TARGET MORPHETTVILLE FEATURE

By Graham Potter | Thursday, April 16, 2026

Several Victorian trainers have targeted the Listed H C Nitschke Stakes at Morphettville in South Australia on Saturday, and the betting suggests that the best of their runners could play a big part in the outcome.

The Ben, Will and JD Hayes training partnership and the Ciaron Maher and Robbie Griffith stables all send out last start winners, with the Hayes trained Rohesia and the Maher trained Exit currently sharing favouritism at a price of $3.40.

Rohesia saluted last time in a Class 3 at Ballarat at the start of the month, while Exit landed a Three-Year-Old Handicap win at the end of March. Both of those winning runs came over 1400m … the distance of Saturday’s H C Nitschke Stakes.

Cranbourne based trainer Robbie Griffiths will be looking to upstage them all with his last start winner, Farakta, who won on debut in a Maiden Plate at Geelong over 1200m when beating Bonus Season (who franked that form by winning next time out) by 0.75 lengths.

That was a progressive run by Farakta when taking the step up in distance from his previous start over 1100m … and the daughter of Farnan could improve further, both with the increase in distance up to 1400m and having now gained the benefit of more race experience. $17 is tempting odds.

Philip Stakes … who has training establishments at both Pakenham and Morphettville, will also be pushing for a big result with Yellow Jacket, who sits on the third line of betting at $4. The daughter of I Am Invincible finished in a close-up third at Caulfield in a Three-Year-Old Fillies Handicap over 1200m last time when resuming.

She too could bring more bite to her game this time around with the benefit of that first-up run.

Stokes won last year’s edition of the race with Stay Focussed.

Mick Price and Michael Kent Junior (with No No Yes) and Clinton McDonald (with Live) are others who help make up the Victorian raiding party.

You can be sure that all of local trainers involved will try to keep the prize-money at home though.

To that end, Richard and Chantelle Jolly send out Kalmana (who has placed in his last three starts) … Cody Readon has More Than Hope engaged (a last start winner), Byron Cozamanis is represented by Talent Scout (who finished second last time out), the Aaron Bain and Ned Taylor training team have pinned their hopes on One More Song (who has won three out of her last four starts), Andrew Gluyas has Tip Top Tori (who recently won a Maiden) and Peter and Belinda Blanch have Boolcunda Dawn (who has finished first and second in her last two starts) ready to go.

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