Playing God is one of the most consistent racehorses in Australia

You’d struggle to find a more consistent racehorse than Playing God in Australia, a four year old trained out of Western Australia by Neville Parnham.

This isn’t a case of a slightly above average horse being kept in the lower grades at the provincials to boost their record either, this gelding is the real deal and his autumn season proved that.

Twice he ran at Flemington last season and both times he placed third, first in the Australian Guineas and then again in the Australian Cup.

He made his return to Flemington for the spring last start as well finishing fourth in a hotly contested Makybe Diva Stakes.

Amazingly that’s was just the third time in his 16 start career that he’s finished out of the money with an overall worst result of fifth  which he picked up in his first prep.

He’s won six overall and this weekend he steps up again for the Underwood Stakes at Caulfield.

It was already one of the toughest races of the weekend on paper and after picking up gate 15 things haven’t got any easier.

“We haven’t done a lot of form on the race just yet but we’ve got to have a good think about it because we’ve got the visors draw,” Parnham said.

“My guess would be that he’s probably going to go off the pace and we’ll just let him work into it.

“Hopefully he can get dragged into the race by something else and then we can be in a position to finish it off.”

He says the horse has improved leading into his third up run and he’s settling in perfectly into Melbourne.

“The fact that we’ve been able to get a regular working pattern with him over the last fortnight its certainly been beneficial for him,” he said.

“I’d certainly say we’d see improvement from him from his last start to this race.”

Parnham certainly isn’t lacking any ambition for Playing God’s prep this spring with nominations in for all the major’s including Caulfield Cup and Melbourne Cup, but weight for age is where he sees him.

“It would be my preference to just target the Cox Plate,” he said.

“We’ll just see how he goes from his next two runs and that’ll give us a guide as to where he’s at.

“The 2000m I believe is perfect for him.”