Tony McEvoy on track for premiership

TAKING out the Adelaide trainers' premiership would mean plenty to Tony McEvoy.

Tony McEvoy

TAKING out the Adelaide trainers' premiership would mean plenty to Tony McEvoy.

With two months of the season to go, the Angaston horseman holds a commanding lead with 35 metro winners - nine ahead of two-time champion Mark Kavanagh.

McEvoy is no stranger to premiership success - collecting four Adelaide and one Melbourne titles in his time as head trainer at Lindsay Park.

This would be the first one in his own right, but he won't be going out of his way to protect his advantage.

"I'd be very keen to win it, but I'm not really making a conscious decision to win it," he said from his Kildalton Park base yesterday. "This will be our first full year in business and I think it would compliment my facility and compliment my staff for their hard work.

"We've got a lot of good trainers in South Australia and to be able to be at the top of the tree would be a very nice feeling.

"To win the premiership in our first full year, our second year of business, would be pretty good."

It's all come together very quickly for McEvoy, who stepped out on his own in July 2010 with just four horses in the stable.

Now he's got the biggest team in the state - there are 80 in work at the moment - and isn't far away from reaching his optimum level.

"The maximum number of horses I want to train is a flat 85," McEvoy said.

"That doesn't mean I don't take any horses, but when a horse is offered to me and I'm at my maximum of 85, one's going to go. I'll take the new horse on, but the one I feel is at the bottom of the rung will fall off the back.

"It's like an attrition rate in the wild, the lame animal at the back gets eaten by lion and that keeps the herd healthy."

McEvoy looks set to extend his lead in the premiership with eight runners at Morphettville Parks today.

The headline act is talented youngster Little Critter, who showed plenty in his first couple of races in Adelaide.

The Court Command two-year-old is resuming after finishing down the track in the Magic Millions Two-year-old Classic on the Gold Coast earlier this year.

"Magic Millions day he just wasn't good enough and he'd probably been up a long time," McEvoy said.

The trainer also expects Sea Coral and Harmonic to run well after finishing close up in their most recent efforts.