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Recent Group 3 winner Rouleau heads an international nine-runner field for the £50,000 Somerville Tattersall Stakes on Thursday, 24th September, the first day of the three-day Cambridgeshire meeting, at Newmarket’s Rowley Mile Racecourse.

A high quality line-up for this seven furlong Group 3 event includes challengers from France and Ireland plus two previous Pattern Race scorers and no less than four horses who have already finished second in Group company, not to mention Clive Cox’s exciting five-length maiden winner, Zonderland.

Trained by Charlie Appleby, Rouleau lifted the Group 3 Sirenia Stakes at Kempton Park on 5th September having earlier been placed in the Group 3 Molecomb Stakes at Goodwood. He will carry a 3lb penalty for that Kempton success, as will Orvar, who is just back from Turkey where he landed the lucrative Group 3 Trakya Trophy in Istanbul.

The French representative is Andre Fabre’s Lawmaking, touched off in the Group 3 Prix La Rochette at Longchamp earlier this month, while Jim Bolger sends over from Ireland the Group 3 Tyros Stakes runner-up, Sanus Per Aquam.

Other contenders already proven at this level or above are Tasleet, second in the Group 2 Richmond Stakes at Goodwood in July, and Steady Pace, who, like Tasleet, found only the brilliant Shalaa too strong for him in the Group 2 Arqana July Stakes at Newmarket’s Adnams July Course back in mid-summer.

“Rouleau has been ultra-consistent throughout his two-year-old campaign and I am hoping that he will be competitive on this first try at seven furlongs. If he is it will open up doors for him in the future,” said Appleby.

“I don’t think that it will prove to be out of his range as he helped force a merry gallop in the Sirenia and then found again when he was challenged late on. He has always tended to be doing his best work towards the end of his races.”

“He’s a very relaxed horse with a great temperament who doesn’t light up in the mornings, so that should help him on Thursday. He will be switched off and ridden to get the trip.”

“He does have a penalty but Thursday may be one of the last chances this season for him to run on a sound surface as the ground tends to deteriorate at this time of year.”