By Garry Howe
A group of mates whose friendship was cemented along the boundary line of the Nar Nar Goon Football Club will be looking to achieve a slice of local sporting history just up the road in Saturday’s Sportsbet Pakenham Cup.
Those 11 people and another 40 hangers-on have booked five mini-marquees along the straight at Racing.com Park to boot the Cranbourne-trained Savvy Oak home in the $300,000 feature race.
They are among the 96 owners of the handy four-year-old, trained by the partnership of Trent Busuttin and Natalie Young, who has won three races and been placed three times in 17 career starts for $266,900 in prizemoney.
Three of those have been at the top level in derbies.
Savvy Oak ran seventh in the 2018 VRC Derby at Flemington with a chequered passage up the straight, was second to Qafila (beating home Mr Quickie and Pakenham Cup contenders Chapada and Secret Blaze) in the South Australian Derby in May and was then buffeted from pillar to post in a roughhouse Queensland Derby in June, finishing 11th.
The Pakenham Cup has been on the radar for some time, much to the delight of the local ownership group – Mick Payroli, Greg Noonan, Paul Keysers, Greg Keysers, David Keysers, Andrew Rose, Eddie Hume, Dale Evans, Chippa O’Sullivan, Nick Collins and Ken Collins.
Most of those have owned horses before, but this is the first foray for Nick Collins, O’Sullivan and Evans.
All 11 are also members of the Nar Nar Goon Masters Golf Club, a social offshoot of the football club who have been playing regularly for the past 20 years.
The next trip they have booked is to Vietnam and, coincidentally, the only 11 signed up to go were the Savvy Oak crew.
“Given that, we will put a bit of the prizemoney aside, so he will be funding part of the golf trip,” Mick Payroli said, agreeing that the trip could escalate if the Pakenham Cup prizemoney was added as well.
“We only own a very small part of him, but it’s been good fun,” Payroli added. “Not many people have their horse run in three derbies.”
Payroli explained that the The Nar Nar Goon No 1 Syndicate got together initially to buy another Busuttin-Young galloper Rocket Empire. They have a 12 per cent interest in him.
The trainer contacted the group saying he had another horse he had a bit of time for and wondered whether they would like a piece of him as well.
Although they had already committed, Payroli went to the group and they agreed to a five per cent share between them.
That investment will pay off big time if Savvy Oak were to salute on Saturday.
“Everyone’s dream is to have a runner in your local cup,” Payroli said. “If we happened to win it, it would be amazing.”
They will have to overcome a hot field, with the newly established Pakenham training combination of David and Ben Hayes and Tom Dabernig nominating three runners – Alfarris, Valac and Creedence.
The Gai Waterhouse-Adrian Bott combination have nominated Geelong Cup winner Runaway
