Despite being caught wide the trip and hanging in all the way down the straight, the Phillip Stokes-trained filly Assertive Play made a winning career debut at Morphettville on Saturday to credit Akeed Mofeed (GB) with his third winner.
Ridden by Dom Tourneur, Assertive Play displayed an impressive turn of foot and despite her greenness proved a long-neck too good for the odds-on favourite Thorondor (Fastnet Rock) with Crockett (All American) doing his best work late to finish a further long-neck back in third.
Stokes said he was confident of a forward showing by the Goldin Farms homebred.
"She's a super filly, I know the family very well," Stokes said.
"She's out of Aussie Crawl who is out of a mare I trained, Freestyle.
"She's shown us plenty at home - she's got a great temperament. I think she will get over further with time and it's great to get a winner for Goldin Farms.
"She'll only have a light prep but in two weeks-time we've got a $100,000 SABIS race in Adelaide over 1200 metres, which looks ideal.
"So, we will give her one more run there because she is still doing quite a few things wrong in the run. She was trying to lay in, so we will try to rectify that before we look towards a spring campaign."
Assertive Play is the fourth winner from as many to race out of the winning Redoute's Choice mare Aussie Crawl whose dam Freestyle won three stakes races for Stokes including the Group II SAJC Breeders' Stakes.
Purchased by Goldin Farms for $130,000 from the Widden Stud draft at the 2014 Inglis Easter Broodmare Sale, Aussie Crawl has one more foal, a weanling brother to Assertive Play. Sadly, she died in October last year.
A striking son of Dubawi, Group 1 Hong Kong Cup winner Akeed Mofeed (GB) will stand the 2018 season at Goldin Farm for a fee of $16,500.
