Last season's race

• Winner: Honesty Policy
• Jockey: Mark Walsh
• Trainer: Gordon Elliott
• Owner: Mr John P McManus
• Age: 5 Weight: 11st 7lbs
• Starting Price: 5/1
• Season Form Figures: 2211
• Previous Best: 1st - 4YO plus Novice Hurdle, Leopardstown (March 2025)

By Paul Jones

Ubak (22/1) and Reserve Tank (20/1) have provided a couple of surprise winners in the last dozen runnings, but overall punters have had the best of it as 20 of the last 27 winners started favourite or second-favourite.

Of the last 28 winners of this Grade 1 over 2m4f, 18 recorded a top-seven finish at the Cheltenham Festival. In the unlikely event that this year’s Turners Novices’ Hurdle winner, King Rasko Grey, lines up here then he would be bidding to emulate The West Awake (1987), Barton (1999), Peddlers Cross (2010), Simonsig (2012) and Yorkhill (2016) in adding the Mersey to his Cheltenham success over a furlong shorter trip. It has not been all plain sailing for the Turners winner, however, as Crystal Spirit, Thetford Forest and Putty Road all met with defeat.

We really ought not to be surprised that the Cheltenham Festival equivalent of this race has been the key guide and four other top-four finishers in the Turners since 2002 (Classified, Tidal Bay, Black Op and Three Stripe Life) have also come on to win here.

With regards to horses stepping up in trip having contested the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, the only two winners of that race to take their chance here (Forest Sun and Indefence) were both beaten when attempting to defy a Grade 1 penalty that no longer exists. That said, it is worth noting that nine of the last 27 Mersey Hurdle winners were stepping up to 2m4f for the first time and that top-six finishers in the Supreme have a pretty good record with Best Mate (2000) and Spirit Son (2011) of particular note going one place better here.

Gordon Elliott took the 2022, 2023 and 2025 runnings (two of which bypassed Cheltenham), so it will be interesting to see what he sends over. Could he hold his best novices back this time in his bid to win the Irish trainers’ championship?

Paul Nicholls has won this race twice with horses beaten in the Supreme. Nicholls’ Mersey record stands at four winners from his last 16 runners, all of which were moving up in trip, so that’s an angle he clearly likes to attempt to exploit for this race - and his Regent’s Stroll was only beaten half a length last season by Honesty Policy. Nicky Henderson easily won the 2011 and 2012 runnings with Spirit Son and Simonsig dismantling their rivals and Willie Mullins and the Tizzard stable have also both struck twice fairly recently.

Honesty Policy became the tenth winner since 1996 to bypass the Cheltenham Festival when successful but only one winner since 1988 had been off the course for over 55 days.

Five-year-olds have fared best of late winning seven of the last 11 runnings including a 1-2-3-4 in 2017 on top of posting 1-2s in 2011 and 2013 and a 1-2-3 in 2010, whilst a further four other five-year-olds have prevailed since the start of the century. The seven-year-olds, Elusive Dream and Black Op, are the only winners to triumph from that age group in well over two decades.

Only Best Mate had successfully had front-running tactics employed on him in this race since 1994 until Reserve Tank in 2019 having disputed the lead to the fifth, then remained close up before kicking in three out.