Brighton & Hove Albion Premier League players hope Seagulls Eleven can win

A horse owned by several players from Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club, including Premier League veteran James Milner, will be hoping the Golden Eagle heads back to England for a second straight year.

Twelve months after Lake Forest snuck along the rails to pinch the $10 million Sydney feature for trainer William Haggas and owner Tony Bloom, who owns the Brighton club, Seagulls Eleven will attempt to kick his own goal at Randwick on Saturday.

Milner has only been used sparingly for Brighton, who play Leeds this weekend, and will not be trackside for the race – nor will his teammates and fellow owners, including Danny Welbeck, Bart Verbruggen, Jason Steele and Adam Lallana.

Michael Owen, another English football legend, who owns Manor House Stables, where Seagulls Eleven is trained, will be in Dubai running a football clinic.

Trainer Hugo Palmer, who spent a couple of years working with Gai Waterhouse at Randwick, when the stable had Tuesday Joy, More Joyous, Manhattan Rain and Northern Meteor, was keen to return to Australia. However, he said the players were split on whether to send the horse, which carries Brighton’s blue and white colours and is named after one of the club’s nicknames, to the other side of the world.

“When they bought him as a yearling, all the players were with Brighton, but at least one of them has since left,” Palmer told this masthead.

“There was actually a bit of division in the ownership when it came to the Golden Eagle. A few of them were against rolling the dice and writing a big cheque to come to Australia. James got the players into this horse, and he was definitely keen.

“The horse has given the players a lot of pleasure. But professional sports stars are a lot busier than most of us expect, they work hard, and don’t have as much free time as you’d think. A lot of the boys are still yet to watch the horse race live.”