Trainer Adam Duggan is warming towards starting untapped filly Fox at Warwick Farm where a showdown with Streama and Sea Siren awaits.

Fox has also been paid up for the Listed Canberra Guineas (1400m) on Sunday but Duggan rates the Group Two Surround Stakes over the same trip in Sydney a day earlier as the more appealing option.

“It’s a bit of a trip to Canberra and I just think at this stage of her career she’s not ready to travel that far,” Duggan, who is based at Gosford on the NSW central coast, said.

“At this stage we will probably go to Warwick Farm.

“It is a race against fillies as well and a smallish field.

“There’s often not a lot of pressure in the 1400-metre races at Warwick Farm and she races forward.”

Fox has long shown Duggan stakes potential, splitting Do You Think and Manawanui when second on debut at Canterbury last year.

She has won two of her seven starts and wasn’t disgraced at her first black-type test in the Light Fingers Stakes when seventh to Sea Siren.

“I thought she acquitted herself pretty well last start against these sort of horses,” Duggan said.

“With a better start on Saturday – I’m not thinking she can win – but I would like to see where she’s at in terms of how far off them she is.”

Fox will head into the Surround on the back of a close first-up second at Gosford and the Light Fingers performance when she bungled the jump.

Duggan will use a barrier blanket to help combat that this weekend when she faces her first test at 1400 metres.

“I was a bit skeptical about her over 1400 metres until this preparation,” he said.

“As soon as she ran the 1200 out first-up after only one trial I thought she’d definitely get 1400 metres.”

Longer-term, Duggan is keeping his options for Fox open but he has earmarked the Listed Gosford Guineas on April 22 as a suitable target.

“Where we go from here hinges on what she does tomorrow,” Duggan said.

“But I do have the Gosford Guineas in six weeks at the back of my mind.”