The Singapore-based Boss is due at Flemington on Saturday to ride a galloper who is aiming to win his way into the Cup field via the Lexus Stakes.

Boss will be aboard the Lee Freedman-trained Tom Melbourne in the Lexus and Terry Henderson, one of the men who runs OTI Racing which owns the horse, says that if the five-year-old wins the Lexus Boss will be aboard in the Cup three days later. Tom Melbourne has not passed all the qualifying clauses for the race, but if he can salute in the Lexus he gets a guaranteed start in the $6.3 million Cup

"Glen knows what is needed on the first Tuesday in November and we were very pleased with his [Tom Melbourne's] last start," Henderson said on Monday at the Melbourne Cup launch event at Flemington.

"The tongue-tie [with which he was fitted] made an enormous difference and we feel he has improved. The trip [the Lexus is 2500 metres, the Cup 3200m] is the big question mark, because he's never won beyond 2100m before.

"But his dam [Roshanak, by Spinning World] is a half-sister to Fiorente and he managed the 3200m well enough when he won the Cup in 2013."

Henderson said the horse's name meant he could not resist when he got the chance to buy him to run in the colours of the OTI syndicate he operates along with former Test cricketer Simon O'Donnell.

The pair regularly source horses in England, France and Ireland, and after Tom Melbourne won for his Irish trainer Andy Oliver at his first start in Ireland – a 2000m maiden on the synthetic surface at Dundalk – OTI swooped.

"We were interested in him because of the connection with Fiorente of course. We found out after that they had given him the name Tom Melbourne for one simple reason – because they hoped if he shaped well a mug like me might come along and buy him for Australia!" Henderson joked, adding that the son of Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner Dylan Thomas had been "expensive enough for a horse who had only won one race on the all weather surface".

If he can win the Lexus and then picks up a cheque on Tuesday he will doubtless look like a bargain, but he has the job ahead of him.

Tom Melbourne is a headstrong front runner, but he made a terrific impression just after arriving in Australia, winning four of his first five starts (including the Albury Gold Cup) before disappointing when an odds-on favourite in the 2400m Mornington Cup. Boss rode him to three of those four victories, his only three rides on the horse in his first Australian preparation.

Since then, Tom Melbourne has been winless, but his last start, when second in the group 3 Coongy Cup at Caulfield, was encouraging.

He went down by a half-length to the Chris Waller-trained Vanbrugh (a group 1 winner as a three-year-old) with the hot Godolphin favourite Its Somewhat a well beaten third.

Boss, who also has a Victorian jockeys premiership to his name, has been riding in Singapore for the past few months but making occasional raids back to Australia.

He left because he felt that rides and opportunities were drying up in Melbourne and that he needed to reinvent himself – as he had earlier in his career, when he moved first from Brisbane to Sydney, and then to Melbourne.

One place he doesn't need to reinvent himself, however, is Flemington, and if Tom Melbourne can get into Tuesday's Cup he might have a few admirers with his feather weight of 50 kilograms.