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Newcastle trainer Kris Lees is giving himself three chances to win Sunday's $100,000 Taree Gold Cup for the third time in six years and thwart a history-making bid by the Chris Waller stable.

The Lees team of Mongolian Wolf (Andrew Gibbons), Milseain (Christian Reith) and Our Gravano (Jay Ford take on the Waller-trained favourite Hogmanay, a last start Rosehill winner, in the 2000m feature race.

Hogmanay, to be ridden by Tommy Berry, will be Waller's first ever runner at Taree. He is Berry's only ride at the meeting.

Hogmanay's big syndicate of 19 owners includes Australian cricket star Steve Smith, currently fighting for The Ashes in England.

Lees won the Stacks Law Firm Taree Cup with Slivovitz (Gibbons) in 2014 and Olympic Academy (Aaron Bullock) in 2016 but his team will need to be at their best to overcome the in-form Hogmanay.

The seven-year-old gelding returned to his best with a strong last start win over 2000m at Rosehill on August 10, his sixth career win taking his prizemoney to more than $550,000.

Our Gravano finished fourth in last year's Taree Cup and Lees favours his chances after his last start win under 62.5kg in the Ken Howard Cup (2000m) at Coffs Harbour on August 1.

He drops 8.5kg from that win to 54kg in the Taree Cup but the compressed weights will see him receiving only a half kilogram from Hogmanay.

The six-year-old gelding Mongolian Wolf has been doing his recent racing in Queensland and returns after a break of 36 days since a third over 2020m at Doomben.

Wyong trainer Damien Lane is also looking for a second Taree Cup win with Pirate Ben (Grant Buckley).

Pirate Ben won the Taree Cup in 2017 but then went amiss and was off the scene for a year.

He has come back to form in recent Sydney starts with two strong efforts at Randwick.

Last year's runner-up Allzin , trained at Wauchope by Graham Hoy, is taking on the Taree Cup first-up off a break of 162 days.

Hoy gave Allzin a similar preparation for the race last year and is looking forward to a similar performance after the 8YO won a recent barrier trial at Taree.