Two years ago, the training career of Ian Williams looked fatally derailed. Winners had dried up, quality in his stable had withered and Williams looked a man who no longer enjoyed his calling. Strength of character has forged the revival which, tomorrow morning, sees him as an unlikely British flagbearer in one of the world’s great races.

Speaking yesterday from the whirlwind of promotional events that precede the Melbourne Cup, Williams sounded as if he could scarcely believe it himself. “I had a couple of very bad years,” he said. “Things were tough but we are going forward again now. Being here, with a runner, is a dream.”

That runner is Munsef, a seven-year-old who has spent most of his career in the colours of Sheikh Hamdan al-Maktoum. He is now owned by Dr Marwan Koukash, a recent but enthusiastic investor in Flat horses who has helped the process of invigoration at the Williams yard, curiously but conveniently placed alongside the M42 motorway near Birmingham.

When he first emerged with a licence, following tutelage from Jenny Pitman, Martin Pipe and François Doumen, Williams looked every inch the new-generation trainer. He was the self-professed “Mister Nice Guy”, an image that looked certain to propel him to success. Within five years, he was training 50 jumps winners a season and developing his Flat credentials.

So what went wrong? How did he decline to 14 winners in the 2008-9 jumps term? Sadly, some of it can be traced to the tragic parade ring accident that befell Chris Kinane, while he was Williams’s assistant. But there was also turmoil even closer to home, with the death of his father, Billy, the former Devon trainer who had inspired him.

“The problems of Chris certainly didn’t help, I think that is obvious,” Williams reflected. “But losing my father was an enormous blow. I did get very low. It was a hard time but you have to face these things out and come back stronger.”

Williams is enjoying his best start to a jumps season. On the Flat, his score for the year is 29, of which Munsef has contributed three since his arrival in May. “We started to think of Melbourne after he ran so well in the Old Borough Cup,” he explained. “My understanding is that you need a mile-and-a-half horse for this race.”

He speaks as an innocent, for this is his first trip to Australia. Already, he is swept away by the hospitality and the hoopla of the greatest show in racing, but reassured that Munsef has attracted little attention in the Australian media or betting.

“He’s totally under the radar and that suits us fine,” he said. “He wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think he had a chance and his preparation has been faultless.” Better, certainly, than that of Kirklees, scratched on Saturday to leave Crime Scene as the lone representative of Godolphin.

Luca Cumani, for whom Purple Moon and Bauer have been second in the past two runnings, has Basaltico this time, Cima De Triomphe having failed to make the field. Cumani has come so close to being the first British-based trainer to win in Melbourne. How ironic if the garland was now claimed by the renaissance man that is Williams.