Trainer Gerald Ryan has his sights on the Princess Series races for Melito but concedes the Silver Slipper winner needs to have improved if she is to stand up and be counted this spring.Melito will kick off her campaign in the first leg of the four-race Princess Series, the Group Three Silver Shadow Stakes (1200m) at Randwick on Saturday.She was considered one of Sydney's best juvenile fillies during the autumn despite having her campaign thwarted by rain-affected tracks.She won her only start o

Trainer Gerald Ryan has his sights on the Princess Series races for Melito but concedes the Silver Slipper winner needs to have improved if she is to stand up and be counted this spring.

Melito will kick off her campaign in the first leg of the four-race Princess Series, the Group Three Silver Shadow Stakes (1200m) at Randwick on Saturday.

She was considered one of Sydney's best juvenile fillies during the autumn despite having her campaign thwarted by rain-affected tracks.

She won her only start on a dry track and was placed in the Widden and Reisling Stakes on wet ground before missing a place for the first time when eighth to Phelan Ready on a heavy surface in the Golden Slipper.

But Ryan is mindful the top two-year-olds of the autumn aren't always the three-year-old stars of the spring and says Melito has to lift again to remain competitive with the best of her generation.

"The autumn form doesn't always (stack up) but we have looked after her," Ryan said.

"Her only start on a dry track she won and her other three starts were on rain-affected tracks and she's better on top of the ground.

"What she did in the autumn she did on raw ability but having said that she needs to go up a cog to beat a filly like More Joyous.

"She has improved from the autumn though."

More Joyous is also entered for the Silver Shadow and the race is set to be the pair's fourth clash.

The first was in the Silver Slipper which Melito won after More Joyous put on a buck jumping display when her saddle slipped, taking no part in the race.

More Joyous gained revenge in the Reisling before both fillies were unplaced in the Golden Slipper.

Ryan has won the Silver Shadow before with Our Sweet Moss five years ago and rates Melito a superior filly.

"Our Sweet Moss was a handy filly, of her first six races she won a maiden and the next five were in stakes races," Ryan said.

"But Melito is better."

Melito will be ridden by Corey Brown on Saturday and after tuning up with a barrier trial at Warwick Farm last Friday, Ryan expects her to perform well fresh.

"She's trained up to run well," Ryan said.

There are 17 entries for the Silver Shadow including classy Queensland filly Kiss Me Katy, Gimcrack and Maribyrnong Stakes winner Our Joan Of Arc and the Bart Cummings-trained Sunday Rose.

The now-retired Samantha Miss became just the second filly to make a clean sweep of the Princess Series last year when she won the Silver Shadow, Furious, Tea Rose and Flight Stakes.

Angst in 1993 was the only other to achieve the feat.