Yarmouth has one of the best greyhound welfare programmes in Britian, if not the world, though that was the last thing on anybody’s mind as the stadium celebrated their 70th anniversary meeting. There were protestors outside the stadium and much of the TV publicity did not go as well as hoped.

Promoter Simon Franklin said: “They came and did some filming and we showed them around. Then the next day we were told that there would be an emphasis on welfare and we wouldn’t like it. We managed to speak to the journalist before the programme was broadcast. I asked why nobody had asked to see our home-finding scheme when they had been filming, but apparently somebody else had taken over the story. We finally managed to convince the reporter to edit the report and the critical tone was apparently taken out.

“But then the following morning, Radio Norfolk ran a programme with people phoning in to say that there were 8,000 greyhounds put to sleep every year and that there were big drugs issues. We did our best to fight our corner but it is very frustrating. This industry should be doing more to challenge this sort of bias.”

Yarmouth’s re-homing scheme, passionately and obsessively driven by Simon’s father Stephen, is enormously successful. Although the vast majority of their runners are owner-trained, the track’s home finding scheme has re-homed over 100 ex-racers during the year. They even ran out of available dogs and re-homed some from other areas.

Simon said: “The reporting is supposed to be even handed and is anything but. One of the biggest critics who was moaning about the number of dogs being put to sleep actually gets all her ex-racers direct from Ireland.”

In addition to their home finding, the stadium also run an veterinary assistance scheme which guarantees to cover all the veterinary costs and re-home any greyhound who picks up a career ending injury at the track in races or trials.

Simon said: “The dog is taken into veterinary care overnight and the dog is operated on the next day. The operations usually cost between £500-£800 though they have been as high as £5,000. The dog is then returned to the trainer to ascertain if it can recover to eventually to return to racing. If not, then it joins our re-homing scheme.”