Wimbledon is going to close. Some might see some relief in the finality. The airline ticket to the Swiss clinic in the Alps has been ordered. The stone mason is standing by with a chisel waiting to inscribe the date.

Plough Lane’s oldest resident will join more than a hundred greyhound tracks who have thrived and expired in the last 90 years. For many years, Wimbledon was London’s third biggest greyhound stadium behind White City and Harringay and ahead of Walthamstow.

She gave birth to the Laurels that went on to foster the English Derby. Wimbledon was home to Mick The Miller and Ballyhennessy Seal. The circuit where Westmead Hawk strutted his stuff.

So let’s get the OTT nostalgia out of the way. She IS an old girl and an ugly one at that. Opened in 1928, she hasn’t aged well. She has been on life support for more than a decade, with her main grandstand creaking with decay and asbestos.

Take a walk through the bowels of the stadium, under the concrete grandstands, and you find the remnants of a ghostly concrete bunker built by William John Cearns. The disused stands that once buzzed with flat-capped Woodbined-up South Londoners will become homes for their great grandkids.

The Government announcement that they were not prepared to resuscitate was entirely logical. If Paschal Taggart had been able to get a deal, he would have been the one demolishing the place and building a modern one-sided greyhound stadium with a capacity for 3,000 tops. Probably less.

Sure they will build a football ground, but the ‘20,000 seats’ will never be fitted. AFC Wimbledon’s current attendance is around 4,400, making them 19th of the 24 clubs in division one. Go up a league to the Championship and the likes of (former Premier League clubs) Reading and QPR get around 15,000.

With an estimated average of £1,000 per seat for a new grandstand, they won’t be rushing to install places for AFC’s imaginary backsides. This was a town that failed miserably to attract decent support even when they had that Roy of the Rovers team known as the Crazy Gang.

Personally I have no anger with Sajid Javid for his decision, or the AFC cuckoos for pursuing their dream. I feel deeply sorry for the Wimbledon staff and trainers. Decent people.

But more than anything I feel deeply deeply frustrated with the greyhound industry.

Unless it has a serious review of its outlook, strategy (much eye rolling) and options, it will not make its century in 2026. Indeed, it could be a 12-track industry within five years.

Is that inevitable? Has greyhound racing as a spectacle simply lost its appeal to the British public? Or do we simply have an industry that has lost its way due to a badly designed inadequate governing body with a lack of leadership or faith in the product?

The loss of the old lady of Plough Lane was inevitable. But there has to be something wrong when her younger slimmer replacement and the potential jewel in our crown is less financially attractive to a potential landlord than the 68th best supported football team in England.

I know we are better than that!