Kinsley boss John Curran believes the odds are in favour of Towester staging greyhound racing again in the future.
He said: “I believe there are at least six potential buyers for the site. The debts aren’t big and it is a tremendous facility. It is in administration, it has not gone bust.
“I am not surprised that ARC are after it, and why wouldn’t SIS who had the money available to buy Newcastle and Sunderland. Nor could you rule out Betfred. If Fred Done makes his mind up to go for it, he usually gets what he wants. It was rumoured quite recently that he was looking for somewhere for horses and dogs. Although they have lost their trainers, it wouldn’t stop open racing.
“There has been a lot said about Towcester in the last few days, people queuing up to put the knife in. In my opinion, Towcester was good for the greyhound industry and I am very disappointed what has happened. This was not a flawed project, it was a brave and good project where a couple of important wrong decisions were made, the major one was not doing a deal with SIS.
“There has also been a lot of criticism about the track preparation and comparing it with Walthamstow. You cannot begin to compare the two. For start, the Towcester circuit had to be raised by a metre to allow the public to view racing. It was done with thousands of tons of soil and gravel.
“Given the site, in the middle of a racecourse, it was very exposed anyway, and trying to water it by hosepipes would always have been impossible. The water would simply drain underground and it would take years to build up as a base. Nor would sprinklers have worked, the side winds with it being so exposed would have made watering inconsistent.
“It was also more difficult to manage because it was built for eight-dog fields. We know they aren’t popular with UK punters, but Towcester were thinking ‘international’ which is where the money will be in the future. It is possible, that the bends were too wide even for eight dogs, but the circuit was built with safety in mind.
“People seem to have forgotten the hare problems at Walthamstow, but I can remember Charles Chandler being virtually in tears after losing so many BAGS meetings. Nor did Walthamstow escape injury problems because they ran their track so hard. My understanding was that Towcester were running very similar for a period of time.
“The track was rock hard and the injury rate of career ending injuries went up 400%. Yes, you do get more ‘sticking plaster’ injuries when you run it softer, but they are generally short term issues, like shoulder problems. Thankfully they changed back and the injury rate went down.”
