WE ARE – EXTREMELY VACANT

There was a time, any empty trap at a BAGS meeting was considered an issue. Two or more would invariably result in a track boss getting the dreaded next day call from John Johnson at BAGS HQ.

These days, ‘vacant trap’ notifications are like a rash on result sheets. Seven or eight are commonplace – even on prime betting shop meetings – leading many industry naysayers  to view the situation as evidence of the decline of the sport due to over-racing.

I would like to challenge that.

Now for fear of being misquoted or my thoughts being taken out of context, I would like to make it clear that there are occasions when vacant traps are very disappointing.

No decent greyhound fan wants to see empty boxes during competitions due to lameness, in-season, off-colour, non-arrivals or any other reason. Particularly in finals.

I feel sorry for connections and also disappointment for the track promoters and sponsors who have seen just a little bit of gloss loss from the event.

But for graded races?

I would suggest that it is not that simple.

Point one – the preferred number of potential runners in not a given. I spent years dealing with flapping tracks in the North of England and Scotland who always staged five-runner fields.

The Aussies and Yanks won’t have any less than eight. Yet on countless occasions going back 40 years or more – most recently at Towcester – eight runner races have been blackballed by our owners, trainers and particularly, punters.

BHA figures show that the average number of runners in flat races is just under nine and just under eight in jumps events. Just under 19% of their races have a field size of five or less.

So who gets upset by fields of less than six runners?

Not the bookies. Galvanised by ‘industry odds’ their biggest issues are their betting margins and they don’t seem to suffer.

The tracks? When I speak to tracks, they know that they have better earning capacity with a 13 or 14 races with a mixture of runner numbers, compared with a dozen races for six runners.

There might be some evidence of that in this coming Friday’s meeting at Romford. And I wonder whether poor John would have spent Saturday morning’s Crayford card having a good lay down.

As for the owners and trainers, let’s not kid ourselves. If you owned a runner in a £20K final and you discovered that the boxes on either side of you were vacant, how would you react? Be honest now!

I’ve never known a trainer complain that one of his dogs is in a four or five runner graded race.

Not only are you increasing the chance of a clean run race, you are correspondingly reducing the injury risk.

Yes – greyhounds are a premium, and we are having to cope with the self-inflicted Four Day Rule.

But would you really want a couple of A2 no-hopers forced to make up the numbers in A1, just so you had six runners?

Would you rather have your middle seed drawn six in a four dog race or six dog race?

Cos let’s not get prissy about this – we can’t have two empty boxes every time we are short of a wide.

I am certainly not asking for five runner fields as standard, but as the squeeze gets tighter with Valley and Askern due on the service, I could cope with the occasional match race or competitive A1 between the outstanding three hounds on the racing strength.

Discuss.

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I had one angry punter write to me last week seeking support.

He was very irked that Oxford had staged the Pall Mall and there was no opportunity to see the race on line or on RPGTV. He was unable to attend, and found it difficult to get a bet on. He had contacted RPGTV and had made little progress.

To put it bluntly, he couldn’t have come to a worse place for sympathy.

If the track bookmakers paid handsomely for the event and wanted a closed shop on it, why should an armchair punter or the likes of Betfair get a free feed?

It irritates me that some RPGTV viewers feel they have a right to free racing. The channel gets the Derby coverage for only a little more than graded money.

I don’t blame them – they deliver what the bookies want – even if that includes a substandard graded card to run alongside a prestige meeting.

Whatever is said about RPGTV, it provides a valuable service to the industry and we would lose many enthusiasts and owners without it – people who DO contribute to the industry.

What happens when the channel loses its Entain content from January, will be interesting to follow.

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I recently received this PM which is self explanatory. If anyone can help, get in touch and I will forward your contact to Laurence Overend

“Hi, I wondered if you or your colleagues have any memories of the old Halifax Track, Thrum Hall. My grandad, Jack Overend, used to work there and would take me there as a boy back in the 70’s. It gave me a lifelong love of the dogs and I’d love to know more about the history of the track”

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