This year’s RPGTV East Anglian Derby has been extended from its regular format with an additional meeting also set for broadcast.
In confirming that the prize money for the final will be identical to last year (£15K, £3K, £2K, others £1K), track boss Simon Franklin revealed that the event would be extended by two days.
He said: “Normally we would expect to stage the first round on the Wednesday, with the second round the following Monday. This year, we don’t have a Wednesday fixture so it was an option of switching it to Thursday, or back to Monday.
“We decided that it was too much to ask of the dogs to remove a day, so it will now be Monday (September 3rd), Monday (10th), Saturday (15th) and then conclude on Thursday (2oth). The Saturday meeting will be broadcast on RPGTV.”
There is good news too on the George Ing St.Leger with sponsors Quickcall committing to a further five years.
Simon said: “Jim and James Cranfield, who are Quickcall, were very happy with the first running of the event and are keen to go ‘bigger and better’ next year.
“I thought the whole event worked really well including the supporting opens.”
Simon was keen to play tribute to Ray Cross, who with wife Pam, has been training greyhounds at Yarmouth for around 40 years.
He said: “Ray has been part of greyhound racing at Yarmouth all my life. I think he was quite hot-headed in his younger days but mellowed with age. Although he was a proper greyhound man, he readily engaged with our welfare and re-homing efforts and will be a sad loss to racing at Yarmouth.”
(I would like to add my own personal tribute to Ray and condolences to Pam and family. Ray was a ‘Good old boy’ as they say in Norfolk. As a family, we raced against him many times back in the late 1970s and never had a cross word. A very decent man – Ed)
