All the hard work is continuing to pay off for the Gunnedah Greyhound Racing Club with it's status as one of the premier clubs in regional NSW reaffirmed in the allocation of race dates for the 2020/21 financial year.
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The club has been allocated 23 meetings. Twenty of those are Thursday twilight meetings with the other three Sundays.
The 23 is one extra on what they were allocated for the 2019/20 racing year. As it was they ended up racing more than that after becoming the centralised hub for racing in the New England under the zoning system introduced by Greyhound Racing NSW in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Club president Geoff Rose was pretty happy with the allocations.
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"We're quite happy with the Sunday and the Thursday," he said.
"Thursday's not a bad meeting."
For the current year they raced predominantly Wednesday and Sunday.
The move to Thursday won't really make any difference, Rose said.
He said it feels like the hard work over the last 20 or so years is starting to pay off.
When he first started at the club, Gunnedah was a non-TAB track, they were "struggling around on about 20-25 dates, paying about $300 a win".
"Today they've got 22-23 TAB dates, paying roughly $1500 a win," he said.
"It's been a big step up in the last 20 years. We've been working hard for it.
"But it's not only just me, there's a lot of voluntary labour that's gone into it, a lot of people have helped along the way."
Following the easing of restrictions, the club is preparing to welcome back spectators (including owners) for it's final Wednesday meeting next Wednesday.
"We've done our plan and sent it to Greyhound Racing NSW," Rose said.
He said it is good to be starting to return to a bit of normalcy and estimated under the spacing requirements of 4m square they could probably hold 70-80 people.
"We're allowed to sell alcohol now (too) and food there but they've got to be sitting at the tables supplied. They just can't be walking around with a beer," he said.
