It's feature event of the year might have been cancelled but the Gunnedah Greyhound Racing Club still has plenty of racing to look forward to.
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The club has been allocated four consecutive Wednesday meetings under the racing schedule for the next month released by Greyhound Racing NSW.
The first meeting will be on April 29, the schedule also including additional prizemoney for the meeting on May 20.
It comes just days after it was announced that the Chief Havoc Cup carnival would not be going ahead as scheduled this year.
Culminating in the running of the Chief Havoc Cup - named in honour of the champion local greyhound and Hall of Fame legend - the carnival is the club's biggest event of the year.
The decision to call it off was made in conjunction with GRNSW, the current zoning restrictions introduced in response to the coronavirus crisis, leaving no alternative really without detracting from the prestige of the race.
"It is a time-honoured event - the Chief Havoc - and we do have a lot of dogs travelling from a long way away to contest it and under the zoning rule they can't come," Club president Geoff Rose said.
"We just didn't think it was fair that be put on with the stipulation of only the local people can nominate."
"And because it's 527m there's not that many dogs available that you'd be able to stage too many heats. "
They usually have four heats, which means 32 dogs.
"I think you would struggle to get 32 nominations for that," he said.
To be staged over three meetings concluding on the June long weekend, the carnival was set to this year offer $15,000 for the feature race - the biggest prize purse the club has paid out on it.
Rose is hopeful they might be able to put it on towards the end of the year, or even maybe early next year.
"[But] We just have to see how this virus is going and how it's going to affect the industry," he said.
For now though his focus is on the next month.
The hub for racing in the New England region, Rose welcomed the news of weekly races. It was something he had been pushing for with the governing body, with the club only allocated two Sunday meetings, the second of which was on the weekend, in the first schedule.
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One of Rose's arguments was that they have been getting around 120 nominations a meeting. As part of the restrictions meetings are capped at 10 races, leaving a large number of dogs not getting a run.
Predominantly it is the lower class dogs that miss out with the grading system working from the top down. Under the restrictions they can't go out of the zone to run anywhere else
"The following week the grading system will do the same again and so they won't get a run again," Rose said.
And so it goes on.
By racing weekly it will increase their chance of getting a run.
"Not all of those ones that raced the week before are going to go in again so those lower grade dogs will get a chance of getting a run," Rose said.
The extra meetings will also provide an economic benefit.
"I've got about 18 casual staff here every meeting we race - that's an income for them," he said.
He said Sunday's meeting was "a good meeting".
"There was some good money available and some good dogs," he said.
