While the greyhound racing industry deals with recent strife statewide, local supporters remain concerned about the immediate future of their local track.

Speaking at his Wilga Street home on 5 July, Coonamble Greyhound Racing Club founding member Roley Green sat at a backyard table next to a large box full of documents detailing the club’s history.

It includes photos, meeting minutes, old newspaper articles and even a club 40th anniversary card, which Roley plans for the Coonamble Archives when he dies. 

“I have kept all this because when I retired no one else was going to worry about it,” Roley said.

He has helped build the club since 1968 and dreams of it outliving him. 

He admits he can’t be sure that will happen after it was revealed on 30 May that Greyhound Racing NSW (GRNSW) would close the local track along with four others across NSW.

The 2024 October Carnival will still go ahead, although the industry body has said it has no plans to keep the track open afterwards. 

Roley met up with Daniel Weizman, CEO of the Greyhound Breeders Owners & Trainers Association and then GRNSW CEO Rob Macaulay at last years race meeting in Coonamble

The bodys CEO Rob Macaulay has since resigned on 9 July following a report by a former GRNSW official alleging poor animal welfare standards, with Deputy CEO Wayne Billett stepping in while the organisation finds a replacement.

Barwon MP Roy Butler said he received a call from Mr Billet on 15 July to confirm that Mr Macaulay's commitments to hold the October Carnival and for GRNSW to visit Coonamble, made in-office, remain unchanged.

"They're probably in a bit of a stage of reorganising themselves, but the commitments that were put on the table remain in place," Mr Butler said.

"The commitment at this stage enables the door to still be open for Coonamble to be maintained as a GRNSW track. How that looks in the future will probably be guided by the discussions that they have with the community and the club."

Roley is hopeful that a successful carnival will change minds at GRNSW, although he said it will be harder to pull off if GRNSW give them no race dates before then.

“From my experience, carnivals are built on momentum,” Roley said.

“You can’t just have nothing then pop up with a big carnival. They have races leading up to the Melbourne Cup, it doesn’t just happen out of the blue.”

Coonamble community leaders united against the plan to close the local greyhound track in June

Fellow life member and former greyhound trainer Zeke Buckley sees his glass half full, although he admits the club has its challenges.

“I think there is a slight chance that they [GRNSW] might change their mind,” Zeke said. 

“The prize money is our biggest setback. We’re racing here for small amounts of money while they’re racing in Dubbo and Gunnedah for TAB money, which is three and four times as much.

“Trainers are not going to bypass the couple of thousand dollars of prize money in Dubbo and Gunnedah to come to Coonamble.”

TAB (Totalisator Agency Board) is an online betting operator which takes Australian greyhound races to an international betting audience. 

The Coonamble club doesn’t operate with TAB, with punting only taking place through bookmakers on site. 

Tracks have to meet track and equipment standards set by GRNSW before the racing body decides whether to grant it TAB status, including broadcasting equipment. 

If a track does have TAB, their races are broadcast on Sky Racing.

Crowds enjoy the racing at Coonamble Greyhound's Gold Cup Carnival. IMAGE: Daily Telegraph

Zeke said becoming a TAB track could help create funds.

“We’d get dogs, even if we raced one or two times a month,” Zeke said. 

Roley agreed the rise of online betting and bigger prize money in other towns has reduced attendance numbers in Coonamble. 

“It all boils down to money,” Roley said.

“It’s all on phone - corporate bookies - you can watch the races where ever you like. You don’t have to be there, so that’s killed the attendance side of it. With Coonamble you had to come here and we had ten bookmakers at the carnival. And they used to bet big and that’s why they came here.”

A challenge for Coonamble is creating an event that the general public, who don’t follow greyhounds year-round, want to attend for other reasons.

GRNSW said it decided to close tracks in favour of investment into larger regional centres. 

The industry body also said the Coonamble course would require “substantial infrastructure work” to bring the track up to standard.

GRNSW said it had considered TAB status for the track before it made the decision to close it.

“We assessed the possibility of conversion to TAB status for each track and the needs of each track against the matrix of all track needs, and against our construction budgets over the next four years,” a GRNSW spokesperson said.

“Our strategy is to have the best and safest tracks, and our focus and investment will be on the larger regional centres moving ahead. Most local trainers around the Coonamble region in fact already travel to Dubbo to race.”

However, local club members have not been privy to these calculations and representatives have told the Coonamble Times they believe that, after significant investment in infrastructure in recent years, "it wouldn’t take much” to bring the track to the standard required for TAB races.