Oxford

[cityrebel]

3 hours ago, Chairboy said:

Good stuff. I've no doubt you will always remember that Gold Cup Final, and the preceding rounds. My family had dogs trained by John Annett (attached to Oxford) and Gary Baggs (Walthamstow) in the late 80s/early 90s. I trained a few myself, racing mainly at Rye House and Milton Keynes.

I'm guessing not everyone on this forum will appreciate this foray into greyhound reminiscing. I will always see football, speedway and greyhound racing as the 3 great working class sports of the 20th century (not necessarily in that order!).

I come from a dog racing and speedway family. My mum worked in the racing office at Wandsworth & Park Royal in the 1960's. I was Taken as a child to Stamford Bridge for the dogs, years before i went there for football. I worked for the GRA for 22 years, working mainly at Wimbledon, but also Catford, Harringay, Wembley & White City. 

[Triple.H.]

2 hours ago, Daniel Smith said:

If it was my money, I'd add exactly that but bin the greyhounds and make the track bigger and wider

Not allowed Bangers etc at Oxford. If Stadium does reopen Dogs will be running. The Greyhound racing fraternity have also played a major part in the fight to get the Stadium reopened.

[Chairboy]

51 minutes ago, cityrebel said:

I come from a dog racing and speedway family. My mum worked in the racing office at Wandsworth & Park Royal in the 1960's. I was Taken as a child to Stamford Bridge for the dogs, years before i went there for football. I worked for the GRA for 22 years, working mainly at Wimbledon, but also Catford, Harringay, Wembley & White City. 

Big respect to you, Cityrebel!  This is interesting stuff. Can I take this opportunity to apologise to you for something - I don't make many posts on here, but the user name I first gave myself was "White City Rebel". I felt rather guilty when I found myself reading posts from you, and you had clearly been on this site a lot longer than me, and I had inadvertently chosen almost the same name. I did eventually get round to changing my user name! I hope I bump into you sometime at Kent or Eastbourne, I'm sure you have many tales from your dog days...  

[ch958]

BAGS can make a massive difference to the viability of a stadium - Newcastle being an example. The track doesn't need to be bigger, its great as it is

[cityrebel]

59 minutes ago, Chairboy said:

Big respect to you, Cityrebel!  This is interesting stuff. Can I take this opportunity to apologise to you for something - I don't make many posts on here, but the user name I first gave myself was "White City Rebel". I felt rather guilty when I found myself reading posts from you, and you had clearly been on this site a lot longer than me, and I had inadvertently chosen almost the same name. I did eventually get round to changing my user name! I hope I bump into you sometime at Kent or Eastbourne, I'm sure you have many tales from your dog days...  

I do mate, not all of them good. The dreaded GRA were largely responsible for wiping out speedway and dog racing in the London area.

[Daniel Smith]

3 hours ago, Triple.H. said:

Not allowed Bangers etc at Oxford. If Stadium does reopen Dogs will be running. The Greyhound racing fraternity have also played a major part in the fight to get the Stadium reopened.

That's a shame as I believe it's the only way Speedway would have longevity at Oxford. 

Unfortunately, animal rights are very close to getting dog racing banned in this country. Speedway needs to be in with motorsports to continue strongly imo. 

Now the Speedway has been gone for some time in Oxford I do feel they'll now face a huge issue with noise pollution issues from residents. Especially new residents that have no known history of the sport at the stadium. 

 

[Chris116]

I would sadly have to agree that there is no chance of car racing returning to Oxford due to there being no space for the pits. Speedway has a chance but without Greyhound racing will have a problem of the facility being underused and as others have said Greyhound racing is under threat from animal rights. So with no cars and dogs having an uphill battle any future speedway promotion will need to find other activities to help pay the costs of the stadium. 

[ruckerroo]

the sis contracts are literally gold dust to dog tracks, the media rights deal, if it ceases will muller half of them overnight.

[Midland Red]

1 hour ago, ruckerroo said:

the sis contracts are literally gold dust to dog tracks, the media rights deal, if it ceases will muller half of them overnight.

What’s the English translation of this, please? 

[ruckerroo]

43 minutes ago, Midland Red said:

What’s the English translation of this, please? 

basically 70% OF dog tracks have a media rights deal via BAGS  ( bookmakers afternoon greyhound service ), years ago the old oxford was a bags track, think they raced on a Friday.

Several others do, central park, poole, brough park, Swindon.

The racing gets streamed to betting shops and other countries via sis, the media deal is muted to be coming too an end and there will be huge ramifications when it does

[Midland Red]

3 hours ago, ruckerroo said:

basically 70% OF dog tracks have a media rights deal via BAGS  ( bookmakers afternoon greyhound service ), years ago the old oxford was a bags track, think they raced on a Friday.

Several others do, central park, poole, brough park, Swindon.

The racing gets streamed to betting shops and other countries via sis, the media deal is muted to be coming too an end and there will be huge ramifications when it does

Thanks for that - appreciated 

[Midland Red]

https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18097259.oxford-stadium-campaigners-optimistic-future/

[Tsunami]

6 hours ago, ruckerroo said:

basically 70% OF dog tracks have a media rights deal via BAGS  ( bookmakers afternoon greyhound service ), years ago the old oxford was a bags track, think they raced on a Friday.

Several others do, central park, poole, brough park, Swindon.

The racing gets streamed to betting shops and other countries via sis, the media deal is muted to be coming too an end and there will be huge ramifications when it does

Brough Park Newcastle - Apparently worth over half a million pounds to them.

 

[salty]

The BAGS deal has always been the lifeline for many tracks, but as betting shop turnover on dogs has fallen then the bookies desire to pay relatively big money to the tracks is on the wane. Oxford dogs wouldn't be viable long term without some sort of streaming contract.

 

[Daniel Smith]

The more you dig into this story I think false hope is being played here. 

100 homes on the only car park? Really?

[IainB]

9 hours ago, Daniel Smith said:

The more you dig into this story I think false hope is being played here. 

100 homes on the only car park? Really?

Not only that but you also have to ask the question why Oxford Speedway closed in the first place

[Pirates Of Poole]

9 hours ago, Daniel Smith said:

The more you dig into this story I think false hope is being played here. 

100 homes on the only car park? Really?

that's possible 'homes' not houses so they will be a large complex of flats with say 10 houses could be a possibility. 

[Daniel Smith]

3 hours ago, Pirates Of Poole said:

that's possible 'homes' not houses so they will be a large complex of flats with say 10 houses could be a possibility. 

Regardless, 100 flat building will take the whole car park as the space legally has to allocate a single parking space per flat. 

[DC2]

21 minutes ago, Daniel Smith said:

Regardless, 100 flat building will take the whole car park as the space legally has to allocate a single parking space per flat. 

 

Have you checked the local plan for that area? Parking is not required in some areas that are well served by public transport and employment.

[pvm]

As an aside, Chiltern Railways ran a test train, a couple of years ago, full of local dignitaries along the rail line that runs behind the stadium. The idea being to build a passenger station to run services to from London Marylebone. Oxford station has limited capacity for terminating services and a new station would give the flexibility to run trains through Oxford station without occupying platform space. I haven't heard any further plans being put in the public domain, but if it was to transpire it would put the stadium with-in reach of public transport from as far afield as London.