After nearly 90 years, this Thursday night marks the end of an era, as the curtain comes down on the Dapto Dogs.

A record crowd of up to 3,000 is expected to pack into Dapto Showground, says the CEO of Greyhound Racing NSW, Steve Griffin.

"Without a doubt, there will be sadness for the trainers who've been coming to this track for generations," Steve said. "There will be a great sense of loss, but its time has come. We have too many tracks in NSW and it's time to consolidate.

"Given the enormity of the event, we're expecting a big crowd, and we want to make it a great send-off with the feature race, The Megastar."

Steve said the party atmosphere will include a band, there will be a display of memorabilia and cameo appearances by a number of race callers who cut their teeth at the Dapto Dogs.

"At the end of the night we want to give everyone a chance to take home a bit of the sand from the track, and we'll even be auctioning off the winning post with the money raised to go to charity."

My first visit to the famous Dapto Dogs

I reckon it was in the mid-1970s when I had my first bet. One Thursday night during our school holidays a few fellow Dapto High School mates and I decided to venture down to the Dapto Dogs to see what all the fuss was about.

I recall it was such a strange scene; mainly older men hanging around the bar or circling the bookies looking for the best odds on the next race to jump. Nearly everyone seemed to be enjoying a smoke (not me, of course).

My initial enthusiasm for being out at night with the boys, swilling a beer while in my teens, started to fade as the race meeting seemed to drag on and on. There were long spells when nothing happened, and then suddenly a sprint to the track in front of the big grandstand to watch 20 seconds or so of frenetic action. 

Most of the blokes threw their losing tickets into the dirt, but a few punched the air. They'd just backed a winner at the famous Dapto Dogs. 

I joined the list of Dapto Dogs winners late that night with my brave $2 bet on the eighth race. I won again around about a decade later on an even more memorable night.

The night I ran at the Dapto Dogs

I was reporting for ABC Illawarra in the mid 1980s and to try to entice more punters to the prestigious Silver Collar race meeting the Dapto Dogs decided to stage a celebrity hurdle (I think back then the Silver Collar might have had the biggest prize money for a single dog race in Australia).

Back in the day, ABC Illawarra only had about six staff, and most seemed to be approaching retirement age. So, there was no drawing of straws required for me to be chosen to be tied up, three-legged-race style with Gail on our switchboard for the big hurdle event.

Being from the little old ABC, where the bookies assumed there wasn't an employee or a listener under the age of 60, we were clearly rank outsiders. Especially against those powerhouse media operations of the day, The Illawarra Mercury, WIN Television, 2 Double O and 2WL.

Our race was run mid-way through the evening, just before the main event and so there'd been about five or six dog races before it was our turn to take to the track. 

Preparing for the big race

I recall Gail and I had done some prep for the big race, spending two lunchtimes with two of our legs tied together, running a loop up and down Keira Street in the city past the Illawarra Hotel and the Regent Cinema. We reckoned we made a pretty good team zooming along the bitumen footpath but how would we handle the dewy grass (as it was in those days) at the Dapto Dogs?

Guess what? We were fabulous. We got away to a great start and were never headed, dashing past the winning post about three metres clear of whoever ran second. We didn't even care who that was. We had won in front of a bumper Dapto Dogs crowd and collected the grand prize of a three-speed oscillating fan. How popular will we be back at work tomorrow when we present our prize to the office?

We learned a lot from that experience, did Gail and I. None more important than discovering some of those dogs in the races before ours felt the need to relieve themselves (ones and twos) as they hurtled around the track. We made a mental note, should we be invited back to defend our crown, we would definitely not be running barefoot at the Dapto Dogs ever again.

Dapto Dogs listed as an iconic venue

Local author Glen Humphries, a journalist with The Illawarra Mercury, has just released his latest book, Great Sporting Sites (Australia), and up there with the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the home of the Melbourne Cup, Flemington Racecourse and the Albert Park Formula 1 Circuit, is the Dapto Dogs.

As Glen tells the story, the Dapto Dogs was started in the 1930s because of a debt (makes sense for a sport which has survived on gambling). The Dapto Agricultural and Horticultural Society (better known over the years for running the popular Dapto Show) had amassed a post Great Depression debt of 600 pounds and the society saw the running of dog races as a way of getting that sort of cash.

"The first-ever Dapto Dogs meeting was held on 25 February 1937 and the races have run every Thursday night ever since, except for a suspension during World War II when the army used the showground, and a short post-war period of Sunday races due to power restrictions," Glen writes.

Dogs put Dapto on the map

The name Dapto Dogs is well known, not just in NSW and across Australia, but the world over.

Glen uses the story of local greyhound trainer Glen Goodwin to demonstrate this point.

"Goodwin, who has a tattoo of a greyhound on his arm, was sitting in a bar in Las Vegas. A guy at the bar saw the tatt, found out Goodwin was from Australia and immediately said: 'Oh, the Dapto Dogs.'

"'That says it all,' Goodwin reckoned. 'It doesn't matter where in the world you go you could talk about Dapto and they wouldn't know how many people live there, but they know there's a dog track here.'

"There are more than 40 greyhound racing tracks around Australia but you never hear people talking about the Devonport Dogs, the Wagga Dogs, the Gold Coast Dogs or the Angle Park Dogs. The Dapto circuit isn't even the premier track in New South Wales; that would be Wentworth Park in the inner-Sydney suburb of Glebe.

"The average person likely doesn't even know these places exist, but even those with no interest in punting know about the Dapto Dogs. Marketing types would kill for that sort of brand recognition. If you're going to visit a dog track there is no other option: the Dapto Dogs is the place to go," Glen writes in Great Sporting Sites.

I'll be back there on Thursday night with family and friends. They're expecting one of the biggest crowds in the 88-year history of the Dapto Dogs. 

No doubt we'll share a beer, a steaming hot pie, a bet or two, and I'll resist the temptation to kick off the shoes between races to run one more lap of the famous track for old time's sake.

Great Sporting Sites by Glen Humphries (Gelding Street Press $39.99) is available at all good bookstores.