It starts with the gentle whir of the mechanical rabbit rotating around the track, then the frantic flurry as the dogs sprint out the traps to the deafening roar of the flood-lit terraces.

This is Saturday night greyhound racing as I remember it in the heady days of my youth.

On the one side there was the joy of watching the dogs themselves.

Never be fooled by their dozy, plodding exterior, greyhounds are a sight to behold when their prey drive kicks in and their majestically long limbs unfurl around the track, tongues half hanging out in pursuit of the “hare” - which in reality is little more than a sock or flag-like item.

There was also the camaraderie of the races, the regulars and the friendships formed out on the steps cheering on the racing pack, assorted by number and colour jacket, in the faint hope you might just have picked a “winner” or two.

So when I read the sad announcement recently that Entain — the holding company of Ladbrokes and owners of Crayford Greyhound Stadium — were calling time on the venue after nearly 40 years it struck an emotional chord with me as it has for many others.

For better or for worse, I spent many of my formative years at the dog track. I started as a young boy with my family who for a time owned different greyhounds as both racers and pets in the late 90s and early noughties.

A good hurdles racer of ours even landed me my 15 seconds of fame during a memorable interview with Sky Sports when a nine-year-old me was quizzed by ex-Soccer Saturday presenter Jeff Stelling.

“How do you get him to run so fast?” said Jeff. “We feed him blocks of cheese,” came my naïve reply.

But even later in my moody adolescent years the dog track was still the place to be and by my late teens I was returning with pals to see if we could get “quids in”, often before a night out up the road in Dartford.

What’s happened to famous tracks like Crayford?

Crayford first opened as a speedway track in 1930 before holding its first greyhound meet on Saturday, July 10 1937 when ‘Fog Light’ emerged as the track’s first ever winner.

The original track was closed on May 18 1985 with the new one opening just over a year later. At the time it was the first purpose built greyhound stadium to be constructed in more than 30 years.

It proved to be a good investment as the next two decades marked a golden era for the sport with greyhound racing becoming the second biggest UK spectator sport, second only to football for a number of years.

At its peak race nights at Crayford and across the pond in London at the likes of White City, Wimbledon and Catford drew large crowds with top notch hospitality facilities on par with, if not better, than many other sporting venues.

It was also seen as a great family-friendly night out which, unlike the horses, was seen as being accessible by all layers of society.

Flash forward to the present however and the sport’s presence inside the M25 is set to be reduced to just one last stadium - at Romford.

Dumpton Park Stadium, near Ramsgate, shut in 1996 and has now been replaced by housing.

It means here in Kent just one other track - Central Park Stadium in Sittingbourne - remains with the next nearest in the South East 75 miles away in Hove.

Does Crayford’s ‘demise mean greyhound racing is on the home stretch?

When announcing its reasons for closing Crayford, Ladbroke said its decision had “not been taken lightly”, citing “dwindling support” for the track had led to insufficient trainer interest to fulfil its schedules, fewer competitive race days, and, therefore, lower attendance.

Simon Clare, Entain UK Communications Director, added: “We have been exploring various avenues to avoid this decision for some time, but ultimately, it is no longer viable for us to continue operating the site.”

But there’s “always a story behind the story”, as Diana Illingworth, the stadium’s former operations manager tells me.

And the impact of streaming and changes in online gambling have played a big part in what some see as the “demise” of the sport.

What was traditionally seen as a “day out or night at the dogs” has, in recent years at least, been largely replaced by a product or “commodity”, says Diana, which can be bought and sold, then beamed live via satellite to betting shops across the country, not just those in attendance at the track.

A “split” also occurred in the sports betting industry just before the pandemic which saw two rival companies - SIS and Arc - compete for media rights to televise race meets and fulfil schedules in bookmakers’ shops. A deal was later brokered between the two but for many the seeds of the “demise” of tracks like Crayford had already been sown.

“Now we’ve got all these racing schedules filling all these slots, it’s too much because now they are sharing,” adds Diana.

“I think it’s all caught up in that,” she adds. “Because Crayford itself is thriving but last year they changed the scheduling and took away a lot of their successful race meetings.

“I come from the era where people coming through the door were your bread and butter.

“It’s not the demise of greyhound racing that has caused this, it’s just business. It’s a business model.”

But as “one track closes another opens” adds Diana, with another track behind built right now in Wolverhampton.

Streaming hasn’t been all bad news for tracks financially, however.

When it first started the fear was the average punter was going to sit at home and watch it on the telly or his phone and not come to the track.

“To some extent that happened,” Diana says. “But then is it’s not the same is it.

“It’s like watching football on the telly. It’s fine if you can’t get there but you much prefer to be there.

“It’s a spectator sport, it’s soulless when you watch it on the telly, you’d rather be in the atmosphere and caught up in what’s going on.”

Having spent more than 40 years at Crayford, in various roles ranging from payroll to marketing guru, Diana has seen all the coming and goings at the track, and was even there when the new stadium first opened in 1986.

“They built the new Crayford kind of like a giant betting shop,” she explained.

“From the minute the doors opened it was just too much. We were taking too much money. It was busy all the time.”

Since that time she explains there has been “peaks and troughs” as there are in any industry.

But even after the troublesome pandemic period the stadium has managed to return to form, albeit with revised schedules in light of new consumer behaviour.

“Saturday afternoons became the new Saturday nights,” the retired operations manager said.

“It’s bizarre. I thought this wasn’t going to work. Hundreds of people in a Saturday afternoon.

“They were getting more people in on the afternoon than the nights towards the end.”

Another part of the track’s enduring appeal has always been its 250-seater restaurant which in 2005 Diana helped project manage the refurbishment of.

“The restaurant has always been popular because for most people it’s more comfortable to sit a table and be waited on and of course you can sit there for four hours,” she explained.

“Most places now after a couple of hours they want your table and you are out.

“There’s not many places you can sit and eat, then stand and scream and shout at the table as well. It’s a joy to watch.”

Then of course there’s the people you meet over four decades at the same venue.

Diana recalls with fondness back in 2010 when she received a call from Crayford station to say there was an Irish gentleman who had never been to the stadium but needed help getting there to see a dog he’d bought come and run.

“He was in his 80s and was living in America,” she adds. “As it turns out he was a retired catholic priest.

“Such a nice guy but mad as a hatter. He wrote in and thanked me. It’s these little stories and how much it means to people.”

On another occasion a bookmaker came in and wanted to bet on all the permutations of the jackpot race that evening, handing over a carrier bag with £24,000 inside.

“It took us the rest of the night just to count it. You couldn’t do it today for various reasons.

“When you work with people you never know what’s going to happen next. Which is just fantastic.”

Could an outright ban on greyhound racing be on the cards?

Greyhound racing has become increasingly controversial in recent years and is not without its critics.

The last time greyhound racing was formally discussed in the UK Parliament, back in 2022 when it was chaired by Herne Bay and Sandwich MP Roger Gale, it heard pressure from animal welfare charities and campaigners resulted in GBGB—the Greyhound Board of Great Britain —being required to publish annual data of greyhounds injured, rehomed and euthanised for humane or economic reasons.

It has done so since 2017 when the total number of recorded greyhounds injured at tracks annually was 4,837. But this figure is going down and more recently, it was 4,422 in 2021, 4,354 in 2022, and 4,238 in 2023.

The total fatality rate has halved since 2018 when it was 0.06% and is now 0.03% against total dogs run.

After retiring from her role as operations manager, Diana turned her time and energy towards the need to help to find retired greyhounds permanent homes.

The Friends of Retired Greyhounds charity has been homing Crayford’s ex-racers since 1974 and during this time they have homed hundreds of hounds.

However, it will be forced to fold when the track closes.

“It’s our 50th year so it’s a bit sad,” adds Diana. “I think we did a lot of good, not just with the money raised but with the awareness. We’ll always help out where we can.”

Each greyhound at the track, she explains, is followed through its whole career and beyond from cradle to grave.

“We know where every dog is,“ explains Diana. “We know where they are homed, where they are and what has happened to them.

“As an industry it has bent over backwards to prove itself and say ‘look, this is how good we are and we look after everything’ but it’s never good enough.

During the pandemic, Diana says the governing board, GBGB “came up trumps” and secured funding to look after trainers and their dogs while racing was placed on hold.

“I can’t speak for anyone else but I know Entain did come up with the funding and they did look after the homing centres that were homing their dogs which was a bit of a revelation.

“And they have continued to support them which is brilliant so I can’t knock them there at all.”

Despite strides forward in the the welfare of the sport the debate over its continuation rages on.

New Zealand announced earlier this month plans to ban greyhound racing, citing an “unacceptably high” rate of injuries.

And Wales could be next. According to the results of a government consultation, more than a third of people support the idea of banning greyhound racing in Wales.

It has delayed a decision until next year to the disappointment of animal charities who describe any dog deaths or injuries “in the name of entertainment” as “unacceptable”.

We remain committed to the highest levels of animal welfare

Speaking previously to KentOnline, Kerry Taylor, education manager for pet charity Blue Cross believes “now is the time” to ban the sport.

She said: “We have been working for many years with the greyhound racing industry to improve the welfare of the dogs but we are still finding significant issues.

“We want to improve the conditions of the greyhounds, on and off the tracks.”

The only other countries where greyhound racing remains legal are the US, Australia, and Ireland, where many British greyhounds are bred.

Australia moved to ban the sport five or six years ago but backed out at the last minute.

“It’s not just banning races, it’s people’s livelihoods as well,“ adds Diana. “It’s not something to be taken lightly.”

So what’s next for Crayford and the stadium site?

Entain said it will continue to support all trainers impacted by the disruption at the track and hopes that many of them will continue to race their dogs at other UK greyhound tracks.

“We remain committed to the highest levels of animal welfare,” they added. “As such, every affected greyhound will be cared for through an enhanced investment and rehoming strategy.

“We are looking to expand our infrastructure to rehome dogs, develop new rehoming partnerships in the UK, US and Canada and support trainer and greyhound transition to other tracks in the UK.”

It has also confirmed that its other tracks – Romford, Hove, and Monmore – are not at risk of closure, and Crayford trainers will be allocated new positions wherever possible.

“Impacted colleagues have been informed of our intention to close the track and we will shortly commence individual consultations with colleagues to discuss the support/options available to them,” they added.

As for the stadium itself, discussions are reportedly ongoing about the potential sale of the Crayford site.

Its location, close to Crayford station with Southeastern rail services, no doubt gives it strong commuter credentials and makes it an appealing spot for more housing.

Plans for hundreds of homes surrounding the dog track at the former Electrobase site off Maxim Road have already been given the go-ahead.

The scheme is for a site covering 7.19 hectares, to include a former Sainsbury's car park and an area of open wood or scrub-land known as Crayford Rough.

Like many others, Diana is sad to see the track go after all these years and hopes it can still yet be saved.

“I know everyone is out to save Crayford and it would be great if they did because as I say I don’t know anyone that I speak to that has had no connection with it at all in one way or another.

“It has been the heart of the community. I’ve travelled to places all over the country on holiday and I always bump into someone that knows Crayford.”

A date has not yet been given for the stadium’s closure but it will remain open throughout the Christmas period.

Entain and Ladbroke did not respond to a request for an interview or further comment on the track closure.