Saturday night’s meetings here are open race night, when dogs from other tracks race against our local runners.

I have always been a believer that in these events the Crayford-trained greyhounds use their knowledge of how to run the track to their full advantage.

The proof of this can be found in the high percentage of home wins and there is often real value to be found in backing the local dogs.

At the weekend we had a prime example in an open race over 714m, when Lynton Choco and Aero Jimenez – both trained at Crayford – were winner and runner-up at 16/1 and 14/1 respectively.

Apart from the win odds, the forecast would have paid out a high amount being based on the starting odds and you simply do not get this level of either win or forecast odds in graded races when the six runners are all trained at Crayford.

Lynton Choco was winning in an open race for just the second time in a career spanning 128 races of which only 11 have been open. But it shows that our dogs, if backed, can repay you if only you have the confidence to support them against supposedly better opposition.

On the same card, we had a winning debut from puppy Looking for Style trained by Barry O’Sullivan. Starting his career in bottom grade A8 over 380m, he showed he is far better than the grading level by romping home by five-and-three-quarter lengths to record a time of 24sec.

First-time runners come on to the race card after a series of trials and can only be graded according to what they show in those.

However, it is often the case they improve trial to trial and that continues into their first race as was the case here.

To reinforce the view on Friday night, Murleys Raymie also won his first race here in scintillating fashion when recording a fast sectional time of 3.51 on his way to a win time of 23.47 in an A5 graded race.

The March 2013 son of Ballymac Maeve has already shown he has the early pace needed to win over 380m and his trainer and connections will be full of optimism about the career ahead.

On this evidence, he looks the type who could progress to top grade A1 in areasonably short time if he can keep producing this effort.