Crayford Stadium said a fond farewell last Saturday night to one of its long-standing trainers, Patsy Cusack.

Patsy has trained greyhounds here since 1999 and he has now handed the training licence to Mark Fenwick, who has worked for Patsy for years. Patsy famously trained Newlawn Sweep, who I often featured here as the dog holding the all-time race record for greyhounds at Crayford Stadium.

Patsy has had many long-standing dog owners over the years, so it was nice to see him joined by family and owners for a meal here at the weekend, when the track staged a special race, The Farewell To Patsy Cusack Stakes, which was appropriately won by Nellie Attack, trained by Mark.

The dog has only just returned to the race card after a 10-week break and general opinion was that she would need a couple more runs. However, over 714m, she is always a threat if handily placed going into the second circuit, as was the case here.

Her winning margin of two-and-a-half lengths at odds of 4-1 rounded off a special evening for all connected to Patsy and he will be missed here as a trainer.

Mark also had two other winners on the night in Bernies Toughguy and Highview Hand.

Bernies Toughguy made it a winning debut race here in bottom-grade A8 in a fast time of 23.99 seconds over 380m and having previously only had five races at Thurles in Ireland, the pup was impressive and looks like having a great chance of winning in higher-grade A7.

Highview Hand won in just his second race here in an open race over 540m and clearly the dog likes longer distances. He came second in his debut race a week early over 380m but his Irish race form shows he had run distances of up to 686m, so our 540m here looks a good distance for him.

This was only his second win in 17 career races. However, I expect the dog to perform well at Crayford on the evidence of his win on Saturday night.