The inaugural running of the Jack Sommerville Northern Rivers Cup final will take place this Saturday night at Grafton. Here’s our preview of the eight runners, including The Hounds tip to claim the $50,000 winners' cheque:
Trainer DAVE Irwin said: I reckon he’s 100/1. He wants the outside and as he’s aged, he’s got a bit field shy. He doesn’t like to be crowed anymore, he’s four-and-a-half years old and Blazing Bob and Queen Wok both want to get to the fence so it’ll be tight inside. For us to be any chance, he needs to spear the lids but to do that he probably needs to be in the second line because he can miss it off Box 1. I hope he avoids any trouble and gets a clean run because if he gets to the front without being touched, he’s a real chance, but I can’t see that happening. I think Valhalla looks a good thing and it’d be hard to see him not being competitive. Jack Sommerville was very level-headed man and very supportive of the industry, all he wanted to do was help people and you couldn’t get a better bloke so this race is a great honour for his family.
Owner Geoffrey Dwyer said: The box is alright, he just doesn’t have great box manners or early pace. The best hope we have is he gets to the inside and there’s some trouble around him. Impress Dressel wants to push off the bend a little bit so hopefully we can sneak underneath him and find the rail. On paper, it looks like he might be last out and we hope he doesn’t decide to come out tomorrow. The best dog in the race is Valhalla so if he gets luck, he’ll win. I thought my dog would much bigger odds than he is but obviously the bookies think he’s a chance. My mother passed away twelve months ago and Jack Sommerville was always her go to person so it’d be an honour to win the race.
Trainer Michael Landrigan said: If he begins like he normally does, he’s a good chance to lead because he’s got the fastest first section out of the lot of them. But he can’t run the 450m at Grafton and doesn’t like the long straight. He gets tired the last 20m and he’s never won a race there. He’s won 26 races at Casino but only two at Grafton and neither was over the 450m. His Casino heat run surprised me because I’ve been trialling him over the 411m there and his run home times were two tenths slower then normal. But I put him in over the 484m in the heats and he had a pretty hot dog chasing him and he held on. He was 1kg down on his normal weight in the heats so maybe he was just too heavy. I’d think Blazing Bob is the better of my two chances but I’m a bad judge. They’ve bumped into each other a few times and I’ve always backed the wrong one.
Trainer Stephen Casey said: It’s going got be a hard race as finals usually are. Theres a fair bit of pace off the inside and he’ll need to be there with them to be a chance. I think Impress Dressel will be very hard to beat but they won’t want to give my guy too much of a look in because he can make his presence felt. He’s probably a better dog at Casino than Grafton but he’ll run a straight line to the bend and it’s just a matter of where he is when they hit the corner. He’s run 25.38 there but he’s probably a low 25.20 dog at his best but it’s a good even field and it’s very worthy of Jack Sommerville. He was one of our vets, he was a great man from a lovely family.
Trainer Michael Landrigan said: She was a bit unlucky at Casino during the week. I trialled her before the heat and she ran 27.58. In the heat itself, she got chopped off early and that took a bit of steam out of her. She ended up finding the front but she finished in around 27.9. She’s only won 14 races but she’s a litter sister to Blazing Bob and when I started getting them ready to race, she would beat Bob nearly every time. But she’s come on season and had a few injuries and never really got a good run at it. I can’t have her off Box 5 and she’s a desperate railer so she’ll crash left and that will give the dogs outside her a good run into the race.
Trainer Tom Tzouvelis said: Box 6 is never ideal but we’re just hoping he can get a clear run early and if he can, he’ll be hard to beat. He came out two starts ago at Grafton and did really well but last week he did everything wrong and it was a miracle that he finished second. He was last going through the first corner and there were dogs going everywhere and he was lucky to slice through and we quickly went from having no chance to being in big one. Every race he’s in, he’s competitive but if he walks out like he did on Sunday, he’s no chance. The dog has high speed and high ability, he just needs a clean start and if he does, he’s got terrific pace when he hits the ground. Impress Dressell and Albert’s Memory go really well on the track and they will be the dangers.
Trainer Reg Gardoll said: It’s a reasonably hard race. Tommy Tzouvelis has a very good dog (Valhalla) and DAVE Irwin’s dog (Impress Dressel) is good too, so it’s no gimme. Our dogs got a rough chance. The heat was very pleasing because he went hard along the fence and he doesn’t normally do that. He’s usually a dog that likes to be drawn a bit wide so we’re very happy with Box 7 on Saturday night. If Isurava leaves him alone, we’re a good chance of being somewhere near the lead at the first corner. I’ve won a lot of races over the years but this one here would be special for two reasons. Our dog was named after Albert Gleeson who was a great friend of mine, and as far as I’m concerned, the race itself is named after the nicest man who ever lived in the Northern Rivers, Jack Sommerville. What he and his wife, Carol, did for the greyhound industry up here was enormous and it’d be a great honour to claim this race.
Owner Brent Kline said: This is going to be his fourth or fifth feature final, he was in the Richmond Cannonball, The Townsville Cup, the Group 1 Hobart 1000 and he hasn’t been able to win one yet. He’s drawn absolutely perfectly in this race though and he has great form from wide draws. But Valhalla is drawn well also. Queen Wok crashed to the rail a few starts back and took us out so the race is probably setup for Valhalla, but our bloke is boxed where we want him and we just hope he jumps well and stays out of trouble. If they bunch up on that first corner, he could get a nice cart around them and a top three finish would make me very happy.
