THE management at Oxford Stadium are delighted with a massive boost to their funds after landing their biggest BAGS contract ever.

The new deal, which starts next month, will mean around an extra 600,000 and the facilities will continue to be improved at Sandy Lane.

It will be a case of don't blink, or you will miss a meeting at Cowley for in the new contract Oxford will be racing on alternate Wednesdays and Sundays as well as Friday BAGS (Bookmakers Afternoon Greyhound Service) and the normal meetings.

This means five meetings a week and next month the track will be racing on 21 of the 30 days.

Oxford were awarded an extra 26 meetings in the new contract, making them the fourth highest BAGS track in the country after Romford, Wolverhampton and Sunderland.

It's a great reward for the GRA and the staff at Cowley, and general manager Mick Hardy said: "I think it's extremely rewarding for the racing office. "It's a great pat on the back from BAGS and we are delighted. The investment we started last year will now continue now that we have the security of the BAGS contract.

"Our plans next year include the opening of the executive boxes and and an extension to the ground floor."

Racing operations manager Gary Baiden was also upbeat at the news.

He said: "Although this will be the busiest ever racing schedule we have had to deal with, we are looking forward to it. Obviously we will need to look at staffing levels as we are now approaching the American and Australian way of racing almost daily.

"We will have to organise some sort of shift work because the same staff will not be able to cope all the time.

"We have to organise some control over the grading system with some staff missing meetings, but as we have access on video of all meetings, it shouldn't be a problem. Commercially, it's a great boost for us.

"We will require about 380 dogs to carry out the programme and that shouldn't be a problem.

"It will give the trainers an opportunity to bring as many dogs here as they like. The grading times will be geared to suit our needs. The success is all down to the hard work of the current staff." Some may argue that there is already enough racing.

After all, there is only so much money to go around, but the beauty of the BAGS is that it doesn't really matter whether you have 50 or 500 punters at the meeting, most of the business is done in the betting shops with the big bookmakers always represented at the track.

Overall there will be a total of 1,193 BAGS meetings at 14 tracks, which is an increase of 274 on last year.

The average BAGS payment is 6,300 for a meeting and the total BAGS budget has jumped from 6m to 7.5m per annum.

In all, BAGS is expected to contribute some 12m of income to greyhound racing.