Tropical Blue made it a winning debut at the track on Saturday evening for trainer Patsy Cusack in an A7 race.

The manner of the win would strongly suggest that an A6 event is well within his scope next time out.

The dog used all of his previous race experience at Kilkenny, in Ireland, where he had 10 races, to make it the perfect start for his new trainer here.

The dog possesses early pace away from the traps, which won him this race, and he will have benefited from this competitive race after a pleasing set of trials.

I believe that he will win again soon.

Duke Of Leon is a dog that I have been following over the last few weeks as I see him very much as a ‘value dog’. He generally returns a decent starting price of around the 4-1 mark and, after finishing second over the weekend in an A3 race, he now looks likely to win at good odds.

If you go back to mid-December you will see that he won in top grade A1 so logically there is no reason why he should not be successful at this level.

Don’t be put off by his starting price as he has won at odds of as high as 6-1 before.

Like all tracks, we occasionally have a dead heat outcome in a race and such was the case last Friday evening when, in the feature race, the Royal Wedding Sweepstake, the honours were shared by Buglys Touch and Shes So Brave.

The pair raced together throughout with the lead changing hands on no fewer than four times so the dead heat result was entirely appropriate.

Greyhounds are competitive by nature so this type of race will have benefited both dogs, who should now reappear fully-fired up.

One for your notebook is Shanballa Lou who looked highly tried to me in her first race at A4 level.

Having registered three sub 24-second trial times, she could have figured prominently in her debut race.

However, the experience of the opposition did not allow her to show what she is capable of.

I’m not sure if she can win an A4 on this evidence but she is capable of a much faster start than was the case here and, had she done so, she probably would have gone close.