Santa bringing a break for Townsville couple

By Pat McLeod

Santa will arrive early for busy Townsville trainer Mark Partland and wife Louise, whatever the result of Tuesday night’s Young Guns Final at the North Queensland Showgrounds track.

Partland will campaign the well-performed Table Topper in the $5005-to-the-winner feature against a strong field of young chasers that have won through from last week’s five heats.

The Aston Rupee and Nurse Meg dog has a record to date of five wins and eight placings from 16 starts and shows positive indications of a promising race career over more distance.

“He (Table Topper) is a good honest dog that is going pretty well for me at the moment,” Partland said.

“He started off with a few second placings in a row, but he is only young, a little immature.

“He has also come a long way race-wise and will continue to learn as he gets a little bit more distance. I have no doubt that eventually he will handle a bit more distance because he is a good striding dog and he's getting stronger and stronger.

“He continues to improve and there is no rush to get to where he eventually will get to, which will be over 500 metres.”

While Partland knows victory in the Young Guns won’t be easy, a podium finish is not the only reward come Tuesday night.

That meeting is likely to be his last for a couple of weeks, allowing him and Louise to have one less commitment.

“We probably won’t race at Friday’s meeting and then the track closes for a while (until Tuesday, January 7),” he said.

“Although not having racing at the track for that amount of time isn’t ideal, I will really appreciate the break. It has been a busy year.”

As the Partlands continue to grow their greyhound interests, they juggle that with a hectic work life, running an extremely busy fresh seafood outlet, Ingham Road Seafood, in Townsville.

Partland said the always frenetic pace at the successful seafood business steps up to another level around Christmas.

“The North Queensland Christmas, well seafood is a very popular part of most people's Christmas dinner up here,” he explains.

“We go through tons and tons of prawns.

“It is a tough juggle with the business and greyhounds, when you have about 25 staff from casuals to full-time, managing all that as well as the greyhounds.

“But, we do have a very good manager who has been with us a long time and she takes a lot of the pressure off us. But, it is difficult, especially at this time of the year.”

An example of that is Monday, December 23, when the Partlands shop won’t close.

It stays open the entire Monday night, eventually closing at 5pm Christmas Eve.

“We will have a line out the door until about 11pm on that Monday night,” said Partland.

“Between 11pm and 3am Louise and I duck home for a few hours' sleep and between those four hours we will still get up to about 150 customers.

“Across those couple of days the shop is open about 40 hours.”

As far as the Young Guns Final goes, Partland says the biggest threat is posed by the visiting Mackay region dogs – Steve Scott’s Oorah (box six) and Back Again (box seven) and Gerard Agius’ Canya Dominate.

“My dog isn’t as quick as Steve’s two, so I am glad that I am outside of his,” he said.

“I am hoping they give my dog a drag across and he does tend to slingshot a little bit into the corner, which will certainly suit him coming out of the eight.

“He has a good turn of foot when he gets going.”

Partland says a good result on Tuesday night would cap what has been a successful year for the kennel.

With just this week’s meetings to go at Townsville, Partland is in fifth place on the trainers’ premiership with 78 wins and 132 placings from 507 starts.

“The year 2024 has been a good one for me and Lou,” he said.

“I am happy with where we are at. We have set our goals for next year and one of those is to try to crack the ‘ton’.

“We have bred and have got a few young pups that will hit the track next year. So, we're looking forward to that and to generally improving where we are.”