Warrnambool and Victoria’s south-west greyhound community will celebrate the lives of two stalwarts on Friday, following the passings of Val Mugavin and Bill McCosker.

Val Mugavin, the matriarch of the Mugavin family, which includes grandson Jonathan Brown, died peacefully on Friday, aged 94.

Warrnambool Greyhound Racing Club life member Brian Fish said of Val: “She knew everybody, and everybody knew her as Mrs Mugavin.”

“I was in greyhound racing for over 40-odd years, and the Mugavins were involved all that time,” Fish said.

“They had great numbers of dogs. They bred dogs themselves and raced them, and they’ve had a lot of good dogs. It was handed down from ‘KP’ [Val’s late husband] to [son] Kevin, and then his sister (Mary) who married Brian Brown, they also took to the dogs. And for a long time, Kevin’s right-hand man was Jonathan Brown. Another brother Tim, he became involved in it. They became a family that were dog people.”

“Mr Mugavin and Mrs Mugavin were always at the dogs when the dogs raced, whether they were the owners or just Kevin was training them for other members of the family. She never wavered from going to the dogs, and she was a lady who you could walk into the dog track and if she knew you, she’d speak to you straight away and ask how you were and how the dogs were going.”

Fish also paid tribute to William ‘Bill’ McCosker, who died on Saturday aged 74. In 2008, McCosker received Victorian greyhound racing’s highest honour, a Ken Carr medal, for his contribution to greyhound racing and the Warrnambool GRC.

“Billy McCosker was probably the lifeblood of the Warrnambool Greyhound Racing Club for a long time,” Fish said.

“He was the handyman. [If] anything went wrong with the track of anything at the dogs, Bill was the first one there, first one to fix it. He could turn his hand to anything at the track, from lure driver to track maintenance man. He would tell you himself, ‘I’m a jack of all trades but a master of none’.”

McCosker also trained greyhounds, including stars River Rage (who won 15 races and set Marathon track records at Sandown Park and Bendigo) and Stream Rage (who also won 15 races and represented Victoria in the National TAB Challenge in South Australia in 1993).

He became the youngest recipient of life membership at Warrnambool in 1987, and was on the club’s committee from 1985 until 2000, spending two of those years as president.

“They’ll both be sadly missed by the greyhound community in this area,” Fish said.

Val Mugavin’s life will be celebrated at Infant Jesus Catholic Church in Koroit at 10.30am on Friday, with Bill McCosker’s service scheduled for 1pm at the Warrnambool GRC.