It’s a decent card at The Meadows tonight given many of Victoria’s finest will be honing in on Sandown Park on Thursday for heats of the Nationals.

As a useless piece of information, take a look at Kiwi Hank (1) who lines up in the first race. In his first start he weighed in at a whopping 43.4kg – greyhounds do not get bigger than that! Action kicks off at 6.39pm.

BEST
Race 8, Sparring (8)
He got the chocolates for us last week and I think he’s well placed again. He seems to still be building into his campaign and may peak tonight. He’ll accelerate forward early and will be advantaged by Brooklyn Girl (7) who can begin well and charge to the rail. A good operator is Sparring and I think he’ll be hard to beat.

NEXT BEST
Race 6, Dr. Will (6)
He’s at longer odds than what I thought he’d be. Despite it being his first look at The Meadows he is classy enough to handle that well. It’s a tricky field but with the early speed he can show he can overcome that. Good chance of winning and then head to Sandown on Thursday for Nationals heats.

VALUE
Race 5, Brindle Surprise (4)
He’s versatile and his best is good enough to run a decent race here. What’s key is that he has Paw Otis (5) on his outside who has speed and hangs wide on the track. Brindle Surprise has got a bit of speed and a bit of strength and with the path he may get is a good value play north of double figure odds.

WORTH THE RISK/TAKE ON
Race 7, Carry On Maci (7)
She’s got a lethal amount of early speed but her drama will be the last 100m of the race as she’s not strong. She should light them up early but the challengers will be looming turning for home and have her under the pump. She opened $3.10 and she’s not strong enough over this distance to be that short.