The June Gulgong Cup race day is cancelled. However Gulgong Turf Club is hoping for an October long weekend date to return bigger than before.

Gulgong Turf Club President, Percy Thompson said he made the tough call to cancel the Cup day. He said it's a shame it's come to this but hopes an agreement can be reached with Racing NSW over an October meeting.

"They had a community meet down in Cobar a couple of weeks ago but they've got better facilities than most places and the jockeys have got to be a meter and a half apart when they sit and we haven't got enough room in there for 'em," Mr Thompson said.

"We make our money out of sponsorships, the gate, bar and the good. So you've got have a crows, you're not allowed to have any crowd. But with the other meetings that they're still running, they're TAB meeting, the clubs get so much out of the TAB depending on how big their turnover is,"

"It's no good community clubs having race meetings if you're not going to make any money."

Percy said an October meeting would be perfect, given the planned Gulgong 150^th celebrations are planned for the first weekend of that month, October 3-5, possibly bringing bigger crowds than ever before to the track.

Mr Thompson said he has hasn't yet heard back about a new date in October.

"I've been in touch with them [Racing NSW] in Sydney about getting another date. I wanted it on the long weekend in October when we have the back to Gulgong 150 years celebration," he said.

Mr Thompson said country meets need to be supported or else they risk shutting down.

"They need horses up in Sydney to race in the provincials to keep their fields up... that's how they make their money, from people betting on horses. The bigger field you have the more money you get, but what they don't realise is these smaller clubs, the more people you've got having horses the more chance you've got having horses good enough to race down there because there's very few of them that are," he said.

Successful local trainer and son to Percy, Brett Thompson said the delay is something to be expected and hopes for an October meet too.

"Yeah, it's really hard on us. We've lost a lot of meetings everywhere but with Corona they really can't do much about it. You know, they're small clubs can't make any money to put it on to make it worthwhile for 'em to run it. But it'd be great if all these - everyone still wants to run their cup meetings and all that it'd be great if they put it on in October for them," Brett said.

"We'd be all for but it's just hard as a trainer that, you know, all the meetings at the moment. The nominations are huge because people can't race at the difference non tab races that are on every way in makes it really hard to get your horse up. It's really hard for the owners as well."

Brett said the delay throws their usual schedule out of whack and work will now be done to prepare their horses for a future date.

"You've just got to learn to adjust to it you know, we would have had the ideal horses for the cup and normally we bring in horses three months before to have them ready for the races,"

"Obviously we weren't able to do it. So you know we just got to move on and go to Well, hopefully they can put it on in October but we need to know sooner rather than later. If it's going there,s o we can say we can get a change to bring the horses in at the right time. That we're aiming for the races.

"It's hard for everybody, it's hard for the club, it's hard for the trainers. The sooner we know the better, but they've got to get crowds back at the races - they're talking about getting them back to the rugby league on the first of July, so if they can get rugby league on the first of July, I can't see why couldn't be back at the races."