PROUD bosses at Poole Stadium were beaming when they switched on a £250,000 state-of-the-art lighting system on Tuesday night - but hours later the track was plunged into darkness.

Part-way through the seventh greyhound race of the night, there was a power failure caused by a fault at a nearby substation.

The event was abandoned and 800 spectators sent home with complimentary tickets for a return visit.

Julie-Anne Houldey, who was there at a leaving party with staff from Bournemouth and Poole College, said the crowd appreciated the irony of the situation.

She said: "It was quite funny really.

"They made such a big fuss at the beginning about the lighting system, with some bigwig from head office saying how fantastic it was going to be, then half-way through a race everything went dark."

She added: "Some sarcastic comments were being yelled out by the crowd. Generally everyone was quite good natured, but as we left a lot of people were complaining."

Shaun Spencer-Perkins, general manager of the stadium, said: "The lights were working perfectly up until that point.

"It could have happened at any time. Unfortunately it happened on the night we chose to turn our lights on."

He said the system, which has more than 40 lights to replace the original four floodlights, uses less power than before. Lights in the stands remained on, but the remaining five races were abandoned for safety reasons.

He added: "I would like to apologise to all our customers who were there. We are now fully back up and running."

He also assured people winning bets from the night would be honoured.

Justin Smith, a spokesman for Southern Electric, said the power cut just before 10pm was caused by a fault on the network which blew a fuse at a local substation.

Electricity was restored just before midnight. No other premises were affected.

He added: "It was just an unfortunate coincidence."