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Wicksy moves closer to nailing the Skip - November 21, 2005
A closer look at the weekend’s results gets a satisfied nod of approval from the captain of your ship. I spy two very good things: the core of the team is improving all the time – Willis, Weeks, Axe, Greatorex, Lyne, Humphrey and Whiting all see their stars on the rise, and we know good ol’ ever present Lynchy has more to come. Then there’s Messrs Hadfield, Hegvold and Ellacott et al. all lurking in the wings. And the best bit was meeting so many new faces – around half a dozen, fantastic. A very warm welcome to you all, and may you protect and serve the club for several decades to come.
As for Wicksy – absolutely fab. He has moved an ominous step closer to winning the ‘Magical Mystery Challenge’ awarded to the man who nails me in the Cross-Country Plate. A part of me will be sad to lose the silverware, but a far greater part will be delighted that Phil’s magnificent running will have graced all 6 races… Come on Phil, you know you want it! Two of those races are the Southern and National, which he’s definitely up for. We can do no better than to build our teams around this lad, and with me committed too, we’re 2 men down, 8 or 9 to go, in our goal of fielding really top teams. It’s never too early to let the TM know you’re up for these huge races – if we want to medal in them, we have to start planning now! The Southern course in Exeter is fast, straightforward and well under 15kms (at least it was last time), and the National at Parly Hill will see far less mud than in January. So please put January 28 and February 25 in your diaries now – we need bodies in great numbers.
We have men off to Portsmouth in a fortnight for the classic 5-miler there, and the next big club race is on December 17, when we defend our title in the South of the Thames champs on our home patch. It would be great to hang on to our title in this famous old race and a team with a similar turn-out to yesterday would almost do it. In closing – what a brave and noble effort by our team up in Mansfield, and pity the poor TM for his devilish selection headache of how to get the flying Jon into the team… Sure he was worth his place, but how could we drop Paul after his Sutton heroics? Or Al after his Rushmoor blinder? Wicksy will always be all but impossible to drop, and well, I suppose there was Sharpy – NOT! It was a bizarre and unique conundrum that only a 4-man race could throw up.
