Bels win second consecutive Surrey League clean sweep
Belgrave men won the A and B team competitions for the second consecutive Surrey League cross country fixture to finish the season in second overall.
Bels’ Dylan Evans secured the individual league title, Ben Hurley finish top-ranked V45 and we won the overall B team competition.
After Storm Eunice meant an 11th-hour cancellation of the original final league fixture, we’d worried that reduced turnout (four of our likely scorers were racing HMs this weekend) for this rearranged date would spoil the momentum we were carrying from our win on Mitcham Common in January.
But a fired-up top end and great depth through the scoring positions meant we recorded our best points total in recent history (at least as far as the Opentrack records go back).
And what a sight it was: after Dylan and THH’s Jack Millar broke away early, we found four more Bels in the next six, making it a tantalising five in seven after the first mile.
John Sanderson (264) and Tom Jervis (314) lead out Josh Trigwell, Phil Wicks, Sam Somerville and Sam Gebreselassie early on. Only Dylan Evans and Jack Millar were ahead of them.
Of that pack, Sam Gebreselassie would finish the strongest, working his way through his teammates and then outsprinting Wimbledon’s Tom Jervis to finish a brilliant third. Sam’s first cross country season started with a baptism of fire on Wimbledon Common and a blowup ending in 32nd. He improved to 12th on Mitcham Common and then a further nine places for this superbly-judged run, certainly his smartest race in our colours. We can’t wait to see what he does on the road and track this summer.
Josh Trigwell (85) in 4th ahead of Sanderson (264), Wicks (27) and Gebreselassie (5) near the end of the first of two laps.
Ahead of him Dylan narrowly lost out to the in-form Jack Millar, who’d finished 5th at the National a week earlier. Both reported enjoying their duel here, and the Aussie’s 2nd place was more than enough to secure in the individual title for the season, a fine achievement in this most competitive of leagues.
After recovering from 68th at the National a week earlier, Phil Wicks ran very strongly to finish 6th, the kind of position he’s much more used to at this level. He was disappointed to lose out to a Thames whippersnapper in the final 400m but scalping John Sanderson, this season’s Surrey League overall individual silver medallist, should more than make up for it.
Josh Trigwell is another name on the up. Under Belgrave legend and coach John Bicourt, he’s used the Surrey League to rebuild his fitness over the winter, starting with a 48th on Wimbledon Common, progressing to 28th on Mitcham Common and concluding with another 20-place improvement to 8th on the day. He’s in for a tasty summer.
Jolly Jonny Neville leads a pack that includes just the quiff of Conall McNally and fellow teammates James Nutt (26) and Dan Wallis (94).
Battersea-based second-claimer Sam Sommerville has been an excellent addition to the team this year. He didn’t quite hold his early top-10 berth but made up for the disappointment of a below-expectation National performance with a really solid 22nd here. Just four seconds behind Sam was Jonny Neville, yet another consistent improver and perhaps the best story of our whole season. Excluding a few school races, it’s his first season of cross country and his Surrey League progression has rocketed like a Christmas Covid chart: 82nd, 81st, 59th, 23rd. Jonny loves the mud but he’s another who offers oodles of promise on the road once he’s added a bit of speed to his game this summer.
Angus Lamb gets in just ahead of Dan Wallis.
From Jonny we closed our final four of the 10 scorers within just 34 seconds. Conall McNally (26th) is never far away from bandmate Neville, and his run here, his best Surrey League placing yet, means he retains the Winter Plate - just reward for a season of quality and consistency. After going missing for nearly two years, James Nutt (28th) was back for his second score in seven days with another deceptively smooth-looking performance. Angus Lamb (38th) was another Bel to record his best League placing to date and just outsprinted Dan Wallis (39th), who’d arrived back in the UK only a few days earlier and whose last-minute borrowed spikes lacked anything like the purchase required for propulsion on Lloyd Park’s boggy turdsurface. Probably not where a 2:19 marathoner would expect to be finishing but a real credit to him that he made it the whole way round.
Dan’s score (10 men within 39 places) is a neat demonstration of how far we’ve come in recent years. At the same fixture, same venue in 2020, by 39th place we’d finished only Will Stockley and Paskar Owor; it took us 94 places to get all 10 home. Then we finished sixth on the day to confirm sixth in the league. This time, even without Will and Paskar, we improved our points score from 502 to 195, notched a second consecutive match win to seal second in the league and go forward with grander ambitions for next year.
l-r: Regular B-scorers Ewan Somerville, Ben Hurley, AJ Elsadig and Rob Kelly hold the shield they won.
Though we only managed five B scorers, their good placing and lower turnout overall meant we still came away with a B team victory on the day and the B team competition trophy for the season, a brilliant testament to our persistence, determination and spirit. The league’s top-ranked V45 Ben Hurley (55th) was the first of them home - he’s one of only three to make every single fixture this season - followed by Rob Kelly, Alex Mills, Will Cockerell and Alex Janiaud who made it round despite separating from his sole halfway through. Had a single one of that quintet not turned up and got it finished we’d have been beaten by the Guildford B-string.
What a high on which to end the cross country season. Two consecutive wins in both the A and B races, our highest league position since 2007 and a team fighting for eachother and for even more next time out.
Standing l-r: Evans, McNally, Neville, Mills, Dickinson, Gebreselassie, Nutt, Kelly, Trigwell, Wallis. Kneeling l-r: Somerville, Wicks, Janiaud, Hurley, Cockerell, Lamb.
Results
Gallery
Report and photos by team manager Steve Gardner