British Athletics League 2005: Match 2, Thames Valley Athletic Centre, Eton

One of those days ...

Bill Laws writes:- This match, originally scheduled to take place at Carlisle, was transferred to Eton and combined with the Division 2 match hosted by Windsor SE&H, due to the winter flooding of the Border AC home track. This placed a huge burden on Windsor Secretary Dennis Daly and the meeting officials and it is a great credit to them that the complicated two-match programme of events went off smoothly.

The Belgrave team missed a number of key performers due to the next day’s GB, USA and Russia encounter at Glasgow but nonetheless produced a number of superlative performances. These unfortunately were just not sufficient to withstand a Woodford Green and Essex Ladies match winning onslaught which took them to position one in the league, albeit by just 15 match points.

It started so well

It started so well with a unique max points total in the 100m and 200m by Graham Beasley and junior international Wade Bennett-Jackson. Graham produced an early season legal sub 21sec clocking in the A200 while Wade produced two legal outdoor pb’s in both the 100 and 200m. Graeme Oudney found a lot of attention focused on the A800 and almost had the scalp of Mo Farah as he produced his best race to date in Belgrave colours. In the B800 Darren Gauson overcame a bad case of being boxed in to gain a last stride win in a slow run race. Lost points in the 400 and an unusual collapse by Stephen Sharp in the 1500 soon brought us down to earth. Young tiger Jonathan Blackledge bettered a leg weary Stephen who had raced a 10km the week before (why?) and another young tiger Phil Wicks bettered the classy Dave Anderson in the 5000m. We missed Kevin Nash in the chase where Tim Watson finished a creditable 3rd and Bruce Barton valiantly strove for points in the B.

Twenty points down the "Swanny"

The throws, uncharacteristically, were like the curate's egg – good in parts. Kevin Brown and Leith Marar produced two second places in bad conditions for the discus and Mick Jones produced a likewise position in the A hammer, backed well by John Osazuwa who had returned from overseas duty just two days earlier and hadn’t picked up a hammer for six months. James Everard threw a pb in the javelin to beat an out of touch Tom Dobbing. But it was the shot where we came unstuck as Chris Gearing failed to get a messenger to the team managers that he was unwell and Scot Thompson was competing in Norway. Twenty points down the "Swanny".

And the jumps were similar with only the long jump coming up to expectations. Seni Majekodunmi sensed a pull during warm up for the triple leaving Farel Mepandy to provide useful points. Cameron Johnston withdrew from the pole vault with an achilles problem and decathletes William Sharman and Kevin Sempers combined to cover gaps including the high jump where again Samson Oni had reported injured.

And to cap a very unfortunate day Dominic Girdler trailed in the high hurdles A race following his blocks slipping and hitting 6 hurdles. He was harshly judged to have deliberately knocked them down and was disqualified. But the ubiquitous William Sharman showed what might have been by winning the B event. The only mention to be made of the 400 hurdles was that once again our sole representative was veteran Paul Beaumont.

And so although the team managers had made efforts to strengthen the weak events from match 1 it was a host of misfortunes which combined to bite them on the derriere. Sadly, towards the very end of the match, President Gerry North fell up the stadium steps and finished up in hospital with some nasty head injuries including a suspected broken nose. It was one of those days.

100m: 1 G Beasley 10.43w/3.6; 1 W Bennett-Jackson 10.45/1.4. n/s 1r1 L Oboh 10.72/1.8; 7r2 G Selway U20 11.34/1.6; 1r3 J Hussain U20 10.94w/3.5; 4r3 K Adjepong 11.24w/3.5. 200m: 1 G Beasley 20.92/0.1; 1 W Bennett-Jackson 21.19/1.4. 400m: 7 A Bennett 49.06; 5 J Hussain 49.49. 800m: 4 G Oudney 1:51.77; 1 D Gauson 1:53.58. 1500m: 2 J Blackledge 3:50.63; 4 S Sharp 3:58.74. 5000m: 3 P Wicks 14:31.80; 2 D Anderson 14:46.55. 110mH: dq D Girdler; 1 W Sharman 14.22w/2.2. 400mH: 8 P Beaumont 69.7. 3000mSC: 3 T Watson 9:12.02; 7 B Barton 10:38.64. 4x100m: 3 Belgrave 41.94 (D Girdler, G Beasley, K Sempers, W Bennett-Jackson). 4x400m: 5 Belgrave 3:18.51 (W Sharman 49.4, G Selway 49.7, K Sempers 50.3, A Bennett 49.1). HJ: 3 K Sempers 2.00; 6 W Sharman 1.80. LJ: 2 A Phillips 7.23w/2.2; 2 D O'Farrell 7.12/2.0. TJ: 3 F Mepandy 15.12. PV: 3 J Ive 4.70; 4 W Sharman 3.40. SP: 8 D O'Farrell 11.80. DT: 2 L.Marar 51.60; 2 K Brown 48.14. JT: 6 J Everard 58.93; 2 T Dobbing 58.16. HT: 2 M Jones 68.53; 3 J Osazuwa 55.47.

1 Woodford Green wEL 358; 2 Belgrave H 314; 3 Newham & Essex Beagles 290; 4 Birchfield H 275; 5 Border H 246; 6 Shaftesbury Barnet H 238; 7 Trafford AC 234; 8 Enfield & Haringey AC 231.

Restored from the club's earlier website, belgraveharriers.com, and published here as originally written.