British Athletics League Results & Reports 2006: Match Three, Alexander Stadium, Birmingham

Bels top the league - but it's far from over

Prologue

Just as Match 1 presented problems with getting athletes back from warm weather training so Match 3 presented the joint team managers with the usual problems of finding out which athletes were popping over to central Europe in answer to the siren calls emanating from our new governing body – England Athletics Ltd., Nothing new in this. On the recognised fixtures calendar there were no England representative matches this weekend. But we knew from past experience that AAAoE would suddenly announce small teams to attend European fixtures at the last minute much to the displeasure of clubs trying to take BAL competition seriously. This we thought had changed especially as UKA Ltd were using BAL matches to mount their Challenge series.

But with the last of the AAAoE staff being moved over to England Athletics Ltd on June 1st we should have known better. Old habits died hard and sure enough two weeks before this fixture the phones started ringing and clubs began to lose athletes to yet another late and unscheduled England Athletics initiative. So much for the bright new world of joined up planning by the sport’s Governing Bodies.

A number of Belgrave athletes turned down their invitations. Dominic Girdler accepted one match, competing in Hungary on Friday evening but then got up at 3am to catch the red eye back to Luton, then train to Loughborough and car to Birmingham. His Herculean efforts, despite illness, typified the Belgrave approach to this match.

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