British Athletics League Results & Reports 2008: Match 4, Barnet Copthall Stadium
Down and out of the Premiership!
Final Premiership Division positions for 2008
Newham & Essex Beagles
Woodford Green with Essex Ladies
City of Manchester
Enfield & Haringey AC
Shaftesbury Barnet H
Birchfield H
Belgrave H
Windsor Slough Eton & Hounslow
Above: James Kelly - a second B 5000m win and his fourth BAL Premiership outing over the distance this summer.
Big problems and the match hadn’t started yet
Our poor result in Match 3 meant that the chances of avoiding relegation were slim. We would need a full strength team to be confident of bouncing back and we already knew that Mark Allen would be unavailable due to family commitments. Imagine the state of the team managers when in the week before this match first Scot Thompson pulled out and then Louis Evling-Jones – both due to injury. Bearing in mind these three have been our big multi event point scorers (together they contributed 79 points in Match 2) then you get the scale of the problem. It would have been easy to rollover and call it a day but the call went out and the troops responded.
New faces and golden oldies help out
Our first new face was Sam Colgate who had been given clearance to vault for Belgrave thanks to the positive support of his previous club Woking AC. And Sam responded by equalling his season’s best to win the B event while Cameron Johnston matched with good points in the A. So, great points in the pole vault and a good start. Very senior veteran Chris Privett provided support in the hammer, discus and shot to scrape precious B points while veteran Abi Ekoku cancelled other plans and arrived to give us further points in the A discus and shot. Abi has not trained or thrown a discus for over twelve months and his near 47m effort was truly impressive. Mick Jones (yes another veteran) arrived early and gained an excellent fourth spot in the A hammer.
Then the ups and downs
With all our specialist long jumpers injured Gary Wilson and Dave Wellstead were drafted into the long jump which benefited from following winds of up to 5.5m/sec. Unfortunately they both trailed in last in the A and B in what turned out to be a high class competition won with a windy 8.12 metres! While the jumpers benefited from a huge following wind the sprinters in the home straight were finding an equally large headwind daunting. Nonetheless Wade Bennett Jackson powered to a fine second spot in the A 100 and fourth place in the A 200. William Sharman completed his fourth win of the season in the sprint hurdles and gained third spot in the B 200. The 800m proved fast races but we achieved good points with Steve Davies finishing fourth in the A race and Neil Speight second in the B event. Steve then went on to gain a good second in the A 1500m while Mark Pollard also gained a valuable second place in the B 1500 in his best track race of the season.
Making his League debut of the season in his most detested event, the 3000 steeplechase, Will Cockerell joined Graham Hyett to scrape further valuable points but once again the 400m provided scant pickings.
We gained valuable points in the 1500m where Steve Davies (left) and Mark Pollard collected two second places. Below right: Gary Wilson returned to the triple jump with renewed vigour after his last leg relay run to leap a season's best.
And the roller coaster continued
Still in seventh spot we gained valuable points from the 1500m and then a third in the A 5000m from Simon Jones with James Kelly repeating his Match 3 win in the B 5000. Then Samson Oni won the A high jump with 2.25m which ironically was the same height Tom Parsons was to clear the following day (Sunday 17th Aug) to reach the Beijing Olympic final. Ryan Dinham, who has been injured for 18 months and is about to resume training also turned up to support as best he could and was drafted into the B high jump, 100m B and 110H B but could not make the contribution we needed. But he came and his support was much appreciated by all. And our final debutant for the season was Wes Smith who 11 months ago broke his arm while throwing the javelin. Now recovered from surgery Wes flew in from Finland for his first competition since the accident and tentatively threw just under 53m to back up James Everard who gained a useful fourth in the A javelin. And suddenly the team was in fifth place ahead of rivals Shaftesbury Barnet and Birchfield.
The relays were getting close and once again it was looking difficult to put together a sprint relay squad. Determined to get the baton round for points the team management pulled Gary Wilson out of the first round of the triple jump. He had never run a 100m before let alone a relay so was placed on the last leg where he only had to receive the incoming baton. Wade led off, handing over to William Sharman on the back straight. William, boosted by a strong tail wind surged into the lead and handed to 400m man Ryan Thomas. Ryan ran a great bend and handed to Gary who took the baton, no problem, and proceeded to tear down the home straight with enormous strides to gain an unbelievable third spot against well rehearsed specialist sprint teams. Gary then returned to the TJ buoyed by his triumph and leaped a season's best to gain second in the A event. It was now very close. We had the beating of Birchfield but also needed to beat Shaftesbury Barnet who were busy gaining massive points winning both A and B triple jumps. Sadly our weakness in the long relay showed where we trailed in last of seven teams. At the last knockings we had failed to catch Shaftesbury by just six points. Disappointment reigned in the Belgrave camp but also there was a tinge of incredulity in so far as this mix and match team had come so close to pulling off an incredible escape.
Demoted we are. Unlucky in losing so many key men in this match we were. But in all honesty it was the general lack of success in earlier matches which had brought us to this point.
100m: 2 W Bennett-Jackson 10.68/-2.0; 8 R Dinham 15.05/-6.7. 200m: 4= W Bennett-Jackson 22.15/-4.7; 3 W Sharman 22.25/-3.2. 400m: 8 R Thomas 49.82; 6 P Burkart 50.42. 800m: 4 S Davies 1:50.40; 2 N Speaight 1:52.97. 1500m: 2 S Davies 3:52.94; 2 M Pollard 3:55.74. 5000m: 3 S Jones 14:43.29; 1 J Kelly 14:49.55. 3000mSC: 6 G Hyett 9:47.46; 6 W Cockerell 10:22.19. 110mH: 1 W Sharman 14.17/-4.2; 8 R Dinham 17.16/-3.9. 400mH: 7 S Reidy 55.68; 4 J-C Roghi 54.67. HJ: 1 S Oni 2.25; 8 R Dinham 1.50. LJ: 8 G Wilson 6.76w/3.4; 8 D Wellstead w/2.7. TJ: 2 G Wilson 14.73w/1.5; 6 D Wellstead 13.31w/2.5. PV: 4= C Johnston 4.60; 1 S Colgate 4.60. SP: 6 A Ekoku M40 13.76; 8 C Privett M45 9.88. DT: 6 A Ekoku M40 46.61; 7 C Privett M45 32.66. JT: 4 J Everard 57.78; 5 W Smith 52.97. HT: 4 M Jones M45 62.16; 7 C Privett M45 38.82. 4x100m: 3 Belgrave 41.75 (W Bennett-Jackson, W Sharman, R Thomas, G Wilson). 4x400m: 7 Belgrave 3:19.82 (P Burkart 50.9, N Speaight 50.2, M Anukam 50.2, R Thomas 48.6).
Match: 1 Newham & Essex Beagles 356; 2 Woodford Green wEL 304; 3 City of Manchester 291; 4 Enfield & Haringey 279; 5 Shaftesbury Barnet H 268; 6 Belgrave H 262; 7 Birchfield H 250; 6 ; 8 Windsor, Slough, Eton & Hounslow 157.
Above: Ryan Thomas takes the baton from Will Sharman in the sprint relay which saw the Bels snatch a surprising third place.
|
Final Premiership Division positions for 2008 |
League Points | Match Points |
|
Newham & Essex Beagles |
32 | 1394.5 |
|
Woodford Green with Essex Ladies |
27 | 1255.0 |
|
City of Manchester |
22 | 1155.0 |
|
Enfield & Haringey AC |
17 | 1105.0 |
|
Shaftesbury Barnet H |
15 | 1058.5 |
|
Birchfield H |
14 | 1017.5 |
|
Belgrave H |
13 | 1037.5 |
|
Windsor Slough Eton & Hounslow |
4 | 646.0 |
Restored from the club's earlier website, belgraveharriers.com, and published here as originally written.