Men's Southern League 2003: Match 5, Guildford

1 North Devon 129; 2 Royal Navy 106; 3 Thames Valley H 105.5; 4 Guildford & Godalming 103; 5 Belgrave 73.5.

With far too many blank spaces on the team sheet this match was a struggle from the outset. In scorching weather we fell a long way short of avoiding 5th and last team place. It will take a lot of effort in the remaining fixture at St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, to ensure that we don't drop into division three for 2004. The call of the British League meant that several of our regulars were ineligible for Southern League duty - but it must be said that we do have the depth to cope. We acknowledge that Southern League division 2 competition is not that appealing to some of our athletes but we can only imagine that the competition in division three will be even less so!

Having said all that, we were able to offer a full complement and more of sprinters, with Ian Deeth struggling to recover from injury but nevertheless picking up a good win in the 400m. Charlie Dickinson's boys filled out the shorter middle distance events where personal records fell. Leading from the gun and in very hot conditions Hassan Raidi won the 5000m by a street while Grant Sprigings did the rounds of the throws to collect 14% of our total points score. Max Marsden made his first appearance in the team - and collected his first win in the B discus while fellow newcomer Chris Axe ran to a promising second in the A 1500m.

So, we have three weeks to get something going for that final match on August 2nd.

100m: 3 I.Deeth 11.3; 3 G.Baksh 11.6; n/s 2 K.Adjepong 11.6; 6 N.Travers-Griffen 12.4. 200m: 4 K.Adjepong 23.7; 2 G.Baksh 23.6; n/s N.Travers-Griffen 24.8. 400m: 1 I.Deeth 49.1; 5 M.Marsden 64.1. 800m: 4 R.Marcus 2:08.2; 3 A.Cowmeadow 2:13.7. 1500m: 2 C.Axe 4:20.2; 2 R.Marcus 4:35.1. 5000m: 1 H.Raidi 15:23.3; 2 A.Boubeh 17:29.5. HJ: =4 R.Collier U17 1.65. LJ: 5 M.Wendt 5.70; 4 N.Travers-Griffen 5.41. TJ: 5 R.Collier U17 11.16. SP: 2 G.Sprigings 12.16; 5 P.Collier 7.84. DT: 2 G.Sprigings 32.28; 1 M.Marsden 30.68. JT: 5 M.Wendt 38.33; 5 M.Marsden 25.15. HT: 4 G.Sprigings 28.52; 3 P.Collier 18.54. 4x100m: 3 Belgrave 45.7 (G.Baksh, K.Adjepong, N.Travers-Griffen, A.Cowmeadow). 4x400m: 4 Belgrave 3:41.0 (I.Deeth 51.4, R.Collier U17 56.6, A.Cowmeadow 60.0, G.Baksh 53.0).

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