Secretary's Report to AGM 2008

We have had a somewhat Jekyll and Hyde year, and tend to lurch from unbeatable one moment, to unspeakable the next. However, this is perhaps to be expected as we are still a club that tries to offer something for everyone, and stretch ourselves too thinly, with just a handful of members managing our wide selection of teams. However, although the bad times this year have been painful, there’s a stack of good stuff to report too, far too much in the time we have here, but I look forward to giving you a brief glimpse of our triumphs tonight.

First though I am sad to report the deaths of three esteemed members, and three past members. We were happy to elect Charlie Walker our President this time last year, after nearly 60 years of proud service to the club. Charlie’s energy and youthful appearance belied the fact that he was nearly eighty. Charlie was a past winner of Surrey County Championships on road, cross-country and track; and winner of a sensational 24 medals from 28 appearances in the twice annual London-Brighton Relay. Our thanks to Dave McMillan for serving as acting President for the remainder of Charlie’s year.

Percy Wright was born in 1914 and our oldest member; a through and through Belgravian who continued to break race walking records into his eighties; one time editor of The Belgravian; silver medallist in AAA 2 miles Race Walk.

Fred Paget – Life Member and seemingly an almost permanent fixture at Belgrave Hall.

… and past Belgravians.

Eddie Pack – a most stylish and powerful 440 runner and key man in our AAA silver medal winning 4x440 yards team in 1938; British Empire Games competitor in that same year; the City of London’s very first motor-cycle cop in 1949.

Syd Jarlett – past Committee Member and a member of our silver medal winning 4x440 yards team along with the aforementioned Eddie.

And finally, E. M. Bare – high jumper in the early 1950s.

Last year I flagged the possibility that we had an exciting winter in store, perhaps one of the best in our history, and I was right. We won no fewer than six titles, and if all four major road relay titles were out of our hands a year ago, we have safely negotiated the return of three. The six titles we won in the heady winter of 2007-8 were: the Surrey road relay, AAA half-marathon champs, the Southern 6-stage, the National 6-stage, the National cross-country 4-stage, and the Southern 12-stage. All those days were exciting and memorable in their own right, and their detail may be reviewed in glorious Technicolor on our website, where you’ll find Alan Mead’s legendary race reports, or in issues of the Belgravian, which now exists in electronic form, but which can be printed off for anyone who requires.

Perhaps the stand-out of the above races was a thrilling and unexpected win in the National 4-stage at Mansfield. We have sent strong teams there for the last couple of years, but such is the fearsome nature of the opposition, and the lottery effect of just four runners from each club battling it out, we managed just 8th in the last two years, after gold and silver in ‘03 and ‘04. But our team of Steve Sharp, Mark Pollard (who couldn’t even make the National 6-stage team), Mark Miles and Phil Wicks, which looked good for about 4th on paper, ran a blinder of a race to steal the gold by 16 seconds.

We travelled to Sutton Park for the National 12-stage in April hoping to win for the 4th time since that tragic 6-second defeat of 2001. But as in 2004, 06 and 07, lady luck conspired against us as we started without our two best runners in Miles and Wicks. This was around a 4-minute parlay, and we lost the race by a little over two. But we battled hard and still came away happy, due to an exceptional run from Neil Speaight on the last leg who set out over a minute down on bronze, but charged through to nick us a set of medals. It is inconceivable that we won’t again be challenging for gold in April. And in the direct future, our squads for the Southern and National 6-stages, which we’re looking to win for the sixth and seventh time in recent years, are looking quite awesome. Have our men’s road and country squad plateaud yet? Not on this evidence; there is even talk of us launching another assault on the Surrey League, which we last landed in 2002.

Whilst the men were creating this merry carnage up and down the country, the ladies were having a trickier time of it, as we suffered from too many injuries and some crucial absentees, notable Catherine Bryson, who after an electrifying win in the first Surrey League, spent the winter studying in Australia – goodness she was missed. However, the Ladies just managed to stay up in the first division of the Surrey League, and it’s good to see Catherine back on these shores and running well. The other Catherine, our dynamic team manager Catherine Eastham, becomes ever busier in her career, and perhaps has taken the team as far as she can after a terrific decade at the reins in which the Belles have often exceeded expectations and placed in the top ten of numerous national events, not to forget being crowned national 10 km champions two seasons ago. And they always put in a rocking performance at the London Marathon, challenging for a set of medals – 4th in 2008. If there’s anything you think you can do to ease Catherine’s workload, I’m sure she’d welcome hearing from you.

Belgrave walkers have had our best year for a long time with five National Championship medals: Third Team in the Ten Miles and Twenty Kms and winning Team in the 50kms at Stockton on Tees. Mark Culshaw being the ever present and John Hall in two. Our other National medals came in the National 50kms Women with Maureen Noel taking second place, and UKA Championships with 17 year old Alex Wright finishing third in the 5Kms Senior event at Alexander Stadium in July.

Alex has lowered the club record for his age in both the 3kms and 5kms. He has moved from his school in Somerset to a college in Guildford and, under the guidance of Ray Hall, could be a name for the future. We have regularly turned out teams in the Enfield League and other events around the London area.

We have had an unusually challenging year on the track, and our time in the British League Premiership is over – for now. As with last year we spluttered badly in the first three matches, to arrive at Copthall for the last match staring down the barrel. At the day’s end, with a mere two results to come in, it looked like we had pulled off a heart-warming escape, even more impressive than our Houdini antics of ’07. The Birchfield manager offered his congratulations, and was resigned to his fate. I went home happy, only to arrive home to field a gut-wrenching text message: “we’re down!” At the eleventh hour Shaftesbury had pulled off a double-win in the triple jump, which consigned us to relegation by the narrowest of margins. But we’re too good to stay down, and I’m sure our athletes will enjoy the challenge of promotion next summer.

Belgrave’s short-staffed women also suffered relegation, and will compete in division 3 of the UK women’s league next year. Elsewhere on the track, our participation in the Southern League was muted at best, whilst we were more robust in our renewed activities in the Rosenheim League, narrowly missing out on the title.

You will have all noted that Belgrave had an exciting Olympics, despite our numbers being down on usual, but so are everyone’s due to the stricter qualification criteria. We proudly boast the world’s second best triple jumper, and fourth best javelin thrower. Indeed Goldie Sayers’ epic Games saw her produce a new British record. Philips Idowu gave it everything he had, only to lose out on gold by just 5 cms. That would have been a vintage day in the club’s history, and was still a fine one. After it, the club secretary was interviewed by Peter Allen in Beijing of BBC radio five live, in the club office downstairs, and then hurried upstairs to do a live interview with Sky News, with our grand Honours Board serving as a lavish backdrop.

On the subject of media appearances, several of us have spoken to the press at length about the Dwain Chambers affair, which has rumbled on throughout the year. Our stance has been that he has served his punishment, and that he should now be allowed to return to his job as the rules state he can, and that for us to attempt to deny him this would be a basic infringement of his human rights. I have fielded a lot of correspondence on this issue, and about 80% backs the club’s official stance, which is roughly the percentage of our members, and committee, who feel the same. Hopefully the saga is now near its end, although I fear it may all kick-off again next year. One thing that we have always been sure to point out in our dealings with the media is that Belgrave Harriers abhors the use of all drugs in sport.

As ever, our athletes continue to fire in individual performances of which we can all be proud, and make all the efforts we put in to run this club worthwhile. Riding on the coat-tails of our stars Idowu and Sayers, we have scores of athletes recording times, heights and distances which make us beam with satisfaction. Who to mention? Where to stop without offending someone? Quite frankly, athletics is such a difficult sport it is short-sighted to rave about, say, Samson Oni’s brilliance over the High jump this summer, or Phil Wicks’ fine silver in the National cross, without mentioning so many others, who put in just as much effort. What about our 53-year-old Postie Peter Cross, who proudly displays our colours all over the country, racing almost every weekend of the year, who ran the Votwo Jurassic Coast TRIPLE marathon back in March, 95% off-road, over three days, for a cumulative time of 21 hours. Brings tears to the eyes. The club is proud of each and every performance an athlete turns in, and we direct you to our website, where we do our best to list them all, and allow you to choose the ones that mean the most to you.

So a busy year indeed, not least for Gordon Biscoe who served a second term as South of England President, and has a third in his sights. With the countdown to the London Olympics underway, we have already noticed an uptick in interest from the public in joining us. We think we can hang on till 2012 as one of Britain’s leading clubs but would always welcome more help in running the show. And after 2012 there should be even more interest in athletics, which should set us up nicely as we celebrate our 125th anniversary and head slowly but surely to our 150th. Nothing is for certain though, Lehman Brothers have just shown us that. Will we beat their 158-years in business? Surely we will. We won’t take things for granted like they did, and will remain forever humble. We will keep what we do simple: running, jumping and throwing is our game; and unlike toxic debts and distressed mortgages, they have been around forever.

Thank you.

William Cockerell, Hon Gen Sec., Weds 17 Sept, 2008

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