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After a solid start with a 5th placing in our opening match at Cardiff, Herne Hill Harriers British Athletics League men's team kicked into gear big style with a sensational victory in our second fixture, the first ever BAL match to be hosted by local rivals Blackheath & Bromley Harriers at their Norman Park track. Starting as we meant to carry on with a double first in the hammer courtesy of the ever reliable Stuart Thurgood and Mark Hanily, we held the lead throughout a glorious afternoon and ultimately prevailed over the promoting club by 6 points at a superb venue for such a day of thoroughly enjoyable action. Even the BAL Chairman commented that the standard in most events was more than worthy of the third tier of top British club league athletics. This excellent win moves us up to 3rd in the league table, but level on points with the top 2, which means that another good result in our next match at Leeds could see us challenging for promotion in our final fixture at Kingston.
On such a wonderfully successful day a report that does not list the marvellous exploits of the vast majority of our team would not do justice to the overall performance, but a list of our event winners would be a good start. As well as the hammer boys, our 400m runners also claimed a double win, as Sammy Mensah showed his class and judgement in winning the A string while Toby Adeyemi justified the faith shown in selecting him above others with strong claims to a B string berth with a brilliant win from the outside lane. Both runners recorded excellent personal best times into the bargain. To prove it is possible to win BAL matches without racking up lots of A string wins, our only other event victors were B string winners Robert Graham, a real class apart in the B 100m, Allandre Johnson in the B javelin and 15 year old Blade Ashby, whose B high jump win was one of three very valuable contributions he made to our team triumph.
Two HHH club records were set, as our 4x100m relay team displayed much better baton exchanges to record 41.82 to beat a record set back in 1991. Such was the quality of the race that our quartet of Byron Robinson, Jeffrey Ocrah, Idris Ojuriye and Robert Graham were only placed 3rd, but we relish such competition. Thomas Ashby was another whose contribution was immense, as he pole vaulted (placing 3rd), high jumped (2nd) and threw discus (3rd) and shot (6th) as our A string man in all four events. His best effort was surely his PB pole vault of 4.00m, which equalled the club U20 record and Thomas' all round input to the team gets him my vote for HHH man of the match after much thought and deliberation.
Although finishing 3rd in his race, the B string 800m, I very nearly chose another 15 year old, Lewis Lloyd, who was keen to debut in a BAL race in which every place and point counts in the league, not just the time. In a race where he needed to at least equal his previous pb to have avoided coming last he did much better than this and improved his pb by over 3 seconds, clocking in at 1:56.09. This great run will give Lewis a big boost before running 1500m at the English Schools Championship starting on Friday.
In what is a veritable roll of honour, the following athletes all placed 2nd in their events in addition to those performances mentioned above:- Idris Ojuriye A 200m; Byron Robinson B 200m; Michael Dyer A 800m; Kevin Quinn A 5000m; James McMullan B 5000m; Garry Power B discus and Stu Thurgood B shot. Jeff Cunningham was 2nd in the B 3000m steeplechase with a personal best time all the more remarkable as he sandwiched this run in his "proper" event between valuable event filling performances in the 400m hurdles, an event he had never run before and the triple jump, which he did straight after finishing his steeplechase.
In addition personal bests were recorded by Tim Elsey in the 1500m and Blade Ashby in the high hurdles, while Gavin Johnson Assoon treated himself to two pb's, one competing as a scorer in the javelin and another as a non scorer in the discus, beating our scoring B string athlete, team captain Garry Power into the bargain. Peter Phillips, Sarwar Khan and AJ Boyce were welcomed to the team for their first experience of BAL scoring competition, while Dele Onifade, Jonny Henderson, Andrew Donno and Sam Parsons all played their own very important part in the team success.
The results and statistics of course do not tell the full story of an afternoon throughout which the whole team contributed towards keeping our noses in front right to the final event, a 4x400m relay in which our battling spirit epitomised our earlier endeavour to put ourselves in a winning position. Although the team of Toby Adeyemi, Michael Dyer, Sam Parsons and Peter Phillips were unable to hold the lead for the whole race, their 4th place was achieved with one of our fastest times in this event for some while and did ensure that we ended the day as well deserved match winners. Another strong team performance will now be required at the beginning of next month in Leeds if we are to maintain our challenge to the top teams in a very competitive division.
Match result:- Herne Hill Harriers - 341; Blackheath & Bromley Harriers AC - 335; Kingston & Polytechnic AC - 290; Thames Valley Harriers - 282; Cardiff AC - 275; Harrow AC - 257; Leeds City AC - 209; Swansea Harriers - 195
Geoff Jerwood
