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The Herne Hill Harriers British Athletics League men's team started the season well by finishing 5th in the opening match of our campaign at a brand new, but very wet Cardiff International Stadium. Even though travelling to a land which champions the leek as its top vegetable we could not have expected the deluge that descended from the sky as the match began and which turned the early events into something of a lottery. The pole vaulters and discus throwers and the early track events men suffered the brunt of rainfall for which the description torrential would be a huge understatement, and although the conditions did improve later the cool, wet conditions were not conducive to any events other than the distance races.
Under these circumstances our 5th placing was commendable, if somewhat frustrating. During the afternoon and we, among others, found ourselves fluctuating between 7th and 3rd at various stages, but our hopes of finishing in the top half of the 8 teams in the division were eventually dashed after a couple of our potentially big event points scorers had struggled with the atrocious conditions. 5th in the first match of the season when on a luckier day we may have placed 3rd leaves us with more work to do, but this team is capable of beating most of our opponents and I am confident we will do so if the team turns out in full force for our remaining 3 BAL fixtures, 2 of which are local.
Arguably the HHH man of the match was Idris Ojuriye, who although not an event winner placed 2nd in the A string 100m and 200m, both times behind the Intercounties 200m champion and recording times which were commendably close to his best given the weather. Idris was also in our 3rd placed 4 x 100m team which was only 0.5 seconds outside the club record despite losing time at each handover. The quartet of Jeffrey Ocrah, Robert Graham, Idris and Sammy Menash clearly have the potential to rewrite this particular record.
It was great to see Michael Dyer back in a HHH vest and he came closest to giving us an A string win as he was only hundredths behind the 800m winner in 2nd place, while Stuart Thurgood was 2nd in the A hammer, less than a metre away from winning and within centimetres of a personal best he will surely shatter very soon. With no HHH A string winners, our only 2 winners of the day were Sammy Mensah, who won the B 200m and Mark Hanily the B hammer. Taiwo Aderini was another who did cope with the rain to place a good 3rd in the A string triple jump despite his best jump being into a -3.7m/s wind.
Personal bests were hard to come by, but distance runners James McMullan, 4th in the A 5000m improved his best by over 6 seconds to 14:43.6, Jeff Cunningham, 7th in the A steeplechase ran under 10 minutes for the first time in clocking 9:59.25 and Iain Yates, 6th in the B 1500 clipped a little off his best with a time of 4:07.5. Our youngest team member Blade Ashby ran over 3' 6'' hurdles for the first time in his life and placed a superb 2nd in the B string in 16.8. His hopes of also scoring well in the high jump came to an early end as he hurt his ankle on the wet runway. His older brother Thomas had a disappointing day by his very high standards, but he did score 2nd place B string points in the shot putt.
Sam Parsons ran well to place 4th in the A 400m hurdles and joined with Sammy Mensah, Toby Adeyemi and Michael Dyer to produce a fine 4 x 400m relay performance, placing 6th in a very strong race. Newcomers who we welcomed to our BAL team are Jonny Henderson and Iain Yates in the 1500m, Blade Ashby and Didier Sorel who both scored valuable points in more than one event, Gavin Johnson-Assoon, who teamed up with BAL regular Allandre Johnson in the javelin and Pablo Sisca, who braved the worst of the weather conditions to equal his best height and very nearly beat it in arguably the most dangerous event, the pole vault.
Well done to the whole team including those not mentioned above. Everybody played their part wherever they placed in their event. Reporting individual performances is always difficult as the team ethic is what matters most and it is not just the winners who make valuable contributions when every point is vital to the overall match result. I hope we can build on this solid start to our BAL season and improve our position in the divisional table to mount a challenge to the top teams rather than fighting off the bottom ones.
Match result: Cardiff - 343; Harrow AC - 338; Thames Valley Harriers - 273; Blackheath & Bromley Harriers AC - 271; Herne Hill Harriers - 260; Swansea - 239; Kingston & Polytechnic AC - 237; Leeds AC - 222
Geoff Jerwood
