Northern T & F League Match 3

Yesterday, in glorious sunny conditions at Leeds Carnegie, Spen finished a respectable joint second in the penultimate league match of the year. There was some good performances from many of the athletes who appeared. Top scorers of the day were yet again our throwers with Richard Martin & Carly Beanland scoring a hat trick of 1st "A" string wins. Richard had competed in Bournemouth only the day before and had travelled up from his new base in Bedfordshire to compete, so many thanks to him. Our sprinters too scored valuable points: Chris Ward winning both "B" string sprints & Steve McNamara easily winning the 200m "A"- he would give Josh a good run for his money in the 200 now! Good to see my (occasional) training partners Tony Bradford running well and winning the "B" 5000m but eclipsed by Kevin "the race machine" Ogden who ran under 17 minutes (for the first time on the track in sweltering conditions). Amy Sharrad too ran well, winning the "A" 800m after belting through the first lap in sub 64 seconds. In fact looking through the results there were many fine performances: Becky, Sheila, Ryan's P.B., Carl, Dave in the steeplchase, Stef & Sarah in the javelin, Sarah in the middle distance events, and I wasn't too bad either for an old-timer but only if I could have got the damn baton to Chris within the marked lines for the relay!! Easily won by Spen (in a time which would have been an Icelandic womens national record!) only to be disqualified at the end.

However despite all this positivity, we are once again not fielding a full team. Analysing the results show that Rossendale-the eventual winners, fielded athletes in EVERY event bar the "B" string 3000m for woman. Yet Spen beat them 35 events to 32 and that is with even relay disqualification. For the final event at Cleckheaton (Sunday 2 August) we must have every race, jump and throw covered in order to win the match. Without that, all the good efforts by the above, fall by the wayside.