The second BAL Premiership fixture of the season took place at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium on Saturday. WGwEL’s senior men’s team were some way short of full strength for a variety of reasons, and several other teams were at a different strength form the first fixture at Copthall, which Woodford had won. On this occasion, the home team, Birchfield Harriers ran out winners with 360 points, and having been 3rd in the first fixture now lead the division with 14 league points. Newham were 3rd on the day with 306 points and are now 2nd overall with 13 points, and Woodford had to be content with 5th on the day with 275 points and now 3rd overall with 12 points. Shaftesbury surprised with a strong team to place 2nd on Saturday but are back in 5th overall. Belgrave and Windsor again filled the bottom two slots, and with two fixtures left, already look destined for relegation, whilst the battle at the top remains wide open. Before the meeting a 5th place result was about as much as Team Manger Gladys Bird could have hoped for, but with just a little more luck Woodford would have placed 4th, and been challenging for 3rd or 2nd. Bad luck came firstly in the shape of 1m47secs 800m man Damien Moss, feeling a recurrence of an Achilles injury minutes before the 800m start and having to jog round judiciously in last place to protect the injury, later with Stuart Harvey picking up an injury during the javelin competition, and at the end of the meeting when the 4x100m squad were disqualified for what appeared to be a very marginal faulty changeover.
WGwEL's senior women, produced another solid performance in the second match of the UK Women's League Premier Division. They again placed 5th on 158 points, only 10 away form 3rd, and remain 5th overall in the League table. In a good all round team performance where many athletes competed in more than one event, the highlight perhaps from an individual perspective was, Stephanie Aneto's personal best and Commonwealth Games qualifying mark in the triple jump.
