BAL Premiership - Match Two
With this second match just one week before the Trials for the Berlin World Championships and one week after the Trials for the European U/20 and U/23 Championships, all teams were some way from full strength, which made for an enthrallingly close match. With Britain’s number one hammer thrower, Andy Frost unavailable, Britain’s new number two Mark Dry stepped-up to “A” string duty, and although admitting to being a little flat after his victory last week in the England U/23 Championships duly won with a solid throw of 67.84m with Alistair Williamson placing 3rd in the “B” with 57.26m. In the discus missing Emeka Udechuku, Tom Norman produced his best throw of the season so far of 53.89m for 3rd, with Devon Douglas stepping in to the “B” string and also placing 3rd with 45.00m. Devon later placed 4th in the “B” shot with 14.51m, whilst Carl Fletcher was also 4th in the “A” event with 16.56m. In the javelin Simon Bennett produced a solid 62.45m but found this only good enough for 6th in a high standard competition. Veteran Paul Howard a former international decathlete, stepped back into British League action to help the team, and was also 6th in the “B” event with 50.15m, having earlier placed 5th in the “B” pole vault with 3.40. The “A” event saw Christian North returning to form, again clearing 5.00m, and having reasonable attempts at 5.20m. In the long jump, Guyson Kuruneri produced a season’s best of 7.11m but that too was only good enough for 6th with Adrian Stamp 5th in the “B” with 6.45m. In the triple jump young Peter Kirabo was called into action, and the talented all-rounder did not disappoint with his second best ever jump of 13.31m placing 7th, with another veteran, Keith Newton placing 4th in the “B” with 12.75m. In the high jump, another youngster, Billy Falconer made his BAL debut and cleared 1.90m for 6th and had good attempts at a pb of 1.95. Gareth Dyball also cleared 1.90m for equal 4th in the “B”.
In the sprints, Tim Abeyie was back in action, and recorded two season’s bests. Over 100m he placed a very close 2nd with 10.36w secs (+4.1), and won the 200m with 21.16 secs. 400m man Graham Hedman was even quicker as he took the “B” 200m with 21.09 secs (+1.9), which augers well for his chances over 400m at next weekend’s World Trials. Ramone Smith was 6th in the B” 100m with 11.02 secs. Over 400m Nick Leavey, a medallist for GB&NI in the 4x400m relay at this year’s European Indoor Championships, made his Woodford BAL debut, and placed 3rd from the difficult outside lane in 47.52 secs. In the “B” 400m, another medallist from a major games, Musa Audu, who won bronze with the Nigerian 4x400m team at the Athens Olympics, placed second in a season’s best of 48.43 secs.
In the 800m, Andy Brown was 6th with 1m53.53 secs, with U/20 Omar Mansour placing 4th in the “B” with 1m54.34 secs. Omar gallantly returned later to fill in for the “B” 1500m, where he earned valuable points, running sensibly at the back of the pack before picking off a number of athletes on the last lap for 4th with 4m05.09 secs. In the “A” string, another debutant, Matt Barnes- Smith, predominantly a 5km runner recorded a season’s best of 3m57.98 sacs for 7th. Although far from their fittest, Jon Long and Angus Holford gained valuable points over the 3000m s/ch with 10m20.95 secs and 10m25.97 secs for 8th and 7th respectively.
Over the hurdles there were some fine performances. In the “A” 400mH Francis Smith was 3rd with 51.93 secs, and with just a little fine tuning looks like he could go at least one second quicker. In the “B” event Jamie Wright had a super run of 53.69 secs for 4th and a new personal best, before gaining useful point in the “B” 110mH with 15.31 secs. In the “A” 110mH Dan Davis ran 0.33 quicker than ever before with 13.94 secs for 2nd, in the same time as the winner, but was disappointed to learn that it was wind assisted at +2.7m/s.
With the match points score very close towards the end, the Woodford 4x100m team of Davis, Ramone Smith, Wright and Abeyie, took victory with 41.44 secs, to set a possible but unlikely chance of victory with just the 4x400m remaining. In the end that team finished 3rd, with the teams already ahead of them in the match standings, Newham and Birchfield filling the top two places in a very close race. Musa Audu came in first with 48.2 secs on the first leg, with Louis Kwakye with 49.1 secs and Chris Reynolds 49.3 secs, handing to Nick Leavey in 3rd, where despite a 47.0 secs leg was not able to move up any further, with the team recording 3m13.63 secs.
Full results here