BAL Premiership Match Two
In the 2nd round of the BAL Premiership at Copthall on Saturday, a far from full strength WGwEL men’s team placed 4th with 281 points, behind Newham 347, Sale 314 and Shaftesbury 306, but ahead of the winners form the first fixture, Birchfield. Woodford now lie 3rd in the overall standings with 12 points, the same as Birchfield, who have 5 more match points, with Sale now leading with 13. Newham are 4th with 11. Woodford’s team effort, unusually, didn’t include a single “A” victory.
The high jump was Woodford's highest points scoring event. Robert Wolski, who had been stuck in heavy traffic, and arrived just as the high jump competition was to start, and too late for a warm up, in the circumstances performed well, clearing 2.15m for 2nd behind Birchfield’s Tom Parsons who cleared a first class 2.28m. Ben Challenger cleared 2.10m to win the “B” event and had one very good attempt at 2.15m. The hammer also produced good points, Andy Frost 3rd in a good ‘A” competition with 68.60m and Mark Dry 2nd in the “B” with 66.70m. In the discus Tom Norman continued his consistent form, placing 3rd with 55.35m, and missing Emeka Udechuku, Devon Douglas stepped into BAL action, and although unable to reproduce his recent 50m+ form was 2nd in the “B” with 44.68m. In the shot Anthony Oshodi made his BAL debut and placed 5th with 15.78m and Tom Norman was 4th in the “B” with 13.37m. The javelin saw Simon Bennett again over 60m, placing 5th with 60.54 as Mark Dry filled in for missing specialists and placed 3rd in the “B” with 46.24m. In the long jump, Ezekiel Ewulo led the competition until the final round, finishing 2nd with 7.44m as Commonwealth triple jump champion Tosin Oke was 2nd in the “B’ with 6.81m. In his specialty and using a training approach of just 9 strides Tosin was 2nd by just 1 cm with 15.82m. Sadly in the “B” Sayo Ojo had three no-jumps. Missing Woodford’s two leading pole vaulters, James Wright nevertheless gained some useful points in that event clearing 4m for 5th in the “A”, and veteran former international decathlete Paul Howard cleared 3m in the “B” which placed him 5th.On the track, Toyi Durotoye made his BAL debut placing 4th in the “A” 100m with 10.74 secs (-1.3) as Eugene Ayanful was 2nd in the “B” with 10.84 secs (+0.9). Over 200m, Junior Ejehu was 5th with 21.92 secs (+0.3) and in the “B” Eugene Ayanful was 7th with 22.55 secs (-2.3). The 400m saw junior Austin Joseph called into senior BAL duty, and although recording 49.49 secs found that only good enough for 8th, whilst in the ‘B” Dan Bray was 6th with 50.04 secs. Omar Mansour found himself in a high standard “A” 800m and his 1m55.15 secs was also only good enough for 8th. In the “B” however there was further progress for Andy Mariani who recorded a personal best of 1m52.88 secs for 4th. The 1500m featured two Woodford athletes on the comeback trial, and both performed solidly in the circumstances, Alex Cornwell in his first race since last autumn recorded 3m57.32 secs for 7th in the “A” and Mark Burgess 4m02.09 secs for 5th in the “B”. The 3000m saw Hywel Care and Dan Agustus both record useful times of 8m36.02 secs and 8m 46.88 secs respectively but both were each only good enough for 8th. The steeplechase however did bring some good points. Ryan McKinlay was 4th in the “A” with 9m23.74 secs whilst Tomas Plibersek won the “B” with 9m26.29 secs. In the 400m H Francis Smith was 5th with 53.79 secs and later 3rd in the ‘B 110mH with 15.11 secs (-2.1) as Dan Davis was 4th in the “A” race with a hand-timed 14.6 secs (-1.3).
It was only during the final two events, the relays, that Woodford were able to move clear of Birchfield to ensure 4th place in the match. In the 4x100m relay some good baton changing saw Woodford ( Dan Davis, Eugene Ayanful, Junior Ejehu and Toyi Duratoye place 2nd by just .03 with 41.0 secs, and in the 4x400m ( Francis Smith 51.5 secs, Sylvester Juve 48.5 secs, Austin Joseph 49.1 secs and Junior Ejehu 48.8 secs ) saw Woodford place 4th with Ejehu picking up a valuable two places in the home straight.