BAL 2nd Round
Photo Peter Kirabo
WGEL’s Men's Track & Field team continued their quest for an immediate return to the BAL Premiership, as they comfortably won the second BAL National Division One Fixture held at Gateshead on Saturday. Woodford finished well clear as they scored 372.3 points ahead of Glasgow on 295, Gateshead on 286 and TVH on 282. Woodford now head the League standings with 16 points from Glasgow on 14. Saturday’s weather conditions at Gateshead were appalling, with strong winds and non-stop rain all afternoon, as the predicted storm passed across the North East of the country. Many of Woodford’s travelling contingent, some of whom have been involved in the sport for sixty years, reckoned they had never seen a domestic Track & Field competition take place in worse weather conditions and Officials worked tirelessly to prevent the fixture from being abandoned. That Woodford, and indeed the other teams, performed as well as they did on a flooded track and waterlogged field facilities, was testament to the athletes, and in Woodford’s case their desire to ensure that immediate return to the Premier Flight. Andy Frost led the way with Woodford’s first victory of the day in the hammer, and there was a high jump win also for Robert Wolski. Woodford’s field event strength in this division was underlined by double “A” and “B” wins in the Triple Jump (Peter Kibabo and Thalassong Tshireletso), Javelin (James Bongart and Paul Howard) and Shot (Anthony Oshodi and Youcef Zatat).
Andy Frost’s hammer win came in pouring rain, and with strong winds and a slippery circle his 67.46m was a fine effort in the conditions. In the absence of Woodford’s other top hammer throwers, Andy was backed up by V45 Fergus Harford who placed 6th in the “B” string with 30.75m. The high jumpers probably had the worst of the conditions, with incessant rain and a drenched take off area. Robert Wolski, using his experience of Olympic Games and World Championships, realised it was best to come in far earlier than normal given the flooded take off conditions, and ended up getting the better of Glasgow's 2.22m man Ray Borwonicki on count-back as both cleared 2.00m. Sadly, in the “B” Jack Lochan’s turned his ankle exiting the bed in warm-up and wasn’t able to clear a height. The discus throwers also struggled in the wet and with the slippery circle. Chris Linque was 3rd in the “A” with 46.94m and Devon Douglas 4th in the “B” with 32.47m. The shot brought one of three Woodford “A” and “B” doubles from Anthony Oshodi with 16.61m and Youcef Zatat with 16.07m. In the javelin, U/20 James Bongart took the “A” with a personal best of 54.15m and in the “B” V45 former international decathlete Paul Howard won with his best for five years with 50.74m. In the absence of specialist vaulters Paul also cleared a height in the Pole Vault, as did another ex-international decathlete, now physio, Chris Awde. Paul’s 2.60m placed 5th= in the “A” and Chris’ token 1.10m was 4th= in the “B”. The other double was in the triple jump where Peter Kirabo took the “A” with 14.42m and Thalosang Tshireletso the “B” with 13.75m. Woodford’s long jumpers found the changing wind conditions very tough, and each only recorded one valid jump, way from the standard they would normally jump. Adrian Stamp placed 7th in the “A” with 6.50m and Joseph Dewar 2nd in the “B” with 6.40m.
On the track Tom Phillips picked up two useful results as he placed 3rd at 800m and then 2nd at 1500m. In tactically run races given the conditions, Tom clocked 1m56.63 and 4m00.27 secs. In the “B” 800m, Omar Mansour was also 2nd, with 1m56.42 secs, and Gavin Lewis was 3rd in the “B” 1500m with 4m04.11 secs. In that 1500m, new member Dan Gurton ran as a guest and impressed as he recorded 4m01.7 secs. The steeplechase and 5000m were, despite the conditions, truer run races. Ryan Mckinlay went out hard led by “B” string man Tomaz Plibersek, but after a few laps the conditions took their toll and both faded from the hoped-for pace. However, both held on to place 2nd, Ryan in the “A” with 9m25.14 secs, and Tomaz in the ‘B” with 10m06.23 secs. Ryan also gamely got useful points in the “B” 110mH where he placed 5th with 19.97 secs, and in the “B”, Francis Smith struggling with a hamstring injury, was 7th with 16.59 secs. The 5000m was quickly strung out with both Martyn Cryer and Ed Shepherd prominent in the second group. Martyn pushed on at the front of that group over the last few laps, and in the end placed 3rd with 14m45.88 secs, just ahead of Ed with 14m46.31 secs which won the “B”. The sprints were run into headwinds, in the “A” 100m Joseph Dewar was 4th with 11.02 secs (-1.4) and in the “B”, Eugene Ayanful won with 11.29 secs (-3.2). In the non-scoring 100m Justin Duru recorded 11.5 secs (-2.2). Over 200m Omololu Abiodun impressed with his 2nd place in the ‘A” with 21.58 secs (-1.0), and in the “B” Tom Holligan was 2nd from the inside lane with22.41 secs (-0.8). In the 400m, U/20 Jack Lawrie who had run an impressive 52.6 secs pb over 400mH the previous weekend, made his BAL debut and recorded 50.86 secs for 7th in the “A”, with Paul Scanlan placing 4th in the “B” with 50.21 secs. The track was particularly wet at the time of the 400mH, and Mike Baker was 4th in the “A” with 55.78 secs, and Ewan Dyer winning the “B” with 53.96 secs.
The 4x100m squad of Dewar, Abiodun, Holligan and Ayanful impressed from the inside lane to win by almost a full second with 41.41 secs. The 4x400 squad of Dyer, Scanlan, Abiodun and Baker finished 2nd with 3m20.14 secs.