Midland League, Div 1 Birchfield - Sun 3rd July
All down to the last match on 14th August
Rugby and Northampton AC travelled to the newly refurbished Birchfield stadium on Sunday and took part in a high quality competition with National standard athletes in many events. Victories were scarce and only Kerry Murch in the javelin, 36m 37. took an A string victory on the day. Kerry, along with brother Craig and Hannah Scales had competed at Gateshead in the English Schools championships the day before and had travelled straight to Birmingham to compete for the club.
On the women’s side Jo Pulsford ran extremely strongly to claim 2nd place in the 3000m in a new PB of 10m 08.8secs and Eleanor Ruddock also finished an excellent 2nd place in the 100m A race. In the B competitions Rugby and Northampton had 3 2nd place finishes in Emma Cluely, 400m H, Rebecca Davies, triple jump and Kathryn Reynolds, javelin. The team was completed with several younger athletes who competed extremely strongly and rose to the challenge of the senior competition with Genevieve Roberts looking particularly strong in the 1500m.
The men’s side of the team faired somewhat better with 2nd place A string finishes for Ross Allen in the 400m, 49.6 secs, Chris Lamb in the 800m, 1min57.2, Craig Murch in the hammer with 50m 80cm and Glynn Hollingsworth in the javelin with 57m 67cm. The strength in depth of the team was clear in the B string competitions as the club posted numerous excellent performances to claim valuable points – particularly in the throws. Kevin Murch produced his furthest throw for several seasons to claim victory in the javelin, 53m 06 cm as did Luke Hyland, hammer, Glynn Hollingsworth, discus and John Moreland shot.
On the team front Birchfield ran away with competition with 401 pts, Cheltenham were 2nd with 366, Notts AC were 3rd , 342, Rugby and Northampton scored 326 for 4th well ahead of the final two teams, Bristol and Charnwood. The final match takes place on Sunday 14th August and the club will need to pull out all the stops if it is to avoid relegation into Division 2 next year.
