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7th May 2005
- By Adam Richardson
Team Southampton Men's A Team
British Athletics League Division 4 - Abingdon
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Only a late series of victories in the final hour of the match salvaged some respectability as Team Southampton crawled from last place to finish 6th. There were plenty of athletes missing and with a good points finish of 252, there are reasons to be optimistic about the remainder of the season.
The star of the show was Robert Tobin, making his debut in the red and white stripes of Southampton. Not content with winning the 200m (21.2 sec), coming second in the100m (10.9 sec) and contributing to a victorious 4x100m team, he ran a split of 46.6 seconds in the 4x400m to take Southampton from 7th to hand over with a 15m lead. |
 NIk Illffe slings the disc out to 44m The young athletes that made British League debuts last year are really starting to come of age. Olly Jones produced the most enthralling performance of the day to come second in the 5,000m. Not being satisfied with the pace he took to the front with 5 laps to go and inserted enough pace to whittle the pack down from 8 to 2. Unfortunately, Owain was outclassed in the final straight, but he had already guaranteed a haul of 14 points from his earlier work. Newcomer Gareth Kalepacz also ably assisted with an excellent run for second place in the ‘b’ string. |
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A couple more young athletes who have exciting seasons in front of them are Kieron Kelly and Ben Richardson. A T-shirted Kieron took a break from his studies at Loughborough to putt the shot out to 16m24 to claim a comfortable victory. Unfortunately his weight training has gone so well that he no longer fits into his Team Southampton vest!
Ben, currently on a gap year before starting at Cambridge in October, lowered his P.B. in the 110m hurdles to 15.1 seconds, again to ensure full points in the ‘a’ string.
There were also wins for Gary Solitt (15m02) in the ‘b’ string shot and a triple success for Will MacGee, who won the ‘b’ string 100m (11.0 sec), 200m (22.6 sec) and anchored the 4x100m team to victory. There was a nail biting finish to the high jump with three athletes left in the competition with the bar at 2m. Danny Turner was the only one to clear the height and went on to clear 2m05 and wrap up the competition. In the throws, Niklas Illffe showed some good early season form to win the discus in 44m68, while in a competitive javelin competition Anthony Llwelyn’s huge throw of 50m88 was only good enough for 4th place. |
 New boy Graham Filer in the 400m The squad welcomed youngster Graham Filer, a sprinter from the Isle of Wight. Graham showed great potential with his run of 52 seconds in the 400m and also ran some solid legs in both relays. Points were hard to come by in the middle distances, where our athletes found themselves in very competitive races. All these athletes showed that they were quality runners last year and I’m sure with a few races under their belt, they will be a lot sharper by the time of the next match.
I apologise for not taking many photographs, however, I was somewhat preoccupied during the day. Having cleared the opening height in the pole vault, it was then a case of running over for the first of six rounds in the hammer, a quick sandwich then back over the throwing cage for the discus only to leave in round 4 for the ‘b’ string 110m hurdles, before changing my spikes and picking up a |
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javelin. During all this I somehow managed to accumulate 27 points as well as a personal best in the hammer (35m12) and a creditable 2nd place in the ‘b’ string discus (36m01).
Despite all the fabulous performances during the day we only managed to come 6th in the competition (and at one point during the match were last by 30 points!) It was a real Jeckal & Hyde performance. When we were good, we were excellent – we won 9 events during the day (the winners, Southend, only managed to win 2). However, we leaked points like a sieve in other events. We only managed to score a combined total of 15 points in the 400m hurdles, long jump, triple jump, pole vault and steeplechase. With 5 points available in each event simply just for turning up and taking part, it clearly demonstrates where our weaknesses lie. A combination of athletes hanging up their spikes, injured, ill or having prior commitments left the team high and dry on some of the more technical events. |
 Adam Richardson in event No. 3 for the day Hopefully one of the things to come out of the combined Southampton club will be a better coaching structure to develop young athletes in the hurdles, jumps and throws to enable the club to be able to draw upon a bigger pool of talent in the future. The more immediate thing to focus on is making sure that the gaps are filled before the next match. One thing to come out of Saturday’s match was that we are very capable of placing highly in many events and if this is supplemented by a more consistent team performance at Derby, then there is no reason why we can’t go to there an win the match. Hope to see you there. Team Southampton Mens Team Managers Adam Richardson (& Terese Swain) |
