Match 4 Report 2005


Team Southampton Men's A Team

British Athletics League Division 4 - Bedford

30th July 2005

- By Adam Richardson

'Southampton Scramble to Safety'
After the promise of the Southampton match, this showing was a bit of a disappointment, but somehow we managed to do just enough to secure our British League status for another year. We turned up knowing that all we had to do was beat Swindon to be safe. We finished 7th, but fortunately (for us) Swindon finished last in 8th place. That meant that overall we finished 6th in the league.


Javelin: Jake Lewis Sets a PB of 47m01

After the last match, where everything had to, and did, go our way; this match was very different. A bad changeover in the 4 x 100m, a no show in the shot putt, a pulled hamstring in the 100m and quite a few poor performances in various events, meant that it was just ‘one of those days’.

As a result there were not many performances to write home about.


Dan Turner scales the heights in the HJ

A few athletes that did buck the trend in the throws were young Jacob Lewis who launched his javelin out to 47m01, a new personal best and also Nick Iliffe made it 4 victories out of 4 this season with a throw of 46m76 to win in the discus.


St'chase: John Beattie takes the water jump

There were also seasons bests on the track, where Owain Jones was elated to dip under 15minutes for the first time in the 5,000m and Gavin Hodgson rounded off his season with a good run (all bar clattering the final hurdle) in the 400m hurdles to finish 2nd in the ‘a’ string with a time of 54.51 seconds.


400m Hurdles - Gavin Hodgson takes hurdle 2

One for the future is under 17 Mark Ingram who made his mens team debut in the long and triple jump. However, there was also a farewell to Gary Solitt in the shot, who made his last appearance in red and white stripes at Bedford. Gary is still the club record holder for the shot at 17m85 and the quality he adds to the squad will be sorely missed next season.


110m Hurdles - Rico stride for stride with
Adrian Hemery of Norwich.

The only other wins of the day was Ben Richardson, who achieved his third win of the season in the 110m hurdles, winning the ‘a’ string with a time of 15.34 and Dan Turner, who produced an outstanding jump of 2m11 to win the ‘a’ string high jump.


A parting shot - Gary Sollitt


400m: Simon Ciaravella on the back straight

What must we do over the winter in order to compete better next season? Well we must do three things:

  1. Keep together the squad of good athletes we have at the moment – the match at Southampton proved we have enough quality.
  2. Develop the set of promising young long and triple jumpers.
  3. Introduce people in the club to hurdles, javelins and the pole vault.

If, as a club, we can work on these things over the winter then we will have a much better chance of mounting a challenge for promotion next season

And that, as they say, is that. I hope that everybody has enjoyed the season.

Take care and train hard.

Adam Richardson (& Terese Swain)
Team Southampton Mens Team Managers


Going round in circles - Me in the hammer