Well, as you may be aware, we had to pull out all the stops in our final match at Hastings. Unfortunately, team orders were outranked by injuries, holidays and weddings (what is in the air this summer?). So with a strong, but not optimum squad, we headed down to the sea-side on a warm sunny Saturday - with only a few thousand cars for company! Some last minute arm-twisting got volunteers to fill the missing slots in pole-vault and 400 hurdles, giving us the fullest declaration sheet of the season.
For SLH, the pole-vault was quickly over - I felt like a knight jousting a chicken, with a 3m pole against a 1.2 m bar. However, the chicken still won the first round! In the throws, Tom McAuley went for the clean sweep. I saw Iwan showing him the hammer swing, which looked more like a move you'd make on a dance-floor after a beer too many than an athletics technique! But despite a bad back, Iwan did a season's best to win the hammer by nearly 20 metres. On the track, the selectors were woefully wrong for the hurdles, as Will came home 13 seconds in front of my time (which the timekeepers, to add insult to injury, converted to 18 seconds!).
I think Horsham had only turned up to try and thwart our sprinters, but fortunately we got near-maximum points from Billy and Neil in the 100 and 200. There were also non-score runs from Dean, Jacob and Nathan in the 100m, showing our strength in depth in the sprints, plus solid debut runs in the 800m from Zack and Michael, who raced each other to the line to justify the seeding, before the hot slog of the 5000m. Needless to say, Francis shot to the front and opened a gap. Needless to say, heads around me (including mine), shook, awaiting the inevitable burn-out. Unheeding, Francis led for the 12.5 laps to knock over a minute off his previous time, and just dip under 16. Dave came in in support for maximum points, shaving 18 seconds off his season's time.
Meanwhile, Hastings and Paddock Wood too were steadily gathering points. With Horsham lacking anyone in the middle-distance, it was turning into a three-way race. After 11 events, Hastings had a 8 point lead, with us just one and a half points behind Paddock Wood. Everything to play for!
Kieran was just 3cm shy of winning the long jump, and Darren and Olivier maxed out in the triple. We were weaker in the javelin and discus, with Tom backed up by first Tim (who hit himself in the back with one throw), then Barry in the discus. I could only watch in wry frustration as Paddock Wood and Hastings scooped all the points in the high hurdles, in which we haven't scored a single point all season. I hesitate to say this, but an injured Pat had a storming 400m run in lane 8, running as if the Hound of the Baskervilles (or maybe an irate coach?) were at his heels. Tim coasted to victory in the 1500m, with Andrew stepping in as reserve in the B-string, and we won the 4x1. My time at the steeplechase was 23 seconds faster than my best, but it was a pity with the sea so close that we had to miss out the water-jump due to a hose-pipe ban. Just not the same event without.
With everything in the balance, it was one last effort for the sprinters in the 4x400, including a debut run from Franclin in third leg. We were comfortably in second place in the race, sandwiched between Hastings and Paddock Wood, when disaster struck! We were disqualified for an early lane change, which lost us 4 points and gained Paddock Wood 1. Regrettably, this was vital, as the final scores were:
Hastings 138.5, Paddock Wood 129, SLH 126.5, Horsham 69.
Which meant that despite our best match of the season, it wasn't enough to overhaul any of the teams above us in the league, and we remained second to bottom. Even an outside chance to escape the drop, albeit unfairly, if the Hastings team in Div. 2 were demoted (forcing the Hasting Div. 3 one down), was dashed when they came second in their match. So we left the coast certain of relegation.
But in yet another bizarre twist in the Southern League plot, it appears that Blackheath failed to turn up for their match. This meant they scored no points for their last fixture, drawing us level with them on league points. And despite them being over 90 match points ahead at the end of round 4, our good total at Hastings meant we overhauled them to finish out of the relegation zone by the slenderest of margins once again!