Stragglers Men Rampant At Roundshaw
Posted by Malcolm Davies on 13 December 2017
Saturday 2nd December saw the Stragglers men back in action for the 3rd Surrey League match of the season at Roundshaw Downs. There was some trepidation around this fixture beforehand with several key runners missing with the inevitable pre-Christmas clashes and an expected strong challenge from the clubs around us including both Walton AC and Woking AC clubs.
In the circumstances the Straggler men responded superbly, managing to field 33 runners, making us once again the best represented club in Division three. A veritable yellow army massed on the start line before completing the 5 mile two lap course around the relatively benign and flat course of Roundshaw.
The charge was led by Rob Wilcox who fought out a very close battle with Simon Ford with 3 seconds separating them with Jim Lurkins another 9 seconds behind those two. Unbelievably then a mere 26 seconds separated the 4th to 10th place scorers for the Straggs comprising Oli Bowers, Crispin Allen, Richard Carter, Jonathan Ormerod, Malcolm Davies ( with 5 seconds separating those four closely followed by Chris Walmsley and Chris Coates making up the A team.
The B team was equally competitive headed up by Richard Baggott closely followed by Andy Hoseason making his welcome Surrey League debut then Roy Reeder, Freysen Maritz, Donovan Duffy, Laurence Duffy, Tiago Ramos, Gareth Pritchard, Mark Pattinson and Jim Desmond.
Within the rest of the team a special welcome to Stuart Amory making his Stragglers Surrey Leaague debut, who also confirmed that he would be back for more.
So how did the teams do? The B team continued their absolute domination of this competition recording 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,11 and 12 (shall we try for 1-10 next time?). For the A team there was an anxious wait while the results were confirmed. By Sunday morning, however, it had emerged that Stragglers had won the match by the narrowest of margins, 9 points from Walton. More importantly though we had beaten Woking by 83 points to open up a 95 lead on them going into the final match in second place in our quest for promotion. See the results here.
Whilst the result was welcomed, there was no premature celebration as it was clear that Woking were also missing a number of their key runners who we can expect to be back for the final match at Lloyd Park. Those with longer memories will also remember a similar lead being overturned in the 15/16 season, coincidently also at Lloyd Park so the job is not yet done! Stragglers we need you on the 10th February!
Malcolm Davies
