There was a disappointing end to the Southern Athletic League at the weekend as far as Sussex clubs were concerned although there were many excellent individual performances.
No titles no promotions and three relegations made this a rather sobering end to the League season.
In Division one at Bromley, where Crawley were hoping to take over from Brighton & Hove as League champions the home team Blackheath and Bromley who were lying next to bottom in the table called up their British League Athletes and after a neck and neck battle won the match by just two points from Crawley 211 to 209.
This allowed Nene Valley to slip just one point ahead of Crawley in the League to take the title.
It was the women who produced most of the winning performances with interesting victories for Orla Brothers, who is U17 and missed out on a possible Southern title to compete for her club.
She stepped up to 400m and clocked a PB of 58.50s for victory.
At the other end of the age scale Karen Shackel, who is now in the W50 age group, won the javelin throw with 29.74m.
Team captain Craig Cox clocked 51.70s for victory in the 400m and George Grainger 54.92 for another win over 400 metres but that was after they had placed a load of hurdles on the track.
In the same league at Basingstoke Brighton & Hove were fighting to avoid relegation after a terrible season were beaten by the home team, which in itself would was enough to doom them to the drop but they eventually finished fourth in the match.
This was despite some excellent performances notably a PB long jump of 7.50m victory by Tom French which put him just 10cm short of Roy Cruttenden’s Sussex record that celebrates its diamond anniversary next year and second on the Sussex All-time list.
There was a fine double in the 1,500m where Ian Crowe-Wright, who set PBs over 800m at Watford last Wednesday and 400m at Withdean on Thursday eased to victory in 3:58.7, after earlier winning the 800m in 1:53.77s and helped Steve Ferroni to break four minutes when winning the B race in 3:58.93s.
Brighton athletes however also won both Men of Match awards; French won one earlier in the season, with Matt Hewitt clocking 14.7s in the 100m hurdles and Anna Short clocking 12.10 in the 100m.
Sussex had two teams in Division Two with Eastbourne coming third at Erith and they will drop to Division three next season while Worthing in fourth place at Andover will also face the drop.
There is no relegation from Division three but Hastings, who were lying second in the league had an off day finishing fifth in the match and missing promotion by one place.
In the same league Horsham finished second in their home match with 222.5 points to Havant’s 251 points and will finish a creditable seventh in the League and they also provided a man of the match with pole vaulter Chloe Billingham clearing 3.20m and also winning the triple jump with 9.42m.
East Grinstead travelled all the way to Bournemouth to finish 4th, 15th in the League, with Abby Beswick winning “M o M” for a cracking PB long jump of 5.65m as well as winning the 100m and the high jump while Phil Spivey, another O50 athlete recorded an unusual double throwing the hammer 48.07s and pole vaulting 2.60m.
Lewes/Haywards Heath and Chichester were in action at Aldershot and finished fourth and fifth respectively to give them 16th and 20th in the League table with Chichester’s Ollie Smith with a sparkling 48.8sec victory in the 400 metres Man of the Match.