Wallasey Athletic Club's successful road racing quartet of Brian Woolford, Ron Barlow, Kevin Mather and John Wright are Merseyside's chief challengers for team honours in Waterloo Harriers' mommoth seven miles open road, at Crosby on November 9.
Last year Wallasey won the Malcolm Bullock Cup - for which teams of five runners compete, with the position of the first three members to finish deciding the result - but this time they will face new opposition from Portsmouth A.C. and Coventry Godiva Harriers, and a stronger challenge from some of their Northern rivals.
The fifth member of Wallasey's team has not yet been decided nor have the two runners who will complete the club's representation in the "Round the Houses" six by two miles relay for the John Moores Shield on the evening of November 13.
These races are part of the Waterloo Festival of Road Racing, which this year is sponsored by the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo. Three races for schools on November 16, for which teams will be travelling from Cumberland, Yorkshire and Derbyshire, as well as all parts of Lancashire and Cheshire, to complete the festival.
Brian Woolford, a 26-year-old clerk who represented Great Britain in the Czechoslovakian Kosice marathon recently, was the first of Wallasey's quartet to take road running seriously, about three years ago. He was soon joined by 24-year-old Barlow, who is the current Cheshire
cross country and three miles track champion.
This pair picked up several individual prizes, but a third member was needed to qualify for team awards and that is where club secretary Wright came in.
Later Mather joined them and since then various other club members have given their support in team events where more than four counters were needed. The two who helped Woolford, Barlow, Wright and Mather to win the Liverpool and District road relay title recently were Roy Parry and Brian Chalton.
Woolford, a former pupil at Wallasey Grammar School, took up athletics in 1952. His improvements since then has been gradual but he really came into the limelight this year by winning the Northern marathon championship, finishing second in the Pembroke 20 miles race, and coming third in the A.A.A. marathon.
His best time for the marathon of 2 hours 22 minutes 22 seconds makes him Merseyside's fastest (he dislikes being called best) runner at the distance.
Barlow, a former Army three miles record holder, has had many successes since taking up athletics in 1954. The presence of nearly 50 internationals at Waterloo will not worry him, for he has little respect for reputation and usually produces his best when the odds are against him. He is an electronics engineer and an old boy of Wallasey Technical College.
Wright, who is 30, now teaches P.E. at his old school, Oldershaw Grammar. He took up athletics while at Loughborough in 1954 and has been a member of the Cheshire cross country team since 1956 and county champion in 1960.
Wallasey's sports personality of 1962, Mather, is another Oldershaw old boy. A formidable competitor on the track, Mather's best mile time of 4 minutes 6 seconds, has been beaten by only one other competitor, Martin Heath. Mather took up athletics while in the R.A.F. in 1956 and is another Cheshire county runner. He is 26.
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Source - Liverpool Evening Express - Thursday, 31/10/1963 by Paul O'Brien
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