Club Race Reports Season 1967-1968
Liverpool & District XC Union
Championships - Sherdley Park - 13/01/1968 - Senior/Junior Men
The male section of the club were at Sherdley Park, St. Helens for the Liverpool & District Championships and it was a day of 'seconds' for Wallasey.
The boys, with six to count improved on last week's performance and packed Colin Reiner (8th), Bob Warburton (18th) Paul Hughes (19th), John Rogers (20th), Bob Brimage (23rd) and Gary Fair (24th) to take second place to Liverpool Pembroke with 122 points.
The youths, over-confident before the race, relaxed too much, and let Liverpool Harriers 'steal' the title from them by only four points. Placings for Wallasey were: Dave Lockley (2nd), John Jones (4th), Brian Knox (9th), Mel Schless (11th) , Steve Walker (18th) and Phil Wealthy (19th).
In the senior event over 7½ miles, Ron Barlow had a great fight with Sutton's Roberts before conceding the premier award in the last few strides.
Club captain, Barrie Smith came through well to take 8th place with John Wright (10th), Doug Hanna (54th), Ken Rosso (60th), Len Durkin (69th) and Mike Teahan (83rd).
Cross Country Championships
National - Sutton Park - 02/03/1968 - Senior Men
By finishing in sixth place in the English cross-country championships last Saturday, Wallasey Athletic Club youth team set an all-time high placing for a Wallasey team in the national championships.
In doing so, they also proved that they are second team in the North of England - by crushing all Northern opposition except the winners, Wakefield, who have won both the national and the area titles this year.
The Wallasey team thus fully vindicated themselves after their disappointing run in the Northern cross-country championships three weeks ago, when a travelsick team slumped from an expected medal performance to 6th team. From a record field of over 600 runners, in the English championships last Saturday, at Sutton Coldfield, Johnny Jones repeated his excellent Northern form to take 32nd place.
Dave Lockley was only seven seconds behind him, but such was the density of numbers that he was 16 places in arrears at the tape. Third home for Wallasey was Brian Knox, 28 seconds behind Dave, but in this field he was 106th, with Mel Schless 24 seconds and 39 places behind Brian. This gave Wallasey a total of 331 points, and placed them sixth behind Wakefield Harriers (111), Cambridge Harriers (210), Shaftesbury Harriers (217), Corby Town (249), and Hornsea (St. Mary) Harriers (312).
Placings of other Northern teams who had bettered Wallasey at Sheffield were: Airedale 9th team with 396 points, Longwood 10th (413 pts.), Leeds 19th (526 pts.), and Sale 15th (456),
Wallasey's only other runners were Phil Wealthy 303rd and Mike Teahan 625th in a senior field of nearly 1,000 runners.
