Ron Barlow won another cross-country championship on Saturday, the West Lancashire. He has already this season won the Cheshire Athletic Championship and the Liverpool & District Cross-Country championship.
For the race, at Sherdley Park last Saturday, Wallasey did not even field a full team but hopes were of an individual victory for Barlow and not a team place. Ron ran very strongly and after the first mile left no doubt about his abilities to make the race a pace which none of the other athletes could quite hold. John Young coming back to former fitness, finished 36th with Dave Field 50th, Hugh Pritchard, made his usual journey from the South of England to finish 59th and Len Darling, who was unfortunately working a night shift, run well to finish the 9 miles in 67th place.
In the first championship race, the boys' race, Wallasey boys' pulled in 62 points to finish 3rd just behind Warrington who had 60 points and finished 2nd. Dave Lockley ran exceptionally well and finished quite strongly in 3rd place with Dave Spencer well up in 7th place. The other two counters were rather further back than Wallasey had hoped, although their performances are still very good. This put Wallasey into 3rd place, John Jones 25th and Paul Emery 27th ran very well but with only a few places improvement would have put Wallasey 2nd or perhaps even first.
With only four Wallasey runners in the youths race every one who started had to finish,
with this in mind Barrie Smith, also thinking about a team place, ran very well to finish 20th, followed in by a very tired but strong running Alan Keating in 24th place. Mike McNamee ran well and finished 37th one place ahead of Robin Tarrant who completed the youths' team. Wirral won with 31 points.
In the Junior Championships, Wallasey could only finish four runners, John Hughes, running below form but still quite strong, finished 25th with a very unfit Mark Aldridge in 28th place. Tony Parry ran quite well to finish 32nd with an unfortunate Doug Hanna, having a spike come through his running shoes, finishing in 34th place. Sutton Harriers were the team winners with 39 points with Liverpool 2nd 47 points and Blackpool 3rd 50 points. Wallasey gained 119 points.
Ends
Source - Wallasey News - Saturday, 06/02/1965
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