Richard Burney and Jonny Mellor led Liverpool to victory in the final Liverpool & District Cross-Country League match held at Arrowe Park.
Burney won in a time of 31.54, with Mellor coming home 10 seconds later and guest runner Simon Mills third. Southport Waterloo's Rob Berry was fourth, the non-counting Danny Griffiths (St Helens-Sutton) fifth and Jon Frost (West Cheshire) sixth.
Luke Reddy (ninth), Harry Harper (11th), Rob Dewhirst (12th) and Alan Ashton (21st) clinched Liverpool's team win ahead of Wirral for whom John Hunt (eighth) led the way.
Southport Waterloo finished third on the day, winning promotion from Division Two at the expense of LPS, who were 10th despite having Bernie Murphy and Adam Clancy in the top 15.
Wallasey A.C. also clinched promotion, with Greg Jones, Tony Barbat, Keith McLaughlin, Pat Riley, Colin Palmer and John Armstrong making the count.
St Helens-Sutton took third place overall, Dave Twigg making a welcome return finishing a respectable 33rd.
Missing from the Saints line-up on this occasion was David Forrester, who the previous week had led Great Britain juniors to the team silver in the European Junior Cross-Country championships at Toro in Spain.
On the same weekend Samantha Fraser anchored the England Schools combined events team to victory in the Schools International at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. The England team was led by Liverpool's Katarina Thompson, who won the event.
Southport Waterloo's Richard Carey was 24th overall in the race, finishing 25 seconds ahead of Laithwaite, while clubmate Rob McGrath was the first veteran over-40 in the Longridge seven-mile road race at Preston.
Several local clubs are holding their traditional Christmas handicap races over the weekend while the Chester Round The Walls event is the main attraction on Boxing Day, although the full race capacity has been reached. The Boxing Day Leyland 10k looks certain to attract another high quality field.
Ends
Source - Daily Post - Thursday, 20/12/2007 by Phil Thomas
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