Written by PW   

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ROSENHEIM FINAL– Tooting, 15th August 2012

Kingston's Men followed up our 3rd successive Western Division title by successfully defending the overall interdivisional championship, winning the Rosenheim Final against some exalted competition from the Eastern Division.

In evening sunshine which thankfully belied pessimistic weather forecasts, 2nd Claimer and Rosenheim regular, Richard Holt, got us off to the perfect start with an easy victory in the 400m Hurdles. This was mirrored by debutant Michael Cole, who only entered the High Jump when all his rivals had already gone out, eventually clearing an excellent 1.90m. In the 100m, Andre Nembhard also fought his way to the narrowest of wins, but Chris Dack couldn't quite manage another victory in a very high quality Javelin competition, although he hit an accomplished season's best 57.24m to finish 2nd.

As these results came in it became obvious that we were the only Western Division team in with a chance of victory. It was also clear that Eastern Division heavyweights, Belgrave and Herne Hill Harriers, were less prominent than in previous seasons, but Hercules Wimbledon were emerging as close and serious challengers, fielding several quality athletes we haven't faced before.

Back on the track, our athletes were having to scrap for every point, with Jonathan Darby running a good time, but not quite managing to hold off Hercules's Liam White for victory in the 800m and K&P's Gordon Pearce will have been grateful to him for draining White's legs, when he faced the same athlete later in the 1500m and hung on for a narrow win by 8 hundredths of a second! That race took enough out of Gordon for him to promote Andy Robinson to the scoring berth in the 3K, but Gordon recovered enough to win the race, with Andy finding the going tougher than expected. Jamie McCullagh, returning from injury, blew the cobwebs away with 3rd place in the 400m and Justin Green replicated that result in the 200m.

The match drew to its successful conclusion with Nick Owen producing a top notch 14.95m win in the Shot Putt, Chris Hall gaining a solid 2nd place in the Triple Jump, and our 4x200m relay squad (Adam Bellis, Aidan Fahey, Andre Nembhard and Justin Green) proving much faster than the opposition, with Aidan Fahey running an excellent, combative leg.

In addition to our scorers, we had a healthy number of non-scorers on the track, with perhaps Chris Jennings being the pick as he smashed his pbs in 100m and 200m, both with legal winds. Classy ultra-distance runner, Harry Johnston, did equally well to lower his 3K track pb, with several others enjoying good performances to ensure an enjoyable evening for all present in a K&P vest.

The match finished with K&P on 85 points, Hercules Wimbledon 75.5, Belgrave and Croydon tied on 61, with Herne Hill Harriers 59.5, Walton 30, British Airways 11 and St Mary's a distant last with only 3 pts. This was the last match of Humphrey Waddington's tenure as Rosenheim Men's Team Manager, since he took over at the end of 2007. He has led the side into 6 finals, winning 4 of them and never finishing out of the top 3.