No medals, but Morpeth Harriers give very respectable performance at national cross country championships

Carl Avery negotiates a sharp turn just ahead of Leeds City's Josh Dickinson.

The races were held in the grounds of Bolesworth Castle, south of Chester, close to the Welsh border.

The gently undulating course was a marked contrast to the many hillier and muddier venues experienced in past seasons, with one of the main challenges this time to negotiate some sections of quite long grass in the parkland.

Despite not bringing home any medals, the club once again gave a very respectable account of itself and was at the front of teams from the region.

Best placed finishers were in the Under 17 Boys, for whom Liam Roche placed inside the top ten in 8th place, recording 21 minutes 54 seconds for the 6km course.

Roche was supported by Elliot Kelso in 47th position and Bertie Marr in 60th, with Joe Close 119th. The team finished 5th overall, a strong placing, especially considering the absence of the squad’s two fastest finishers in the Northern Championships last month.

Morpeth’s other team performance came in the final event of the day, the Senior Men’s race over 12 kms, where nearly 1500 runners finished.

Led home once again by Seahouses-based veteran Carl Avery, who has been in excellent form all winter, the team finished just outside the top ten, 11th of 99 complete teams from across the country.

Avery was part of a leading group at the sharp end of the race from the start, finishing in 11th place overall in a time of 36:56, less than a minute behind race winner James Kingston of Tonbridge AC, who won by a margin of six seconds from Jack Gray of Cambridge and Coleridge AC.

The team prize was won, perhaps unsurprisingly, by Leeds City AC by a margin of more than 60 points from Cambridge and Coleridge, with Tonbridge in third.

Avery was supported by Sam Hancox, having a much better run in 80th place, Phil Winkler (102nd), Matthew Briggs (128th), Connor Marshall (177th) and Andrew Lawrence (252nd), with the club third from the North of England behind Leeds City and Salford Harriers, and first from the North East.

In the U/15 Boys race over 4kms, Oliver Calvert ran well to place 11th, with club colleague Oliver Tomlinson putting recent injuries scares behind him in 49th.

Oliver’s sister Zoe placed 161st in the U/13 Girls race.