The West Suffolk/Diss team rather expected the Division Four North match at St Ives would be a hard one.The team had not competed against three of the other teams, Huntingdon, Biggleswade and Watford.

The West Suffolk/Diss team rather expected the Division Four North match at St Ives would be a hard one.

The team had not competed against three of the other teams, Huntingdon, Biggleswade and Watford.

The other two teams, Luton and London Heathside, WS/Diss had already competed against.

It was essential for WS/Diss to have a strong team. Unfortunately this did not happen. Diss provided three athletes - Simon Bowman and two young athletes M Burrows and B Head.

Bowman was beaten by one metre in the hammer - he threw over 40m. Simon also competed in the shot and the discus, being fourth in the shot and fifth in the discus.

The West Suffolk part of the team consisted of six athletes, five of which were experienced athletes of high quality such as Luke Allen, a 6m plus long jumper who also won the triple jump.

The 5,000m is an event that Diss, for a number of years, had not had competitors but C Ridley is a top rank distance runner able to compete in middle distance as well - he won the 5,000m in 17:41.4.

Another outstanding performance was the javelin by A Harland with a throw of 20cm short of 50m.

The two young Diss athletes helped to provide the team with useful points. Head was second in the 400m hurdles, doing the event for the first time in 83.7sec in the B event.

Burrows clocked 12.5sec in a blanket finish which was won in 12.4 for third in the 100m.

Both boys again competed in the 200m Burrows fourth in 25.6sec and Head in 29.0.

Both competed in the 4x100m relay and the 4x400m relay in which WS/Diss were third in 49.6 and 4:43.5.

The WS/Diss team could not compete in the high hurdles, steeplechase and had only one competitor in two other events.

Huntingdon won with 187 points, WS/Diss 131, Watford 104, Biggleswade 92, Luton 90, London Heathside 41.

This was a better result than could have been expected with a depleted team, which means that WS/Diss will slip into second place in the league.

The next match will co-incide with the English Schools Championship where Simon Bowman, as secretary for the Norfolk Schools, will be away and Allen will compete in the triple jump.