THE MEN'S division one team from Basingstoke and Mid-Hants won their Southern League match, despite classy opponents at Copthall Barnet on Saturday.

The oppositition included Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers, one of the UK Premier League teams, who included Anthony Whiteman, a British team member in the Sydney Olympics and currently ranked third in Europe over 800 metres.

He went through the bell in 51.2sec and finally strolled to victory in 1min 47.7sec for one of the fastest 800m times seen in this country this season. This was a run-out in preparation for the Commonwealth trials this weekend.

Basingstoke's Matt Woods was third place in one of his rare races over this distance to clock 2:1.5. Martin Tarsey was third in the B race in 2:12.4. Each team member either produced a season's best or beat a superior performer on paper.

The meeting had started amid controversy with an experimentatal new bleep start system for the first few races. This did not faze Ben Hazell, who stormed to victory in a lifetime best 56.1sec in the 400m hurdles. He was one tenth of a second off an English Schools qualifying time and beat Callum Mckay, last year's English Schools runner-up.

As an under-20 athlete, Hazell was limited in events but he still managed to produce a pb in the high-jump of 1.85m for equal first, another pb in the B-string 110m hurdles and a B-string win in the long-jump with a leap of 6.33m. He was narrowly beaten to the A-string slot by an equally-busy Carl Marchment, who leaped 6.36m for second place in the A-string.

Marchment went on to take third place in the A-string pole-vault, with 3.60m, win the triple-jump, with 12.80m, and take second in the B-string high jump, with 1.75m. Another win followed in the B-string javelin, with 42.47m, and a run over the 110m hurdles in 17.2sec earned third place. He finishing off joining team-mates Hazell, May and Elderfield for second place in the 4x100m relay.

Rafer Joseph also had a busy day in the throws, winning the A-string discus, with 42.46m, taking second in the hammer, with 44.74m, javelin (45.32m) and shot (12.60m). Stuart Semple completed a clean sweep of the discus points with a throw of 36.37m and another good win in the B-string shot with 11.95m.

On the track, Andy Hughes of Shaftesbury won the 100m on the line. He was given the same time of 11.1sec as Basingstoke's Robert Tobin, who was second after a couple of false starts and problems with the new start system, which was then abandoned.

The positions were reversed in the 200m where Tobin took an early lead to win by a half a second in 21.8sec. Paul May, in his first race in the league top-flight this year, came third in the 100m and, for the second set of maximum points, won the 200m in 23.5sec into a headwind.

Steve Turville opted to step down from his usual middle distance events for a win in the 400m in 51.3sec. Under-17 Jonathan Elderfield was B-string fourth in 54.0sec. Elderfield immediately had one triple-jump to secure a place in the final rounds for an eventual B-string second place with 11.77m, just 12cm behind the winner.

Under-20s Dave Ragan and Tom Bolton tried to hold on in the fast first two laps of the 1,500m against a formidable Shaftesbury duo but the lead was too much and they had to settle for third places.

In the 5,000m Darrel May, in his first race of the season over this distance, worked his way through the field to finish runner-up in 15:50.3 while Tim Ellis followed him home for third in the B-string in 17:5.2

For the first time in many matches, Basingstoke were able to field steeplechasers but the race was cancelled due to damage to the water jump. However, the points allocated helped the teams.

The day was capped by a final win in the 4x400m by Turville, Woods, Ragan and Tobin in 3:21.5 to take Basingstoke into the top half of the table.

Points: Basingstoke 146, Shaftesbury Barnet 131.5, Worthing 114, Windsor, Slough Eton and Hounslow 73, Ipswich 49.5.