Winchester & District's men kept their hopes of British League athletics alive by winning their final fixture at Southampton Sports Centre last Saturday.

Although automatic promotion is now beyond them after finishing second to Worthing in the Southern Men's League Division 1, they will now go into a 'paper' match in which a league panel decides the final play-off places for Watford on September 8.

While Winchester must wait and see if they can reach new heights, pole vaulter Chris Mills already has! Having equalled his personal best with a 4.40 clearance at the Sports Centre, he went on to win the event with a club record height of 4.60.

Throwers Mike Marchant and Peter Loots had more of a struggle against the big men of Belgrave, Woking and Verlea but, after a tentative start on the track, Winchester hit a golden vein with Ben Ellis (11.4/22.4) and Chris Hall (11.6/23.0) pulling off 100/200m doubles.

No points escaped them in the 800m either with Mike Gregory (1.57.1) and Adem Omar (2.02.3) cleaning up. And it was a similar story in the 1500m, 5000m and 3000m steeplechase courtesy of Gregory (4.08.1)/Mike Noyce (4.13.4), Nick Anderson (15.32.3)/Kreem Said (16.10.5) and Paul Ashley (9.48.0)/Ian Hardcastle 10.23.9.

With one event remaining, Winchester led by 12 points and it made little difference to the final reckoning when anchorman Ellis was just outdipped by Woking in the 4x400m.

Match result: Winchester & District 128.5, Woking 117.5, Verlea 105.5, Nene Valley 100.5, Belgrave 75.

Top-three league positions: Worthing 29 league points (793 match points), Winchester & District 29 (776.5), Kent 28 (805).

Winchester's B team finished second in their final Division 4 West match at Southampton, leaving them safely in 15th place.