One of the more important items in the Handbook, so important that it came immediately after the office bearers and honorary members, was the Constitution and Standing Orders. Not long compared with some other sections but very important in the event of any infringement – especially by a Committee Member. Apologies for some of the copying but the binding on the copy we have is very tight and at times obscure a letter or two.
The sport couldn’t run without officials – not to be confused with administrators. The former stand out in all weathers measuring jumps and throws, timing and starting track events, while the latter sit in the office and organise meetings, etc. We have the officials with their events and their addresses so that meeting organisers can invite the officials of the grade and in the numbers they want. For some reason the women’s officials are listed in three pages at the back of the book while the men’s officials are listed earlier.
The first page of Coaches below is from the 1980 Handbook because the corresponding page in the ’79 version does not show the paragraph at the top of the page in its entirety. This accounts for the wrong page number and slight difference in names of Coaches. Note that although the list of officials appears earlier in the handbook, the SWAAA officials are listed here in the last three pages. I don’t know why that is.
Both the SAAA which dealt with Track and Field athletics and the SCCU which dealt with cross-country and road running in Scotland had their own organisational structures and procedures for the running of the sports. They ran parallel to each other but had different ways of electing committees, the committees were also differently structured, the club input to each body was also different. Financial procedures were also peculiar to each body. We also have the professional circuit’s equivalent publication – the SGA Handbook and the comparison between the two codes is interesting.
And there were the rules and regulations to be adhered to and which had to be communicated to the clubs and other organisations (schools, County Associations, Youth Organisations, etc). These were contained in their respective annual handbooks. That of the SAAA was necessarily larger since it had all the track and field events to cover, and the various regulations relating to the Highland Games, Border Games, Local and Works Sport meetings, and in short everything for every sort of competition. The SCCU handbook was 5″ x 4″ while the SAAA was 8″ x 5″.
Their importance in the running of the sport across the entire country cannot be over-estimated and it is appropriate that we look at the contents of these publications. We have taken the cross-country handbook for 1980 and the SAAA publication for 1979 simply because they are representative and because we have them to hand.
See them at the links below.
SAAA Handbook SCCU Handbook SGA Handbook
Every year the SAAA issued the Handbook – a compendium of the current state of the Association, of its Constitution, Rules and Regulations, of its history and of its members. No look at the sport during the reign of the SAAA would be complete without looking at this production. It is however a fairly big book – the 1979 edition runs to 128 pages plus cover – and will take some time for the scanning to be complete.
It will be done in sections as above with the part dealing with the Rules for Competition being further divided simply because of its length. Links to these sections are below and will be linked as the relevant pages are complete.
Finally, it will be noted that such a booklet could not or would not be published today – mainly because it has the addresses and phone numbers of all committee members, all coaches and all club secretaries. This is a pity because it makes the job of course organisers who want to invite appropriate coaches, race promoting bodies who are looking for officials, and club secretaries who want to contact others. This was part of athletics life however in 1979.
When I first came into the sport in the 1950’s the SCCU annual cost 3d (maybe 6d, but I think it was 3d) and we were encouraged to buy it. Not everybody bought it, and not everybody who bought it, bought it every year. It contained a wealth of information about the season’s fixtures, about who the committee men running the sport were, who the club secretaries were and lots of historical information. At 4 inches by 5 inches it was small enough to fit into your pocket, it was a useful thing to have. It wouldn’t be allowed now to print all the addresses or any other personal information but to me that’s a pity. However, we reproduce here the 1980-81 version of the handbook. Pages 1 – 27 below with a link to the second half of the booklet at the foot of the page.
Gary Beggan has a large collection of Willie’s photographs – all in black and white and all showing a knowledge and love of the sport. The range is wide and many, but not nearly all, are of his clubmates at Springburn. We start with club legend Harry Gorman 1st VET (and club president at the time) Springburn Harriers Club Cross Country Championships on 5th March, 1994.
John Bell in the club championships, 5th Match, 1994
Jim Cooper (Cooperman) in 1994 club championships
Frank Wright in the club championships: Frank later became an official timekeeper
Below: Adrian Callan at the Nigel Barge race in 1994.
The last changeover for the winning team at the Lanarkshire Relays – John Bell to Andy Callan
Very little information of these photographs, above and below, of the Robert Burns ‘Cradle to the Grave’ relay from Alloway to Dumfries
A Springburn group
Round the Houses 10k, Grangemouth 19/02/1995. L to R – Peter Laing – Jamie Harper – Derek Houston – Eddie Dickson.
David Donnet, 109, running in the West District Relays at Cumnock, 1991
West District Junior Championships at Clydebank, won by Jamie Hendry, running second, from D Greig of Kilbarchan
No detail available for the above
Another Springburn Group
Alison Rose (Dundee University, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh Southern/Woollen Mill) was born in Canada on 27th September 1967 but moved to Britain with her parents.
Aged 18, Alison moved from Farnham to Scotland (Dundee University) to study physiology. She raced for Scottish Universities and asked Malcolm Brown (in charge of SU Athletics) to coach her. After graduation, she went to Edinburgh and studied physiotherapy at Queen Margaret University (as it is now called). Alison pays full credit to Malcolm Brown for helping her to improve greatly as an athlete.
Malcolm said the following about Alison, “As an athlete she had great persistence, was physically robust, determined and quietly ambitious. She enjoyed setting long term goals and pursuing them, which was very unusual in a relatively young and inexperienced athlete. By choosing the right event (marathon), helped by her coach, she raced European and World Championships for Great Britain, which was above expectations. She rarely performed poorly at races. Alison was top of the class for intelligent application.”
Between 1988 and 1996, she developed into a very good, versatile athlete. Alison first appeared in the annual Scottish lists with times for 3000m (9.43.37 pb) and 1500m (4.40.6 pb) but before too long increased her racing distance, moving from 3k and cross country to 10k. She trained at Meadowbank with international male runners John Sherban, Phil Mowbray, Ian Hamer and Geoff Wightman.
In 1992, Alison (or Ali, as she was known) won an excellent individual silver medal in the Scottish National Cross-Country Championships (behind Vikki McPherson) and led EWM (Sue Ridley 3rd, Susan Durham 13th) to team gold, a title they retained in 1993, when Alison secured individual bronze, with Sue Ridley winning silver and Kirsty McCallum finishing 19th.
Alison Rose became a Scottish International runner in 1992, taking part in the UK Cross-Country Championship in Basingstoke, when Scotland lost to England but defeated Wales. Alison was 13th, the third Scottish counter behind Lynn Harding and Karen McLeod.
Later in 1992 she recorded 34 minutes 39.16 seconds for 10,000m on the track, which placed her fourth in the Scottish ranking list that year.
On 23rd August 1992, she finished seventh in the Great Scottish Run Half Marathon, recording 1.16.43; and, on 26th October, ran well for fifth place in the Dublin Marathon (2.46.27). Alison was fourth in that year’s Scottish list, behind three established Scottish stars: Liz McColgan, Harding and McLeod.
In 1993, Alison demonstrated great consistency with slight improvement to her personal bests: 10,000m track in 34.35.73 on 5th June for third in the Pearl European Relays in Portsmouth, which gave her third Scottish ranking. She achieved a ‘lifetime best’ 5000m time of 16.41.51 which was the fastest Scottish mark set that year. On the road, she won the Fleet Half Marathon on 21st March (1.16.41); and on 18th July raced for GB Students in the World University Games Marathon at Buffalo, New York State. She was fifth in 2.46.09, which ranked her fourth in Scotland.
Alison Rose worked at FASIC (the Edinburgh University sports injury clinic).
1994 saw similar progress. On 20th February, Alison won the Grangemouth Round the Houses 10km in 34.43. On 17th April she was 13th in the London Marathon (2.45.55). Alison Rose’s best-ever 10,000m time was 33.57.86. This was set on 12th June when she was seventh in the AAA Championships in Sheffield. She narrowly missed selection for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games. Another new marathon pb of 2.45.19 was set on 7th August for 31st place when she raced for Great Britain at the European Marathon Championships in Helsinki.
1995 was Alison’s marathon peak. On 1st January, she finished third (1.21.23) in the prestigious Morpeth to Newcastle Road Race. On 5th March, she won the Finchley 20 miles (2.03.02). Then on the 9th of April, Alison Rose represented Great Britain in the IAAF World Marathon Cup in Athens, finishing a thoroughly respectable 24th with a new best time of 2.42.42 (which placed her tenth in the Scottish all-time marathon list). Her GB and Scottish team-mate Trudi Thomson was 25th, only two seconds behind. 12 Nations took part; and Alison Rose was the first GB finisher (from a team of five).
Consequently, Alison Rose was selected to race again for GB on 5th August 1995 in the IAAF World Championships at Gothenburg, Sweden. Trudi was first British finisher (22nd in 2.41.42); Alison was 28th in 2.45.52 – and second Brit. 1995 was also the year when her coach Malcolm Brown moved to Northern Ireland.
1996 was the last year that Alison Rose appeared in the Scottish lists. After wearing the Scottish vest in an international cross-country match at Ashington, England, where she was 22nd and her team lost to England South and England North, but beat England Midlands and Wales, she produced times of 17.12.98 for 5000m (ranked 7th) and, when sixth in the British Olympic Trials at Birmingham, 34.44.89 for 10,000m (ranked 2nd).
An ankle injury which required surgery ended her running career. Yet Alison Rose could be rightly proud of many fine team and individual achievements in the sport she had graced for several years.
After Neil Black had a riding accident, Alison was selected as GB physiotherapist for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. She was physiotherapist to Olympic gold medallists: Dames Kelly Holmes (from 2000 onwards) and Jess Ennis-Hill. In 2002, she moved to Leeds to set up and become clinical director of a private physiotherapy clinic – CSPC.
She was also physio to triathletes: Alistair and Jonny Brownlee, Non Stanford and Vicky Holland – all world champions. In addition, she was physio to top middle-distance track runner Laura Weightman. Alison Rose has been widely praised for her expertise. Malcolm Brown added, “She is very well liked and universally respected. It is partly that she cares about her patients. She is loyal. She has no ego (therefore no social media). Alison is extremely hard working and she is at the forefront of her profession, constantly updating her skills and getting athletes into peak condition for the big events.”
Alison Rose treating 2020 Olympic 1500m silver medallist Laura Muir
