Graham Williamson winning an invitation race at Meadowbank
Bell’s Junior International meeting was an annual competition between Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales and was sponsored by the Bell’s Whisky company and held at Meadowbank. Bell’s, under the chairmanship of Raymond Miquel, were enthusiastic sponsors of sporting events and supported the annual Tennis Championships of the Highlands, the Junior Athletics International, the Bell’s Badminton Championship of the Highlands and in 1983 they extended their sponsorship of golf (which included the PGA Cup and the Ryder Cup) to include sponsorship of the PGA Junior Championship. Individually they provided 66 individual Outward Bound scholarships at Loch Eil in Inverness. The event began in 1978 and went on through the 1980’s.
The first meeting was held on 29th July, 1978. Ron Marshall’s take on proceedings for the ‘Glasgow Herald’ are reproduced below.
A disappointing result written in a tell-it-like-it-is fashion by the Herald’s top athletics reporter. With hindsight, there are a couple of interesting names in the English team. First Neil Black who won the 1500m was a very good athlete who would later join Bellahouston and be a top member of their very good team before going in to the administration of the sport; second the English winner of the men’s shot putt was Andy Vince who would become Scottish National Coach in the 1990’s and coach several very good Scots athletes. Graham Williamson was of course always a very good talent and thoroughly deserved his victory after being very badly treated when omitted from the Scottish team for the Edmonton Commonwealth Games.
Despite the disappointing result first time round, the second match took place on 31st July, 1979 again at Meadowbank with increased sponsorship from Bell’s.+ It was previewed in ‘The Scotsman’ by Sandy Sutherland on 24th August under the headline of ‘More Cash for Junior Match’ as follows.
The accommodation arrangements as described by Sandy do seem rather strange with athletes from the east travelling between Edinburgh and Glasgow four times in a couple of days. Graham Williamson was missed but he had very good run in the World Student Games where he won the 1500m. With an international match in Dresden and the women’s British League match final taking place on the same day, space in the Monday papers was at a premium but the ‘Glasgow Herald’ gave the Bell’s match only a passing reference while the ‘Scotsman’ (Sandy Sutherland again) was a bit more detailed and did include the results.
There is a disjointed sentence which refers to the 1500m which should have read that Fiona McQueen won the women’s event with a strike from halfway enabling her to win easily, and in the men’s. the tactic was almost copied by Steve Cram. At the start of their careers, Williamson won 21 out of 22 races with his rival but missed out on the CG in Edmonton while England took Cram along. Not a good move by the Scotland selectors – but in ’79 while Cram was at the Junior International, Williamson was to win the World Student Games 1500m Lots of very good names in this list of results with many Scots who were to shine in years to come including Linsey, Fiona, Dawn Kitchen, Chris McGeorge and Paul Mardle for Scotland and others like Eugene Gilkes and Ossie Cham spread through the field.
Linsey McDonald winning at the British Airways Games
The decade ended with the meeting being held on 26th July in 1980 when it clashed with the Olympic Games in Moscow which grabbed all the attention and almost all the space available in the Press. The ‘Sunday Post’ gave us this on the day immediately afterwards.
One day later, the ‘Herald’ gave slightly greater coverage when it said “England won the Bell’s Junior Home Countries International at Meadowbank on Saturday. They scored 349 points, Wales were second with 198, Scotland third with 190 and Northern Ireland fourth with 124. The English team was so strong that in many events they took maximum points. Scotland badly missed Linsey McDonald. In her absence England’s Jane Parry took the sprint double in 11.95 and 24.17 but Kaye Jeffrey proved to be an able substitute for Linsey in the 100 metres finishing second in 24.34 seconds.”
And that was it as far as coverage went.
27th July, 1981 saw the fourth in the series and a new star took the headlines in the ‘Scotsman’.
Again many very good athletes – and that was a part of the attraction: spotting the stars of the future. The Scotsman gave us Sandra (pictured below in the Commonwealth Games of 1986) and Ann on the women’s side and Paul Mardle (AAA’s champion whose father Des was a Scottish Staff Coach) but others who would prove to be quite outstanding were Peter Elliott of England in the 800m, his team mate Paul Davies-Hale in the 3000m and Roald Bradstock in the javelin, and Nigel Walker for Wales in the sprint hurdles.
A year later, 7th August in 1982 was the date of the now firmly established annual Meadowbank fixture. It continued to showcase some really high quality up-and-coming talent. For instance Lynne McDougall, a future Olympic finalist running for Scotland defeated another future Scottish and British internationalist in Elise Lyon for a Scottish 1-2. It was another Commonwealth Games year with the team not yet selected. The ‘Herald’ report on Monday begins with comments on that and 9th reads –
Complete results are not available at this point but we do have all the Scottish athletes performances, courtesy Arnold Black at the link below.
Bell’s Junior International: Scots Positions 1978-86