Category: The Fast Pack

Dumbarton runners at the end of the Glasgow to Fort William Relay

Alistair Lawson, Allan Adams, Ron Paton, Gordon McLaren, Harry Martin, Mike Lidwell, Ian McWatt, Billy Cairns, Colin Martin.

Dumbarton AAC was established in 1919 and has produced many fine runners since then.    We have separate profiles for Colin Martin and Alistair Currie on this website and their period at the top overlaps somewhat.   On this page we will be looking at some of their best athletes from the 1970’s – runners such as Hugh Elder, Allan Adams senior, Willie Cairns, Jack Brown and Alan Currie.    But the club is more than just a road running and cross-country club.   As Colin Martin says in his profile, the club was cnsiderably good on the track when he joined them with the top man being Bobby Mills – best known as a hurdler but also a top ranked decathlete – and including well-known official and announcer Jim McInnes, who was a useful sprinter,   They were a club with some initiative too – in the days before the West Highland Way was invented as a long distance footpath, Dumbarton developed a Glasgow to Fort William Relay with idiosyncratic rules codified by Mike Lidwell.   The teams had to be of eight men, two groups of four; the distance was split into 32 sections and each group had to be responsible for 16 sections with each man covering four stretches.   One team ran mainly road parts of the course while the other ran the more mountainous segments.   Such is the nature of the terrain of course, that even the road team had to do Rannoch Moor and the Devil’s Staircase among its duties.   .     The route was also slightly different – and tougher – than the WHW.   It started at 6:00 am from George Square in Glasgow and went out via Maryhill Road and over the Bearsden Golf Course to Milngavie Town Centre where it linked up with what is now the WHW; when it reached Dumgoyne, the course went up the hill over the fields to the Black Bull in Killearn, down Drumtian  Road to the main road, under the railway bridge and over the fields to cross the A811 and head for Queen Elizabeth Forest, then via Stronachlachar and Glen Gyle to meet up with the route of the West Highland Way at Crianlarich before heading to the Fort.   They pioneered this route and challenge matches were held between the club and Clydesdale Harriers, Glasgow University, Lochaber AAC and even at one point Dark Peak Fell Runners, typically three clubs at a time.   So Dumbarton was an all-round club with not a little initiative and the distance men took part in the League meetings and the track men competed on the road and over the country.   The individuals concerned were a very competitive unit with everyone working for everyone else.   A final note for now: I am still collaing information from Allan Adams, Colin Martin and Alistair Lawson and that will be added as soon as it is available.

The ‘one that got away’ was Hugh Elder.    A solid club runner (DoB: 1/10/48) he specialised in the steeplechase on the track and did well in it.   with two SAAA medals and a personal best of 9:06.0 in 1974.    His other personal best times were

3000m – 8:34.6i (1972);     10000m – 31:20 (1970);     10 Miles – 53:41.0 (1973);     Marathon – 2:49:21 (1970);     2000m Steeplechase – 5:58.2i (1972).

He first appears in the Scottish ranking lists with a time of 10:05.2 for the 3000m steeplechase in 1968 at the age of 20 in nineteenth position, one ahead of Jim Sloss of Beith and two ahead of Doug Gillon  (10:11.6) of Edinburgh AC.   A year later he was sixteenth with 9:50.5 and competitively he was starting to get himself noticed.   After winning the West District ‘chase in 9:56.0, he was third in the Inter-Counties with his ranking time.    In 1970 he started to spread his talents a little and not only did he record a time of 9:34.2 for the steeplechase, but he was also ranked at twenty eighth in the 10000m with 31:20, twelfth in the 10 Miles with 53:41 and thirty second in the marathon with 2:49:21.   In 1971 he won his first SAAA medal when he was second in a time of 9:25.6 behind Bryan-Jones’s 9:08.2 after being second in the West District with 9:39.6 behind Jim Brown’s 9:23.6.   He also won the Inter-District ‘chase in 9:23.6 from club mate Willie Cairns’s 9:53.0.   The statistical yearbook said “Hugh Elder continued his steady progress to proficiency over the obstacles and looks set for better results next season.”   His best time of the season was 9:18.0 set at Meadowbank in July which placed him third Scot.   In 1972 he began with an indoor 3000m in 8:34.6 to be twentieth ranked Scot, and he went on to edge down his steeplechase time to 9:17.6 (sixth in the rankings) and his 2000m steeplechase best was also set where he was placed second.   He picked up his second SAAA medal when he was third in the Championships.    He had by now moved to the Midlands for business reasons and had joined Wolverhampton & Bilston AAC in 1972 and this gave him valuable competition opportunities but also introduced him to the British international 400m runner Verona Bernard (European, Commonwealth and Olympic runner) who would soon (in 1974) become Verona Elder.   In 1973, possibly as a result of the competition he was now getting, he hacked a chunk from his steeplechase time to a new pb of 9:10.6 placing him sixth in Scotland.   On to 1974 and it came down even further – this time to 9:06.0 which placed  him fifth best Scot behind Ian Gilmour, Adrian Weatherhead, Gareth Bryan Jones and Alistair Blamire (incidentally tenth ranked over the steeplechase that year was Frank Clement with 9:27.8!)   He was also in the 10000m with a time of 31:21.6.     In 1975 he dropped back in both events with 9:16.6 and 31:29.7.   His last year of being ranked in Scotland was 1976 when his best time for the steeplechase of 9:26.6 placed him thirteenth, nevertheless he had been a very good runner in the demanding event over eight years.

Hugh’s first Edinburgh to Glasgow relay was in 1967 when he ran on the second leg at the age of 19 and dropped from the twelfth place that Bobby Mills handed him to eighteenth – hardly surprising when you consider he was racing against Eddie Knox, Don Faircloth, Alistair Blamire, Mel Edwards and company.   The following year he was on Stage Seven where he was sixth fastest and picked up one place from eighteenth to seventeenth.   In ’69 he was on the long sixth leg and he picked up from fourteenth to tenth with tenth fastest run of the day.   Keeping the sixth stage in 1970 he stayed in tenth for the team that finished eleventh.   In 1971 he moved from fourteenth to twelfth on the same stage, and there was a wee change n the following year when he was fourth on the first leg.   In ’73 he was tenth on Stage One and his next run was in 1976 when he could only hold on to eighteenth place on the final stage of the race.   He ran eight races in total.   Over the country, in the National Championship, Hugh Elder did not appear too often – he is first spotted as a Junior finishing fourteenth in 1968 and then in his next year in the age group he was twelfth.   Moving up to the Senior squad he was forty eighth in 1970 – not bad in that one place in front was Joe Reilly of VPAAC and one place back was Peter Duffy of Motherwell.   Continuing to improve he was twenty second the following year and second Dumbarton counter behind Colin Martin.   The last appearance in the National that I can find was in 1975 when he was twenty second and first counter for his club.

Allan Adams is best known for his wonderful running as a veteran road runner in the 1980’s but he had been running since the age of 13 and he first appears in the National Cross-Country Championships in 1959 as a Boy finishing seventy first.   Two years later he was sixty second in  the Youths Championship and we have to jump to 1966 before he appears in the available results finishing seventieth in the Senior Championships – six places behind Ian Binnie (VPAAC) and one ahead of Clark Wallace (Shettleston).   He didn’t appear too often in the results of the National which, typically only went as far as fiftieth in most lists and the next appearance is in 1971 when he was 169th    His Edinburgh to Glasgow Relay appearances were not very frequent either: he only ever ran in six races: 1966 on Stage Three where  he moved up from eleventh to eighth; 1972 on Stage Seven he maintained eleventh place; in 1976 on Stage Five he held on to nineteenth place, in 1978 he received in twenty first (four and a half minutes behind twentieth) on Stage Eight and couldn’t do anything about it (who could?);  in 1983 on Three he held fourteenth and in 1985 he received in twenty first and finished Stage Six in twenty first.   There was a very good article by Doug Gillon in “Scotland’s Runner” of December 1986 in which it says that by his own admission he had been running since the age of 13 and never been more than a good club runner.   He says “I enjoyed cross-country but was never better than the top of the middle of the pack.   If I trained really hard I would sometimes make the first team.   But my real love in my earlier days was hill running.   My biggest claim to fame was that I once won the Cairngorm Hill Race and I was second twice, on Goatfell and second to Phil Dolan at Mamore.”   It was then that he took to the roads for a while because he was unable to tackle the hills any more.   But injuries were not the only problem that he had to face.   I quote from Doug’s article:

“Running home from work was part of his everyday routine bur suddenly he began to lose weight dramatically.   “I was coughing all the time and vomiting up my food.   I lost two and a half stones … down to nine stones from my normal 11 … and I began to wonder what I had,” said Allan.    “The crunch came one day when I got so breathless on the way home that I had t stop and walk.”    Like his father before him Allan’s hobby was keeping pigeons, and only after intensive tests in Vale of Leven Hospital did the truth emerge.   He had pigeon fanciers lung.   “It’s caused by the dust and droppings from the birds,” Allan explained, ” a type of allergy.   Once I got rid of the birds the problem cleared up.”

  Allan also played the bagpipes and he played regularly, first of all for Singers Pipe Band and then for the Red Hackle.   That also took time from his athletics but once his marathon career took off, he didn’t have time for the pipes.   Let’s go back to his first international though, which Doug Gillon describes as follows:   “When the call inviting Allan Adams to represent his country came, they wanted him to make his international debut at the age of 42 just three days later in Aberdeen.   He had just won the Lochaber Marathon less than a month previously in a course record of 2:26:36.   The race had taken its toll and only four days before the phone call, Adams had laboured his way round a windy Luddon Half Marathon finishing fifth veteran in for him a slow time of just inside 72 minutes.   “I felt tired and heavy legged,” said the Dumbarton Athletic Club man.   “I wasn’t sure whether I was up to running another marathon so soon.”   So by way of a fitness test he set out from his Dumbarton home for a 14 mile run over the Erskine Bridge and back.   The verdict was that he was that he felt OK and he accepted his first Scottish vest.  

Given the intensity – near paranoia in some cases – with which international marathon runners prepare for races Adams’ performance was genuinely remarkable.   He finished fifth in 2:19:10, first veteran.   It was not his fastest marathon.   His best was 2:25:36 when finishing second to clubmate John Stephens at Inverclyde.   He had become consistent around that time having recorded 2:26 also at Inverclyde and 2:27:00 and 2:25:48 in successive Glasgow outings.   But in September in Glasgow he surpassed himself , again  as a late call-up into Scotland’s colours.   This time however the race had been on his programme.   He placed fifteenth in a time of 2:23:03 winning the Nationwide Trophy as leading veteran.   A third representative honour this time in a Glasgow team took him to Nurnberg in October when he finished fifth in 2:29:07. ” 

His very first marathon had been the Glasgow Marathon in 1978 before it became a people’s race and when it was described as Scottish athletics’ best kept secret, starting and finishing in George Square on a Sunday morning.   Aiming for 2:45 he had run 2:32 – prior to that his furthest race had been the 12 miles of the Balloch to Clydebank.    After his first international marathon, Allan won the Vets hill race at Bathgate in a record time and a weekend later he was fourth in the Bearsden half-marathon (first vet) in 72:12 and a week later again he was second to Brian Carty in the Clydebank Half Marathon in 72:12.   He was not apparently in sympathy with the ‘race sparingly’ school of thought!

If we summarise his marathon career we get

*Ran 25 in 10 years: 3 wins, 3 seconds and 3 thirds.

*Full Scottish vests in Glasgow, 1986, where he was first vet in a pb of 2:23:03; Aberdeen, same year, first vet, 2:29:10 where he says he chased Colin Youngson the whole way – “a hard man to beat”, he says.

*Selected for a Glasgow Marathon team six times: Nurnberg 1985, 14th, 2nd vet; 1986, 5th, 1st vet; 1990, 3rd, 1st vet; Barcelona, 1987, 2:28:42; 1989, 2:26:32, 11th, 2nd vet; Dalian, China, 1987, 12th, 2:35:48, 1st Vet.

*First, Lochaber, 1986, 2:26:36;

*First BVAF Flying Fox Marathon, 1989, 1:29:32.

First Loch Rannoch, 1991, 2:21:37.

* A total of ten first vet awards and seven second vets awards.

Not known as a track runner, Allan nevertheless clocked up the following best times over standard distances:

Vets 10K Track Championships – 1st in 1986, 1990 and 1993;

10K pb on the track of 31:53, DAAA 1986.

On the road, his bests were 10K: Helensburgh, 1991, 31:33;   10 Miles – Tom Scott, 1986, 49:12;     Half Marathon – British Rankings (Vets) M45, 1991, 3rd; 10K, GB Rankings M50, 1991 1st;   Vets Hill Race, Bathgate – 33:30 (course record); Half-Marathon pb, Kirkcudbright, 1991, 1st, 1:08.36.

In solely vets competitions, Allan won five Scottish International vests and was third M45 at Sunderland in 1989.   He has run in twelve Scottish Vets Cross-Country Championships winning six gold, two silver and team gold at Hawick in 1995.

Among his medal haul were the following:   National Veterans Cross-Country Championships:   M40:   silver medals behind Dick Hodelet in 1985 and Brian Scobie in 1986;   M45:   gold medals in 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1992, silver behind Colin Youngson in 1993;   M50:   gold medals in 1994 and 1995.

It is a quite remarkable career and one of which he can be very proud.   He says that if it were not for Colin Martin pushing him hard for all those years, they would not have got the results they did as vets.   They trained hard and git the best out of each other.   He is quite sceptical when asked whether the same philosophy is true of the current generation of road runners.   (If you want to read about Allan’s son, also Allan- and his career at Clydesdale Harriers go here

*

There were many good runners in Dumbarton during the 1960’s and 70’s – and one of the regulars was Willie Cairns.   Younger than the others, he was never a 100 mpw runner but he had a lot of ability.    Willie ran in nine Edinburgh to Glasgow Relays, mainly on difficult stages – he ran on Stage One once, On Stage Two four times, Stage Four three times and on Stage Six once – between 1968 and 1978, and it would probably have been more because his club missed some years as participants.    He first ran in the National Cross-Country in 1968 as a Youth.   One year later he was at Dundee University and ran for them in the event in 1969 and 1971, and then competed in it for Dumbarton AAC from 1972 until  he retired from the sport.   Willie was a good track competitor as well and turned out for his club in the summer track leagues being ranked in the 3000m steeplechase every year from 1971 to 1977 with a best of 9:30.6, he was also ranked in the 10 Miles where he ran 53:02.4 in 1972 and the marathon with a best of 2:38.53 in 1982.   There were others such as Alistair Lawson Ian McWatt, Harry Martin and Mike Lidwell who turned out regularly for Dumbarton AAC as distance runners.

When Jack Baird joined Dumbarton from Shettleston, the club then had four sub-2:00 880 yard runners.   The most unusual of these was Bobby Mills.   Unusual because Bobby was a national medal winning track and field athlete of some note with several top decathlon points totals to his credit.    Bobby was ranked every year from 1959 to 1968 in a total of four events (120 yards Hurdles, 440 yards hurdles, Long Jump and Triple Jump as well as in the Decathlon.)    His best performance in the sprint hurdles was 15.8 seconds, in the one lap hurdles 54.5, in the Long Jump 6.88m, in the Triple Jump 13.08m and in the Decathlon he scored 4784.    In the SAAA Championships he was second in the 440H in 1960 and 1965 and third in 1966 with a bronze also won in the decathlon in 1074.    That would be enough for most men but Bobby went more than the extra mile – he went lots of extra miles in the various cross-country relays and championships and in the Edinburgh to Glasgow.   Bobby ran in 1966 (Stage Four), 19687 (One), 1968 (Six), 1969 (One), 1970 (Three) and 1971 (Eight).        He also ran in County, District and National Cross Country Championships and was a big points scorer in track league matches.    Incidentally the Track League at that time was not done using the format as at present.   There were eight clubs in any Division and the clubs arranged their own fixture as triangular fixture.   eg Clydesdale, Dundee Hawkhill and Garscube met, the CH athletes were scored against the DHH men and the Garscube men separately, Garscube were scored against DHH and CH and DHH were scored against the other two.   Points were allocated for each  head-to-head.   Made for a more exciting league, I think!   But back to DAAC.   The two most easily recognisable men  were Bobby and Jack Brown.   Jack was basically an 880 runner with a best of 1:56 who did other events.   He ran in everything that his club was involved in and was a real inspiration to generations of young Dumbarton runners.   Tall, dark, deep chested he was the very model of a middle distance athlete.    He was club captain from 1961 to 1969, cross-country champion from 1960 to 1963 inclusive, hill race champion 1962, 1964 and 1967, track champion 1952 to 1956 inclusive, 1960 – 1963 inclusive (1962 shared with Bobby Mills).   Jack was the club man par excellence.   After his racing days were over he officiated and many meetings and was easily recognisable at Highland Games with his height, carriage and kilt.    Of course the best known DAAC 880 yards and  800m  man was Scottish and British internationalist Graeme Grant who had personal best times of 1:48.2 and 49.8 for 440 yards in 1966.   Grant (born in Helensburgh on 24th May, 1946)  had won the Scottish Schools Mile in 1964 in 4:21.0.   His best season was 1966: in addition to winning the SAAA title in 1:50.3, he ran 1:48.2 at the White City on 28th May in an invitation 800m, and at the AAA Championships he ran 1:50.0 for 880 yards when finishing fifth behind Irishman Noel Carroll.   It was also the year when he was part of the world record setting team for the 4 x 880 yards at Crystal Palace where his opening leg was 1:49.1.   A superb track runner he also set a Scottish record for 1000 yards and had a second place in the AAA’s indoor 880y.   Nevertheless he ran for his club in many domestic races such as the County Relays over the difficult and hilly Clydebank course.   He ran the seventh stage of the Edinburgh to Glasgow in 1966, pulling up from seventeenth to thirteenth, in 1967 he had a bit of a disaster on the first leg when he was nineteenth of the twenty teams invited.   Undeterred he was out for the team again in 1969, back on the seventh stage where he held on to tenth place.   In 1970 he was thirteenth on the first stage in what was to be his last run in the event.   The National Cross-Country Championship fell in February, just when the indoor season was in full swing and even when he wasn’t racing indoors, it was essential that a top flight 800m runner should be concentrating on getting organised for the summer season.

Dumbarton was a very good club with many good runners and a club spirit that encouraged men like Bobby Mills and Graeme Grant to turn out for them in all events.

Back to The Fast Pack     Glasgow to Ft William Relay     Eddie Crozier

Ian Donald and Ian Leggett finishing in the Nigel Barge Road Race

There have been many clubs which have done well consistently well over the post-war period without winning a national event on the road or country.   Clydesdale Harriers is one of those and there are others such as Springburn Harriers which come into this category.  It is maybe appropriate that we look at these two clubs at particular periods in comparatively recent history.  In the period with which I am dealing here, the standard nationwide was probably higher than at any other time – with Olympians running for Shettleston, Edinburgh Southern and Law and District, Commonwealth Games men racing in the colours of several other clubs plus international runners from other home countries (Dave Logue, Ian Hamer) it was not at all easy to succeed at the very top level.   For instance in the early 1970’s Clydesdale Harriers was in the first six in three consecutive years and I would suggest that what separates clubs in that grouping from the very best is the absence of one or even two international class athletes, and that the standard at various periods is otherwise of the highest.    In the period in question the team won the District Championships  three times and won medals eight times.

* Gold in 1972/73,  1979/80  and  1980/81

* Silver in 1971/72

*Bronze in 1970/71,  1973/74,  1976/77,  1978/79

There were also other very good results – second in the District Relay for example – which will become apparent as we go through the mini-profiles.    The main men are well known: Ian Donald, Allan Faulds, Phil Dolan, Ian Leggett, Doug Gemmell and they will all be dealt with here.

Ian Donald had been a member of Shettleston Harriers who moved to live in Old Kilpatrick in the early 1960’s and after training with the club for almost a year, decided to become a member.    He was always ‘his own man’ and although he had won many gold medals in District and National Cross-Country championships as well as in the Edinburgh to Glasgow, and although he was the reigning Shettleston club cross-country champion (having won it in each of the two previous years), once he had decided that was it.   he did a lot for the morale  of the club, telling the young members like Bobby Shields, for instance, that they were as good as his former team mates.    He also taught the older members a lot by the way in which he looked at a race beforehand and analysed it afterwards.   He was undoubtedly a quality athlete.    On the track he had bests of 30:26.0 for Six Miles and 52:04 for 10 Miles.    He won medals in District and National Championships on the track and competed in the old Inter-District match for the West of Scotland.   Good as he was on the variable quality of cinder and grass track around the country, his real metier was either hill running or cross-country.    With Shettleston he had won

• Two Team Golds in the Edinburgh to Glasgow Relay (1960 and 1961)
• Four Team Golds in the National Cross-Country (1959 (15th), ’60 (18th), 1961 (24th) and 1962 (22nd)
• Three Gold (1959, ’61, ’63), Two silver (’62 and ’64) and one bronze (’60) in the District Championship
• Ran in four London to Brighton Relays (1959, ’60, ’61 and ’62)
• The club cross-country championship in 1962/63 and 1963/64

After he joined the club he ran in every cross country race that he could and in all club championships.   In fact his very first race was the day after he got clearance from the SAAA.   This was the Dunbartonshire Championships at Dumbarton where Ian (second behind Lachie Stewart) with Johnny B Maclachlan, Ian Leggett and Bobby Shields was a member of the winning team.   He went on to win the club championship, the Hannah Cup for the fastest time in the handicap race and the Dan MacDonald Cup for the highest points total in Championship races over the winter. The impact was immediate and massive.   In the summer of 1965 he was second in the County Three Miles Championships, second in the West District Six Miles Championships and ended the summer with fourth place in the Ben Nevis Race – young Bobby Shields was seven places back.   In between he raced on the roads and on the track as well as over the hills.   Like most of the top men Ian was never a big time runner who did his own thing and raced when he felt like it.   Every winter he raced in everything from the McAndrew Relays at the start of October right through to the National Championships and beyond.    In cross country races, a lot was learned just going over the trail with him before a cross country race. He was the best ‘reader’ of a trail that I ever met.    At the start of 1966 he won the race at Stewarton then was eleventh in the National Cross Country Championships – the highest by a Clydesdale since 1955.   At the AGM in 1967 Jim Shields “congratulated the club on a fairly successful season emphasising the leadership of Ian Donald”. (Extract from the club Minute Book)  

Ian was a quality athlete who continued to run well and win many individual races, particularly on the hills, he led the Clydesdale team to significant victories in County and District Championships and in many road and hill races.   His record in the National continued at the Shettleston level with 20th (1965), 11th (1966), 29th (1967) and 30th (1969),    The effect on the club team was considerable with steady progress being due as much to his example and encouragement during training as it was in actual races.   He was to run in 10 National Championships for the club missing only 1972.    In the other big measure of a man’s ability and spirit, the Edinburgh to Glasgow he ran in 12 not missing a single run in his time with the club.   He covered Stages One, Two, Four, Six, and Eight.   He picked up places in the event every year until the mid 70’s but he also helped others – eg in 1968 he moved up from 16th to 14th on Stage Four and handed me the baton.   I looked down the road and there were four eminently catchable runners strung out along the road in front like beads on a necklace – he had made up a lot of ground when he could barely see the next runner and made it easy for me to look good catching three of them.   He did the same trick the following year with Sandy MacNeil, not only did he pick up places but he set up Sandy to move, as I had done, from 14th to 11th.   By the time Allan Faulds joined the club in 1970 we had two very good men to head up the team and the spirit that Ian had cultivated really paid off over the next three years.    He was also of course still racing on the hills with a second place in the Ben but victories all over Scotland from Arran to Newtonmore.

Ian died of leukaemia in his early 40’s when he should have been looking forward to a career as a veteran athlete.   We had known he was ill for some time but to start with we all thought it was less serious than it was, when we heard it was leukaemia we were all shocked.   But he kept running right up to the year before his death.   A man of many interests he was a very good mountain climber; he had a passion for gardening and had won the Wilson Medal from the Alpine Gardening Club and still trained seven days a week.

Doug Gemmell after the Jack Crawford Race

Douglas Gemmell had been a pupil at Clydebank High School whose father had been a member of Springburn before the War and who was a natural athlete.   Very quiet and unassuming, Douglas had a hard racing edge and a competitive calm that led to many first rate performances.   Good on the track, very good over the country and, for me, even better on the roads.     On the track he had personal best times of 8:39.0 for 3000m, 14:53.4 for 5000m, 30:53.0 for 10000m, 53:11.0 for 10 Miles track and 2:29.02 for the marathon.   He only ever ran one marathon – unfortunately because he would probably have been very good.   Nevertheless with medals at County and District levels he can be proud of his record.

His record in the Edinburgh to Glasgow is excellent.   Douglas ran in seventeen of them, sixteen in succession with the first being in 1965, and he ran on Stages One, Two Three, Four, Five and Six with the second leg being the one he ran in most – eleven years in succession!   His record on the stage is that he was often in the top seven or eight times (remember these were the days of great Edinburgh teams as well as the Shettleston team from Glasgow) and only lost three places over the period while picking up a total of  15.   The record in this relay is illustrated in the table below.

 On the country, he was consistently good, regularly in the top 50 and with many medals from District and County Championships and Relays.   In the District Championships it had long been an ambition of the club to win the Maley Trophy for the winning team – this was clearly stated before the 1914 War in the club handbook at a time when the club was winning almost everything it could in the country.   The ambition was achieved in 1973 and it was Douglas who led the team home with an excellent run finishing in fourth place.  Although he was actually fourth, he was awarded the third place medal since David McMeekin of Victoria Park who had been third was awarded the first Junior (Under 20) medal.   The pleasure for the club was increased because the huge trophy presented to the winning team had been donated by Willie Maley who won the Scottish 100 yards championship in 1906 in Clydesdale colours.   This was not of course his first run in the event – that had been some time earlier.   That was in 1966/67 in fact when the team was sixth and he was thirty ninth individual, second club counter behind Ian Donald who was in tenth place.   He did not contest the event the following year but then a year later was third counter behind Ian Leggett (fourth) and Ian Donald (twelfth) when he finished twentieth and gain his first medal in the event when the team was third.   Missing the 1969/70 event, he led the team into third place in 1970/71 when he was twenty sixth.   In 1971/72 the team was second and then in 1972/73 came the moment that the club had waited almost seventy years for.   The team was second again in ‘74/’75 but no awards were won for three years until 1979 when the team was second without his participation.   The race was won again in 1980 over the rolling countryside of the Park and Golf Course at Dalmuir in Clydebank and the team was Phil Dolan tenth, George Carlin fourteenth, Gary Millar fifteenth, Douglas McDonald seventeenth, Robert McWatt twenty ninth and John MacKay thirty seventh.    Gold, silver and bronze in the District Championships were his as was the honour of being the man to lead the club to its first ever team win in the event is a proud record.

In the County Relays and Championships his record is even better.   In 1967/68 he was a member of the team that was second in the championships and the following year went one better with second team in the relays and winners in the championships.   In 69/70 it was first team in the relays and in the championships and this pattern was repeated the following year.   In 70/71 it was first in the relays and second in the championships and in 1971/72 there were two firsts.   Douglas was a fixture in all these teams and had bronze, four silver and five gold medals from the ten events.   Ian Leggett was also an ever present and Ian Donald only missed one race with Bobby Shields, Allan Faulds, Cyril O’Boyle and Pat Younger all sharing in the successes.   The run of successes for this extended period was unparalleled in the club’s history with the top four changing from time to time – initially it was Ian Donald, Ian Leggett and Douglas with Bobby Shields and Sandy MacNeil making up the team.   Then for the three years of Allan Faulds’ membership it was a settled quartet of Douglas, Phil Dolan, Allan Faulds and Ian Donald then when Allan left the district and Ian’s illness seriously affected his running Robert McWatt, George Carlin and Gary Millar came into the team but the one man who was in all the teams in all the races below was Douglas.   In 1976 he won the title over a frozen and rutted course at Braidfield Farm in Clydebank.   The team record in the ‘Gemmell Years’ was as follows – 16 gold medals, 5 silver medals and 1 bronze summarised in the table below.

Unfortunately he had a series of injuries and with business taking up more of his time he retired for a time although keeping fit all the while.   He made a comeback to veterans athletics in the mid 1990’s.   In the County Championships in a snowstorm in 1995 he was fourth individual. a member of the winning team and first veteran.   The comeback continued with ninth in the vets cross-country and first M45 which led into track races over 5000m and 10000m.   Veteran prizes were regularly won (eg the Greenmantle Dash) and in 1997 he was ninth in the Nigel Barge Road Race.   In February he won the Scottish Vets M50 3000m in 9:32.8 and in the BVAF he won the British title with 9:27.   In the BVAF Cross-Country championship he was second after a terrific tussle with Brian O’Neill.   May, une and July saw almost incessant racing including the Tom Scott (54:17 – first M50),    First M50 in the Vets 10M at Greenock in 56:33.    In the Vets McInnes Road Race he was second and first M50.   In the three Polaroid 10K’s that year he was first M50 in every one.   In the Walter Ross race he was third and first M50.   In the Scottish Vets 1500m and 5000m he won both in 4:36 and 17:01.   he was first M50 in the Andy Forbes road race and in the 10000m track races over the summer he was remarkably consistent with two at 33:42 and one at 33:45.  He had another excellent summer in 1998 when he topped the UK rankings for the 5000m.   In November he was ninth in the vets international in Ballymena and was first veteran in the EU Braud Hills 6 Miles road race.   He was first M50 in both Nigel Barge and Jack Crawford.   Alas, he was again plagued by injury and really had to retire this time.

Colin Yongson add; “Training daily on the tough Braid Hills of Edinburgh gave him two good years as a very good veteran.   At age 49 in 1966, he won bronze in the Scottish Vets M45 Cross-Country.   Then after turning 50 that November, at Beach Park, Irvine, in the annual British and Irish Veterans International Cross-Country, he won a tremendous M 50 silver medal only six seconds behind the Welsh superstar Alun Roper.    Then in early 1997, he he won the Scottish Vets M50 gold.   At Ballymena that November, in the British and Irish Veterans Cross-Country, he ended up ninth M50 after a below-par run  but the Scottish men won M50 silver.   Then he retired again!   I always liked Dougie – an intelligent interesting guy, who ran hard and but was always friendly and positive.”

Douglas was undoubtedly an top flight athlete who was just a bit unlucky with injuries but he would have graced any club at any time.

Ian Leggett took up the sport in 1963 after becoming slightly disillusioned with football – at which he was a good player.   From then until he emigrated to Australia in 1966, he ran at a good club level winning medals in County events and running well on the track and roads.   In 1966 Ian emigrated to Whyalla, near Adelaide, in Australia.         He still pursued his athletic activities with Whyalla Harriers as well as playing some more football with Croatia and City football teams.   Athletics were mainly track meets with the road racing being concentrated in the cities.   At the start of 1966  he decided to concentrate on athletics and ran in the Commonwealth Marathon Trial.   Unplaced he turned back to football  but kept on running and also kept in touch with the club back home.   When he returned to Scotland, he had been transformed as a runner.   He enjoyed the cooler atmosphere and the road racing circuit that had been missing in Australia.   He quickly became one of the quality group of runners in the club at the time – Phil Dolan, Allan Faulds, Doug Gemmell and Ian Donald.   He even tackled hill races at this point including the Mamore and the Ben.   His best years were almost certainly from 1969 to 1973 with medals at County and District and Championship levels.   The 1969 campaign  can be summed up in the following table.

 It was a good period for the club and it was, as it always is, a disappointment when the squad finally separated – Doug Gemmell went to Edinburgh and Ian Leggett to Livingston for business reasons, Ian Donald died from leukaemia and Allan Faulds’s work also led him away from Clydebank.   Allan and Phil Dolan are the subject of profiles elsewhere on this site.

When people talk or think of Clyde Valley AAC, they tend to think of Jim Brown (pictures above in the Six Stage Relay in 1986), Ron McDonald, John Graham, Bert McKay and the other big names that ran for them – but the club would not have been as successful as a team without the solid backing from good club runners like Eddie Devlin, David and Steven Marshall (not related), Joe Small and several others.    In an attempt to put this right we have the following brief history of the club written by Joe Small.   Joe also wrote the piece on Monkland Harriers which should maybe be read in conjunction with this one.

1974 saw the formation of a brand new club, known as Clyde Valley AAC, being an amalgamation of five Lanarkshire clubs – Airdrie Harriers, Bellshill YMCA, Monkland Harriers, Motherwell YMCA and the L&L Track Club from Lesmahagow.   The main advantage for Monkland Harriers was the addition of the Motherwell and Bellshill middle and long distance runners to the names mentioned previously.   MacDonald, Brown, Gilmour, etc, now being joined by the likes of John Graham, Bert McKay, Roy Baillie  and Ian Moncur.

The first winter season saw a fourth place finish in the traditional opener, the McAndrew relay.   A first victory in the Midland cross-country relay with MacDonald, Graham, Willie Devlin and Roy Baillie promised much.   A national trophy soon followed with victory in the 2 x 2.5 mile cross-country relay at Bellahouston Park, Glasgow.   Graham, Brown, and MacDonald along with Roy Baillie winning comfortably from Edinburgh AC.   Baillie was better known as an 800m runner coached by Tommy Boyle with nests of 50.0 sec for 400m, 1:51.1 for 800m and 3:56.2 for 1500m.   His best championship finish was second in the SAAA 800m in 1974.   His frequent appearances over road and country usually resulted in excellent performances and who knows what he would have been capable of had he focused more on this side of the sport?

In the club’s inaugural appearance in the Edinburgh to Glasgow eight man relay, the team finished third with John Graham having his first outing in the event.   Again Roy Baillie produced an excellent run with the second fastest time on the short third stage, gaining three places in the process.   Other team members were Brown, MacDonald, Graham, Gilmour, Eddie and Willie Devlin and myself.   The National Cross-Country Championship, held on the club’s local course in Coatbridge resulted in a sixth place finish in the team race, Gilmour and MacDonald backed up by Roy Baillie in forty second, Eddie Devlin fifty eighth, Tommy Callaghan one hundred and seventh and Willie Marshall in one hundred and twenty first completing the team.   More on Willie later.

In 1975-’76, after finishing outside the prizes in the McAndrew season opener, where Jim Brown recorded the day’s fastest time, a second place in the District relay with myself and Eddie Devlin in the team along with John Graham and Ronnie MacDonald followed.   The club could only manage fourth in the National Relay despite fielding MacDonald, Baillie, Graham and Eddie Devlin, before again taking third place in the Edinburgh to Glasgow Relay, the only change from the previous year being Bert McKay replacing Willie Devlin.   For more information on Bert please refer to the profile elsewhere on the website.   For reasons unknown, none of the big names appeared in the National, only Roy Baillie (fifty second) and myself (sixty first) finishing in the first 100.

The 1976-’77 season was not the club’s best: fifth in the National Relay with Eddie Devlin, John Graham, Ian Moncur and myself, followed by fifth in the Edinburgh to Glasgow.   New names in the team that year were Neil Agnew, Moncur and Greg Paterson.   Neil and Greg had both come through the ranks with Monkland Harriers’ from junior boy level and were now competing with the seniors.   Neil was a dependable guy, with a good turn of pace, well used in 800m events.   Great things were expected of Greg in his first season as a junior, having finished fourth in the SCCU Youth championship the year before.   However a string of leg injuries in the following years prevented him from fulfilling his true potential.   Ian Moncur was a great friend of Jim Brown, having been a team mate all the way through school at Bellshill Academy, Bellshill YMCA and now Clyde Valley.   He did not appear to compete as regularly as most of us, possibly as he seemed to take up teaching posts in far away parts of the country, arriving at races from places as diverse as Tobermory on Mull and Forres in the North.   he eventually ended up running for Dundee Hawkhill Harriers with a marathon best of 2:22:09 – a more than useful runner!

Seventh in the team race at the West District championship seemed a disappointing result as Brown and Graham had finished first and second respectively.   Small (27th), Bert McKay (65th), Tommy Callaghan (84th) and Willie Marshall (106th) completed the team.   For the second year in a row, there was no real presence in the National cross-country, with again  only two in the top hundred, Ian Gilmour in thirteenth and myself in fifty fourth.   I can only put this down to injuries, illness, etc, as there would not appear to be any other reason for people not turning out in this event

Brian McSloy finishing in the National

In 1977-’78, the first headline of the winter season was “Shock Defeat For Shettleston” as Clyde Valley took victory in the Lanarkshire Road Relay at Motherwell with Brown and Graham performing well.   The Allan Scally Relay was to follow, and another win recorded.   Brown and Graham were joined by Eddie Devlin and Brian McSloy.   McSloy in his first year taking on the senior athletes and was perhaps one of the most under-estimated road and cross-country competitors of the time.   His next outing for the club saw a first placing in the National Cross-Country Relay, joining Devlin, Brown and Ian Gilmour in the victorious squad.   In spite of this record in the early season relays, injury took its toll for the E-G where with no Gilmour or MacDonald, the club dropped two places on the previous year, finishing seventh with McSloy producing a good run on the opening leg to finish fifth, only eleven seconds behind stage winner, Frank Clement.   Another debutant n the race was Colin Farquharson, a product of the Motherwell section, from being an average competitor, hard training with the likes of John Graham and Jim Brown saw Colin improve immensely.   Once again, the National failed to produce a finishing team, despite all three who did start finishing in the top ten: Brown fourth, Gilmour sixth and Graham ninth.

The season 1978-’79 was again a mixed bag as far as results were concerned but further new names appeared in the senior ranks.   A fifth place finish in the opener at the McAndrew Relay with Jim Brown running the fastest time of the day promised much.   The next week, second in the Lanarkshire Road Relays with Brown again fastest and McSloy performing well on the second stage continued the good start.   The West District Cross-Country Relay saw the appearance of young Fraser Stuart for the first time, leading off for the team which finished third, the other three runners being Brown, McSloy and Neil Agnew.   For some inexplicable reason, the club failed to finish a team in the National Relay, they do not appear even to have started a team!    Even more mysterious considering the club won the Young Athletes relay, with a couple of names later to become much better known, Tom McKean and Peter Fox.   Next up was the E-G where a very unbalanced team, old and young, finished ninth: the usual starters Brown and Devlin, were augmented by juniors McSloy, Stuart and Paterson, ‘elder’ members Willie Marshall and Tom Callaghan together with myself completed the line-up.

The West District cross-country saw an excellent victory for Brian McSloy, finishing ahead of Graham Clark, Fraser Clyne and John Graham to name a few.   Finally the club finished a senior team in the national cross-country championship over a frozen course at Livingston, Jim Brown, Brian Gardner, myself, Neil Agnew, Willie Marshall and Tommy Callaghan ended up in seventh place.   Brian Gardner was one of the few runners to come through from the Airdrie section of the club.   Having comoeted well at youth and junior levels, he moved south of the border.   This was his first appearance in the senior race and a fourteenth place finish was a massive improvement on previous performances.   For reasons unknown, travel, distance (?), Brian never featured in the main relays to the detriment of the team, based on his national run.   He is possibly the only Clyde Valley man still competing.   In the 55+ age group now, he has produced outstanding results through all the various stages, including victories at National and European level.    The last event of the season saw the inaugural running of the National Six-Stage road relay at Strathclyde Park and a very strong team – Brown, McSloy, Gilmour, MacDonald and myself, finished in second place losing a large lead to an inspired Allister Hutton on the last leg.

Joe Small, Ian Moncur and Neil Agnew at Cowal

In 1979 the traditional start to the season, the McAndrew Relay, saw a second place finish, almost a minute behind a good Shettleston Harriers team.   Next up, the Lanarkshire AAA Road Relay: the team of Neil Agnew, Brian McSloy, David Marshall and Colin Farquharson crossed the line in first place, well ahead of Cambuslang with Brian McSloy running the fastest lap of the day.   This was a notable performance as there were none of the big guns in the team.   The appearance of David Marshall continued a family tradition, with father Willie still competing regularly at a good level.   The West District relay saw no team finishing.   At the subsequent National Cross-Country Relay, the club won for the third time in six years with Jim Brown and Brian McSloy running the two fastest laps.   Aided by Eddie Devlin and Colin Farquharson they had 15 seconds to spare over local club Aberdeen AAC.   Brown was quoted as pointing out the “splendid support they received form the two unsung members of the team, Devlin and Farquharson.”   The E-G saw the club’s first succes in this major event .   Old stagers by now, Brown, Devlin and Graham had Brian McSloy, Neil Agnew, Colin Farquharson David Marshall, and a first appearance for a new name in the ranks, Peter Fox.   Peter was an excellent distance runner, having come through all the age groups from junior boy upwards.   He possibly never fully realised his potential in the senior ranks, due mainly to the rigours of medical studies followed by work as a doctor. whoch probably curtailed his training over the years.   With Graham, McSloy and Brown all running fastest stages the team ended up almost two minutes ahead of Edinburgh AC with Edinburgh Southern in third – a great day for the club.

At the West District cross-country, Brian McSloy retained his title from the previous year.   The club were third in the team race , to quote Ron Marshall in the ‘Glasgow Herald’, “a totally unrecognisable Clyde Valley.”   The unrecognisable runners were Peter Fox, David Marshall, Joe Small, John Lamara and Tommy Callaghan!   For the first time in a number of years, there was a strong turn out in the National cross-country resulting in the club finishing second in the team race picking up medals for the first time in the senior age group.   Packing well, McSloy 7th, Brown 8th, Graham 9th and MacDonald 11th with Ian Moncur forty second and Joe Small forty fifth saw the team come within 19 points of Edinburgh Southern.   The club had a hat-trick of seconds that day as the junior and youth teams also won silver in their respective events.   The end-of-season Six Stage Relay was once again run round the Strathclyde Park circuit.   In a repeat of the previous year, the team lost a large lead on the last stage, again to Allister Hutton, almost a case of déjà-vu!   Joe Small, Peter Fox, Colin Farquharson, John Graham, Jim Brown and Brian McSloy were the club’s representatives on the day.

This was arguably Clyde Valley’s best year ever, with wins in the LAAA Road Relay, National Cross-Country Relay and E-G, seconds in the National Cross-Coyntry and Six Stage Relay as well as third in the West District cross-country.

A terrific win in the 1980 McAndrew Relay started off the 1980’81 winter in good fashion; Colin Farquharson improving with every race finished an excellent second on the opening leg, Graham, MacDonald and Brown stretched out a lead of 25 seconds over ESH by the finish.   The next week saw Eddie Devlin replace John Graham at the Lanarkshire event, the result was the same though, victory comfortably ahead of Cambuslang.   The West District Relay proved disastrous, fielding only three runners the, so far, most successful team of the season failed to finish a team.     Then the next weekend saw almost a return to top form as the club set out to defend the National Cross-Coyntry Relay title in Inverness, coming very close to succeeding.   Devlin, Brown, Farquharson and MacDonald failing by four seconds to hold off Cambuslang Harriers.

However, come the E-G, the club did manage to retain a title.   Small, MacDonald, Agnew, Gilmour, Brown, Graham, Devlin and Peter Fox finished over a minute ahead of their rivals, Cambuslang.   The winning time of 3 hours 57 minutes 19 seconds being the slowest for a number of years.   This was the result of a very strong headwind for the whole distance and not a comment on the strength of the squad!   The club finished third in the National Cross-Country championship team race, Brown, Gilmour and McSloy in the top ten, Farquharson, Small, together with Andy Brown, now 48 years of age and having won the event in 1958, picking up a bronze medal    Having finished second in the two previous years, only a fifth place was achieved at the Six Stage Relay, Agnew, Small, Devlin, Farquharson, Fox and Brown failing to repeat earlier performances.

Greg Patterson finishing the National

For 1981-’82, I don’t have any details of the McAndrew relay or the West District relay but the Lanarkshire Relay was again won comfortably in October with Cambuslang 200 yards behind in second.   The club’s most successful event over the years had been the National Cross-Country Relay, but this year saw a drop off as Devlin, MacDonald, Agnew and Fox could only finish in fifth place behind the winnes, Edinburgh Southern.   However a return to form saw a second place finish in the E-G, Ian Moncur leading off the usual names: Gilmour, Brown, unusually running the short third leg, MacDonald, McSloy, Graham, Devlin and Fox.   As a comparison, the time in second was over seven minutes faster than the previous year’s winning time.   Having checked out the West District winning time, Jim Brown finished second but there is no record of the team place.   However adding up the places of the six runners, the club should have picked up the bronze medals, bit of a mystery that one?   The National Cross Country at Irvine saw an improvement of one place on 1981, second team, again behind  Edinburgh Southern .    Ronnie MacDonald had an excellent run in fourth, with Jim Brown sixth, Brian Gardner with one of his infrequent runs north of the border thirty second, {Peter Fox thirty fourth, Andy Brown, now forty nine years old improving thirty eight places on last year’s run in fifty second, and Joe Small sixty seventh.   Excellent footage of this race can be seen in the video clips section of this website.

1982-’83 started with third in the McAndrew Relay with peter Fox running the third fastest time of the day and this was a good start to the season’s racing.   No details are available for the Lanarkshire race and the club did not feature in either the West District or the National relay, a sad state of affairs given the past years success in this particular race.

The decline continued with the club’s worst ever performance in the Edinburgh to Glasgow – twelfth place, a full ten places below the 1981 runners-up result, injuries taking their toll.   With no Graham, Gilmour, MacDonald or McSloy, there wasn’t sufficient strength in depth to sustain a challenge in an eight man relay.   Mainstays Brown, Devlin, Agnew, Moncur, Fox were joined by Bernie Kane, David and Willie Marshall – Willie being well into veteran status by this time.   This must be one of the few occasions when a father and son have competed in this race.   The run of poor results continued, at the District cross-country the club’s first finisher being Jimmy Geddes in 168th place!   The story continued at the National, Brian Gardner in sixty eighth being the first to cross the line with only Ian Moncur (79th) the only other finisher in the top 100.   Worse was to follow – the Six-Stage relay saw the club fail to even start a team.    The lowest point in Clyde Valley’s short history?

Brian Gardner running for Scottish Vets.

By 1983-’84 the writing appeared to be on the wall for the club, the star names were in their late 20’s and early 30’s with the younger element not reaching the same high quality, however we weren’t dead yet!   The Edinburgh to Glasgow in 1983 produced an excellent third place.   The return of Ronni MacDonald, John Graham and Brian McSloy together with Brown, Devlin, Fox, Small and a first appearance from Steven Marshall produced something akin to earlier results.   Steven Marshall on the fifth leg was second fastest only four seconds slower than Evan Cameron and as a first year junior he showed great promise.   However the revival appeared to be short lived.   Come the National, Brian McSlow in forty seventh was the first Clyde Valley man to cross the line.   There was no team in the Six Stage Relay.   Thus ended another poor year!

1984-’85 turned out to be Clyde Valley’s last year of existence.   Internal divisions, which were never properly addressed over the lifetime of the club, saw the break-up of the five sections and a return of the individual clubs which had amalgamated ten years previously.   A final appearance in the E-G saw a worst finishing place of fourteenth, never recovering from Peter Fox’s twenty first position on the opening stage.   This, in spite of Brown, Graham, Devlin, Small, David and Stevie Marshall all running.   A ninth place team finish in the National was the last result for that race, for the record the six counters were Peter Fox, David Marshall, Joe Small, Bernie Kane, Eddie Devlin and Steven Reid.   Stevie Marshall was runner-up in the junior race running in the colours of Dundee University.   Fifteenth in the Six Stage Relay was the final winter outing again the team being David Marshall, Stevie Marshall, Neil Agnew, Eddie Devlin, Kevin Newberry and Joe Small.

Peter Fox: Six Stage: 1986

To summarise the Clyde Valley story, the club had four top class athletes in Jim Brown, Ronnie MacDonald, John Graham and Ian Gilmour.   Together with the likes of Brian McSloy, Peter Fox, Brian Gardner at the next level, followed by good class club runners mentioned above, Eddie Devlin, Colin Farquharson, Ian Moncur, myself, David Marshall, Neil Agnew, etc, success was achieved at National and District events as well as the usual open races and relays.

One criticism that could be brought was the inability to field the absolute strongest possible team.   Due in part to injury, illness and runners having their own agendas and targets, the club never managed to win in my opinion the biggest prize – the National cross-country title – something which should have been within our grasp.   I’ve gone on long enough and would just finish by saying that this is by no means an in-depth history, purely a personal recollection of events based on memory and informantion available to me: the full story remains to be written!

Back to The Fast Pack

 Receiving the Trophy

In the post-war period of Scottish athletics when endurance running reached a very high standard indeed, the three teams from the West of Scotland that tended to dominate the championship team races were Shettleston, Victoria Park and Bellahouston Harriers.   For some reason the feats of the third of these don’t seem to be as well known as they should be.   Possibly because they did not have as many ‘stars’ as the others and their results were often as much because of solid team work throughout the teams.   They did have very good athletes, some of whom are mentioned below but if we just look at their performances in the top two winter team challenges – the Edinburgh to Glasgow and the National Championships in the late 40’s and 50’s – it is clear that they should take their place with the aforementioned club squads of the time.    In the Edinburgh to Glasgow they had one first, three seconds and four third places between 1949 and 1960, and in the National it was one first, five seconds in the same  time frame.   In four of the Edinburgh to Glasgow medal winning teams, they did not have a single fastest time and yet they finished very close up.    eg in April and November 1949, they were only 20 and 31 seconds behind the second team.   In his official history of the SCCU Colin Shields has this to say: “Bellahouston Harriers whose young team had finished second and third in the preceding years, collected their full set of medals when upsetting the post-war monopoly created by Victoria Park and Shettleston .   Their first victory since 1938 was not achieved easily as Victoria Park and Shettleston exchanged the lead over the first half of the race.   Once Dick Penman took the lead on the fifth stage and Joe Connolly kept Bellahouston’s lead after a struggle with Alastair Wood (Shettleston) and Ian Binnie (Victoria Park), good runs by Des Dickson and Ramsey Black brought Bellahouston home to victory in 3 hours 49 minutes 29 seconds fully 250 yards in front of Shettleston Harriers.   ……. The Bellahouston team showed amazing consistency over the next two years finishing within just six seconds of their winning time on each occasion but having to give best to a resurgent Shettleston team.”

Among the top guys, Joe Connolly was the one who stood out but he only came into the squad in the second half of the 1950’s Des Dickson who was slightly earlier and of course Alex McLean and Harry Fenion who were excellent athletes by anyone’s standards.   Jim Irving who was one of the younger athletes in the club at the time but who became of the top men has the following to say about the club.

“Bellahouston was quite a strong club in the early 1950’s but took a turn for the better when six or seven young boys joined up.   Joe Connolly, Dick Penman, Steve McLean, Crawford Kennedy, Ramsay Black and Jim Irvine were among them.   This pack of boys went on to win county, district and national titles over the country.   After doing National Service in the Army and RAF, they came out and won the Junior National at Hamilton (Joe Connolly 5th, Gordon Nelson 7th, Ramsey Black 10th and Jim Irvine 11th).   We lost one or two at this time – Crawford Kennedy who joined his brother Henry out in Canada – they both won lots of college titles in the USA.  

As the club established itself with the younger members backed up by some of the older ones like Harry Fenion and Bert Irving, Freddie Cowan and Bob Stoddart we went on to become contenders for the E-G, winning a few medals before winning it in 1958 (with Bill Goodwin, Bert Irving, Jim Irvine, Harry Fenion, Dick Penman, Joe Connolly, Des Dickson and Ramsey Black.)

Joe Connolly was the most consistent member of the team over all surfaces.   After finishing second to Harry in the National in 1957, he went on to win it in 1960.   He also represented Scotland in the Empire Games in Cardiff in 1958 in the three miles and six miles.   Joe had best times of – mile 4:19; Two Miles 9:11; Three Miles 13:53 and Six Miles 29:06 and all done on cinder tracks.  

Harry Fenion had a rare double in 1957: he won the National Cross-Country Championship at Hamilton and then won the SAAA Marathon championship in 2:25:44 which was a world class time in this era.   He was also selected for the Empire Games and had a long career stretching back to 1949 when he won the National Youths Cross-Country.  

Bert Irving came from Drummore, near Stranraer.   Bert only came up a few times each year – the E-G trial, the E-G itself, the national and the international!   He was a class act over the country, did most of his running on his own and his best place in the National was third in 1959. 

Des Dickson joined the club after giving up football.   The story with Des was that he could not make the E-G team but the following February was ninth in the National and picked for the Scottish cross-country team.   Des became a very good runner for the club for a number of years.    Gordon Nelson won the Scottish steeplechase title and should have become an outstanding runner and won a lot more.   His training was a bit erratic but what a talent he had.

Billy Goodwin was an outstanding talent as a Youth and Junior, winning Scottish titles over the country.   As a youth (Under 17) he was second in the British Cross-Country Championship.   Unfortunately his career was cut short with serious back trouble.   Ramsey Black and myself were part of most team titles, never being too far away.   Freddie Cowan, David Wright and Bob Stoddart also played their part in all this.

It was a great period for the club but like everything else, it ran its course.”

A great period indeed – we’ll come to the specifics later but between April 1949 and 1960 they won one gold, three silvers and four bronze medals in the E-G at a time when the standard was very high, in addition there were one gold and four silvers in the National Championships.   There were many more in the County and District championships too.   The team did well and we should maybe look at some of the individuals involved

.

Ramsey Black crossing the finishing line in 1958

Bill Goodwin, Dick Penman, Bert Irving, Jim Irvine and Des Dickson could be a good start.

Not as well known today as his younger brother Brian who was also a good athlete but is better known as an official who worked tirelessly for the sport in general but particularly for cross-country running, BILLY GOODWIN was a genuine talent.   He was absolutely outstanding as a Youth and Junior.   He only appears once in the track rankings – 1959 with 30:20.4 when finishing third in the SAAA 6 Miles Championship to be fifth in the ratings – but it should be remembered that he had to give up tragically early because of his back problems.   He first appeared in the Cross-Country Championships in 1955 when he won the Youths title from John Wright of Clydesdale Harriers who would go on to win the Junior title twice in succession.   He had been unbeaten for the whole of the 1954/55 season and winning the National completed the set of Renfrewshire, District and SCCU titles.   The following year when he won it from Jackie Hislop of Clydesdale Harriers.  Colin Shields says in ‘Whatever the Weather’, the official history of the SCCU, “Billie Goodwin, who started the season with a record-breaking win in the Clydesdale Harriers popular Youths road race, then reeled off victories in the Renfrewshire and Midland Championships.   He retained his national title with an effortless run and just failed to carry off the double in the English National Championships.   Running as an individual, the Bellahouston Youth was boxed in at the start of the race, losing a lot of ground.   he had to weave his way through the large field of runners eventually finishing second just 60 yards behind the winner.”    His name does not appear in the Championships again until 1959 when he won the Junior championship from John Linaker.   As far as the Edinburgh to Glasgow is concerned, His first run was in 1958 when he was third on the first stage and, as Jim points put above, Bellahouston won the team race.   He ran again in 1959, again on the first stage but this time he was seventh with the team being second, in 1960 and 1961 he took the last stage and the team was second in ’60 and fourth in ’61.   It is as a cross-country man that he will be best remembered however with his outstanding performance being his second place in the English National championship.

DICK PENMAN was one of the four young athletes that Jim spoke about above when he was a member of the E-G winning team in 1958.   He appeared in the Scottish Ranking Lists in three consecutive years – in 1959 he was eighth in the 6 Miles list with a time of 30:49.2; in 1961 he was in both the Two Miles (eighth with 9:17.0) and Six Miles (sixteenth with 31:04.0) and in 1965 ( twenty sixth in six miles with 31:12.8).   His first E-0G was in 1954 when he held on to fifth position on the seventh stage.  In 1957 he ran on the final stage for the team that was second; in 1958 he ran an outstanding fifth stage bringing the club from third to first;  in 1959 he had the fastest time on the same stage when bringing the club from fifth to third.   in 1961 he was given the most difficult stage – the sixth – and did well to keep the loss of places to two. in 1962 he ran the first stage in a weakened team and finished thirteenth.      In 1963 he ran the fifth stage again and moved from 15th to eleventh, in 1964 he went from tenth to eighth on the sixth stage and that was his last race in the relay.    He was a good runner, but it seems safe to say that he did not like cross-country very much – I can only find two appearances as a Senior in the National Championships: in 1957 he was twenty second and third counter in the team that finished second, and in 1959 he was fifty second in the team that finished third.    Dick took  part in Billy Butlin’s John o’Groats to Lands End challenge in 1960.   Billy Butlin was the founder of all the Butlin’s Holiday Camps and following Dr Barbara Moore’s walk over the same route living only on vegetables and fruit to prove the value of the vegetarian diet, Butlin saw the chance for some cheap publicity.   Putting up a big money prize, he encouraged ordinary people to enter and then get themselves to JoG and then take part in the race.   People were arriving in Glasgow with five shillings in their pocket to get them to JoG!   Dick entered the race, led by quite a way early on, then developed some injuries and eventually dropped out suffering from an ulcer in Crianlarich.   He had some small sponsorship from a ‘nutritional drinks’ company and his father drove the support car.   I’d like the full story – so if anyone has it, let me know.   He was certainly a quality athlete and given reasonable notice could have done really well in this event which was run in a snowy February.   Look up the Billy Butlin walk on the internet, lots of video clips.    Dick was one of Bellahouston’s top men in the 50’s.

If you look for BERT IRVING in the record books, you will not find many entries: that does not mean that he was not a runner of the highest calibre, especially over the country.   A large part of the problem was that he lived in one of the farthest corners of Galloway – down on the tip of the Drummore peninsula.   We are talking about a time when not too many people had cars and when public transport away from the major conurbations was not always plentiful.   To make the journey to Glasgow was a major undertaking.   So he trained away on his own in the beautiful Dumfriesshire countryside, only emerging for the main races of the season.    The story of him only doing three races (E-G, National and International in the same season was not far from the truth.   His record in the Edinburgh to Glasgow starts in 1957 when he was in the team that finished second; he ran on the fifth stage and turned in the second fastest time with only Alex Breckenridge of the winners, Victoria Park, being quicker.    He was part of the winning squad in 1958 when he ran the difficult second stage where he held the third place given to him by Billy Goodwin at the end of the first leg.   On the same stage in 1959 he moved the team from seventh to fourth and saw the club finish second.   Missing 1960 he was on the second stage in 1961 where he maintained the lead handed to him by Joe Connolly on the first stage.   He missed the next year but although he ran well into the 60’s his real work for the very good club outfit had been done by then.

On the country, he was even better.   He made his debut in 1957 and finished 23rd in the team that finished second behind Victoria Park.   In 1958 he was twentieth and in 1959 he achieved his best ever position in the event when he was third splitting John McLaren (two seconds ahead) and Graham Everett (four seconds back) to gain his first international vest and a trip to Lisbon where he finished sixtieth.   1960 saw him win his second international honour after he was fifth in the National and this time the venue was at home – the same Hamilton Course that had hosted the national.   This time he was forty first and a counting runner.   In 1961 he was eighteenth but 1962 saw him back to his best when he finished sixth – one place behind Alastair Wood and one in front of John McLaren – and gain selection for the international championship in Sheffield where he was fifty eighth.   That was his last international fixture.   His achievements were quite amazing when one considers that he did all his training on his own in a far away part of Scotland where the weather could be as wild as anywhere on the mainland and without the spur of training with a pack of like minded individuals.   It would have been interesting to see what he could have achieved training with a group and easy access to more races.

JIM IRVINE  was another of the excellent group of  runners who graced the team at this time.   Unlike most, Jim is still involved in the sport, in the club and has in fact donated a trophy for a club 10K road race.    Jim first appeared in the cross country national championship as a Youth (ie under 17) in 1952 when the Bellahouston Harriers team finished third but he himself was a non-scoring runner that year, nor was he the following year when the team won and he was forty fourth finisher.  In1954 though when the team was third Jim in forty second place was the fourth counting runner behind Gordon Nelson (7), S McLean (12) and R Stoddart (31)   Next year, as a Junior that Jimmy  was in the team that was second in the National with the scoring runners being Nelson (6), Kennedy (8), Irvine (18) and Mclean (12) – close packing!  In 1956 he was a member of winning Junior team in which Joe Connolly was fourth, Gordon Nelson seventh, Ramsay Black tenth and Jimmy eleventh.   Again very good packing, four men in six places and all in the top dozen.   He was a Senior in 1957 and a member of the Bellahouston squad that finished second and again in 1958 (when he was thirty eighth) and in 1959 when he was thirty third in a team that finished third. – six National medals in six years.   In the Edinburgh to Glasgow his record was also excellent.   In 1955, as a first year Junior, he ran on the seventh stage and held tenaciously on to fourth in a team the finished in fifth place.   He missed the race in 1956 but in 1957 he was again on the seventh stage where he held on to second place in the team that won silver.   1958 was of course the ‘glory year’ when the race was won.   Jim was on the third stage and moved the team up from third to second, helping on the way to the leaders spot.   He did not run in the next two years.   Jimmy was a good runner at a time of good runners and a member of one of the best distance running squads in the country at any time.   It is interesting to go beyond these profiles and see just how good the runners were.   Jim summarised some of his career highlights for us and some notable road races.   I have them in the table below.   But first the highlights:

Best National Cross Country position:   18th in 1961;   fourth in the Renfrewshire Cross-Country Championships 5 times;   Best track times (all on cinder tracks, remember):   Mile:   4:33;   Two Miles   9:33;   Three Miles   14:51;   Six Miles   31:07.

These were all seriously good races – competition was the thing and there are no easy ‘scalps’ in the names above – the 1959 Carluke race was particularly notable.   A road runner of ability Jim never did the big miles required for the marathon but nevertheless managed a creditable 2:36.   Jimmy was one of the few from that generation who went on to become good veteran runners and he was third twice in the Scottish Championships as an M40 before winning the M50 title in 1986.   His best track times as a vet were – 1500m   4:27; 5000m   15:56;   10000m   32:20 (when winning the Scottish Vets title);    and on the road he has times of – 1:13:28 for the half marathon and 2:43:52 for the Marathon run at London at the age of 49 in 1984.    These are all very good times but he does admit that he ran 1:10:40 for the half marathon at Stranraer but because within himself he felt the course was a bit short, he doesn’t claim it as a pb!   This page recognises the great Bellahouston Harriers squad of the ’50’s and early ’60’s and they were all great team men.   Jimmy never stopped and he ran in the Alloa – Bishopbriggs veterans eight man relay: the vets’ Edinburgh to Glasgow was a superb race which almost emulated the original and was a good race in its own right.   Jim has a full set of medals from these races and even has one fastest lap (on the seventh stage) to his credit!

DES DICKSON was also a member of the winning Edinburgh to Glasgow team in 1958 and won several other medals on the road and country for the club.   Jimmy’s story above is a good one!   Des came into the sport, Jim reports, from football and failed to qualify for the E-G team in November 1957  and then finished ninth in the National in February 1958 and was selected for the International.   He had run in the National in 1957 and finished forty fourth to be a counting runner in the team that finished fourth.   He did make the team in 1958 and ran on the seventh stage – taking over in first place, he held his ground and handed over a lead to the last runner.    1959 was a good year for Des, seventeenth in the team that was third in the national, running on the fourth stage of the E-G he was in the team that picked up silver and in between he appeared in no fewer than four ranking lists.   His one mile in 4:20.2 saw him in fifteenth, two miles in 9:33.0 had him twelfth, three miles in 14:52.3 placed him twenty first and six miles in 30:48.0 was good enough for seventh fastest in Scotland.   In the National in 1960 he was fortieth and the team was second and in the E-G that year he picked up a place on the fourth stage and another silver team medal.   His mile time that year slipped to 4:23 which had him nineteenth in Scotland.   He ran for several years in the 1960’s having more than done his bit for the club in the last years of a wonderful decade for the club.

I’ll stop there but may well come back to Bellahouston to look at some of the other members of this illustrious squad.  Meanwhile, Neil Black who ran for Bellahouston Harriers in the 80’s has been appointed successor to Charles van Commenee as GB’s national coach, and Graham Getty has written this short paragraph about him.

“Neil Black joined Bellahouston in January 1982 when he was working in the East of Scotland.     Following the participation of a number of Bellahouston Harriers in the famous Morpeth to Newcastle race,  in which Neil finished third for his club Morpeth Harriers he was introduced to the Bella boys by another Bellahouston runner, Rab Marshall, who had many years earlier relocated to the north-east of England, joining Morpeth Harriers in the process.   Neil made his debut for Bellahouston Harriers in the West District Cross-Country Championships at Coatbridge on 23rd January, 1982 and, as an unknown in the area, surprised the leading runners, finishing third and helping Bella win the team title with a team including Daly (13th), Getty (15th) and Braidwood (18th).   With this performance, he didn’t remain unknown for long!  

On February 13th, 1982, Neil won the famous Edinburgh University 10 Mile Road Race in a time of 50:13, helping the club to second team with the other runners being Daly 12th, Getty 14th and Wyper 18th.   Two weeks later, on February 27th, Neil followed that up with finishing twelfth in the 1982 SCCU Cross-Country Championships, assisting Bellahouston to fifth team with a team of Braidwood tenth, Getty thirty fifth, Cox thirty seventh, Daly thirty ninth and Joss seventy third.  

Neil also ran for the club twice in the Edinburgh to Glasgow Relay.   In 1982 he ran the fifth stage in 26:25 taking Bellahouston from second to first and helping them to an overall fourth position.    Neil’s time was 62 seconds faster than Dave Logue’s for the winning team, Edinburgh Southern Harriers.   In 1983 he ran the third leg and took Bella from eighth to first in a time of 28:09: this compared with Graham Laing’s time of 28:18 for the winning team, Aberdeen AAC.  

He was a class runner who added much to an already strong Bellahouston team during his short stay in Scotland.”

That’s a clear succinct indication of the man’s talents as a runner and gives a hint of more insight into the athlete’s requirements than almost any other applicant for the job.    At least he knows that the UK does not stop at the Watford Gap!

The club’s entire historical record forms part of the remarkably detailed member’s ticket for 1962-3 which, thanks to Jim Irvine, can be seen  here .

Two of Scotland’s Best Ever Club Men

Eddie Stewart

The Cambuslang Harriers group  of distance runners of the 1980’s was maybe the best group to come together for the club in the last century.   Not one was a Commonwealth, European or Olympic Games athlete; not one dominated any single event in the country, and yet at a time when there were many excellent athletes in competition with them, they won so many team races and collected so many team medals by running for each other and for the club, that they rank up there with the best of them.  The club had started performing well as a group in the 1970’s when the Rimmer twins joined the club and Rod Stone, a Northern Irish Internationalist working in Cumbernauld, joined the club to add strength and depth to the squad which contained Robert Anderson, Gordon Eadie and others.   At that time I was coaching a group of runners at Coatbridge and after Hugh Forgie of Law & District brought Alex Gilmour along, a good number of men from the club joined the group.   Top dogs were Alex and Eddie with Jim Orr, Tom Ulliott, Pat Morris, Sam Wallace and others all of the highest calibre.  It will be difficult to separate Alex and Eddie because they were such an inspiring double act – very different people, equally important to the club.    Like all top class athletes they were extremely affable, likeable and hard working.   Neither went in for posing or prima donna attitudes.   Alex came to Cambuslang from Larkhall YMCA as a very promising young athlete; Eddie came from Eastwood High School, via West of Scotland Harriers, joining Cambuslang when West of Scotland went defunct.   Alex only had one International vest over the country – New York in 1984 – but was a real hard man to race against and lifted the scalps of all the top men at one time or another: he was always in-and-about team members too, urging them on to work harder, do better.    Eddie was a bit more easy going – on the surface.   He led by example, no one raced harder, but he had a quiet authoritative demeanour.   An example of his manner and influence is shown at the time of the New York World Championships when there were four Cambuslang Harriers (himself, Alex, Jim Orr and David McShane) in the team.   Eddie had them together the night before the race and pointed out that every country had someone like Nat Muir and every country had someone like Allister Hutton; there were 40 countries taking part, so that was 80 places they could probably forget about!   He then discussed the race with them.   Eddie only had two cross-country international vests – 1982 and 1984.   We can start by looking at their own records before commenting on other club members.   (You knew you’d made it when the ‘Sunday Post’ got your name wrong, Hamish McHattie became Hamish McTattie for instance: after the West District Championships one year they were Eric Stewart and Alan Gilmour!) These are necessarily short profiles and are not meant to be totally comprehensive but are here to indicate the quality of the individuals concerned and how they came to be great club men at the start of a remarkable run for Cambuslang Harriers.   Several club members are already profiled in some depth on the website and if you click on their name, you will get the profile.   They are Gordon Rimmer and Colin Donnelly, .    The reasons why any club might do well at any particular period are varied but Dave Thom in his history of the club says that The club’s growing success on all fronts was due to a number of factors: the coaching and encouragement of Robert Anderson, the sound administration from Des Yuill, Jim Scarborough and David Cooney along with his close liaison with the senior athletes, the gritty inspiration of Alex Gilmour, the ever reliability of Eddie Stewart (Steady Eddie), up and coming athletes such as David McShane, Jim Orr and Charlie Thomson and the excellent team spirit which the club was engendering.”   We can take five athletes as examples of this spirit, and all five are noted above by Dave.

Alex Gilmour

I’ll take Alex Gilmour first simply because he joined the club first – in 1975.    Alex did a lot of track running and it was as a track runner that I first saw him in action – an invitation 1500m at East Kilbride – and at the end of his career he had pb’s of 3:54.6 (1500m), 8:05.3 (3000m) and 14:06.53 (5000m) and he was third in the 1985 SAAA 5000m.    He had several track international appearances and narrowly missed selection for the Commonwealth Games in 1986.    Between 1975 and 1989 he ran in ten Edinburgh to Glasgow races, covering stages 4, 5 and 6 with one fastest time (on Four in 1985) and pocketed one gold, three silver and one bronze.   His best run was probably in 1983 when he ran the second stage and moved from tenth to third.    But the amazing statistic is that he never, ever lost a place in the event – and picked up a total of 21 places.    Of course he ran in the Six Stage as well and in the 80’s picked up a gold, two silvers and a bronze.

On the country, as a Senior, between 1980 and 1990, inclusive, he amassed a total of three gold medals, two silvers and three bronze.   His best performance was in 1988 when he was fifth and twice he finished eighth.   His rivalry with his good friend Eddie was beneficial to them both although they never let it interfere with their view of the race as a whole.   eg in 1984 he finished eighth to Eddie’s tenth with only 10 seconds between them, in 1986 he was one place behind Eddie’s eleventh with only 10 seconds separation, in 1988, he was fifth, team mate Colin Donnelly sixth and Eddie seventh with nineteen seconds between them, but the closest finish was in 1990 when Eddie was nineteenth and only TWO seconds ahead of Alex.   I’ll quote from Dave’s club history again: “Later in 1983 the National Cross-Country Relays at Edinburgh proved to be a happy hunting ground for the harriers when they regained the senior title.   Earlier runs by David McShane, Rod Stone and Eddie Stewart had kept them in contention but adrift of the favourites, Edinburgh Southern Harriers.   However a storming last leg by Alex Gilmour won the day for Cambuslang.   The young athletes lifted the bronze award.”   And again, “Success continued in 1986 when the Seniors won the National Six Stage Relay for the first time, when after good work by Tom Ulliott, Rod Stone, Jim Orr, Eddie Stewart and Charlie Thomson, Alex Gilmour overhauled Edinburgh Southern once again.”  

In the training group Alex was also worth his weight in gold – keeping the recovery jogs up to time, encouraging some, telling others off and reporting back on sessions.  In addition to the medals quoted above, he won many of all colours in the Six Stage and Cross-Country Relays plus Lanarkshire Championship and Relays.  At a time when his club was starting to get itself together and make a mark on the National scene, Alex was a key man.

Eddie Stewart  was a tower of strength over the country for Cambuslang   adding leadership to the team which was invaluable as well as being reliably one of the best men in the field wherever he turned up.   He, inevitably I suppose, had the title of “Steady Eddie”.   Surprisingly he only had two International outings – in 1982 and 1984.   He turned out as a Junior in 1977 and 1978 for West of Scotland Harriers which was fairly strong with runners such as marathon man Davie Wyper, young Ian Shaw and others but when they shut up shop he joined Cambuslang.   His record in the national was outstanding.   Let’s put the 1980 to 2002 period (23 years) in tabular form.

10 National Golds, 4 National Silver and 3 National Bronze

As is to be expected, Eddie had a good record in the Edinburgh to Glasgow in which he raced 13 times, including every race between 1979 and 1989, winning one gold, four silver and  one bronze.   He covered stages 2, 4, 5 and 6 and performed nobly one every one of them.    He ran on the tough second stage five time and picked up 19 places on it, three times picking up four places.   Eddie turned out where he was required and raced in the Six Stage Road Relays collecting a gold, two silvers and a bronze.

The track was not his favourite surface but he did perform well there too with personal best times of 8:16.5 for 3000m (1985), 14:11.7 for 5000m (1985) and 32:10 for 10000m (1977).  It was not unusual to see him using an open graded meeting or a Lanarkshire league match  for training purposes running in the 800m, 1500m and 3000m at the same meeting!  The 1985 times are of interest for a particular reason.   In the National Cross-Country Championships held in February, 1985, Eddie finished seventh but when the team for the international was chosen, he was left out in favour of Colin Hume and Neil Tennant of Edinburgh Southern Harriers, the first of whom finished eleven seconds behind him.   The first six and number eighth were selected.    It looked like a clear case of bias.   Cambuslang Harriers were not prepared to let it go and their ire was the greater because Pat Morris, a promising athlete on all surfaces, finished sixth in the Junior race and was left out in favour of Tom Hanlon (also of Edinburgh Southern Harriers), second in the Youths event.   Having gathered the appropriate number of signatures, Cambuslang called an Extraordinary General Meeting of the SCCU with the single item agenda.   In Eddie’s case, the Union representatives argued that Hume was younger and had shown more promise for the future than Eddie had.   Eddie was just 29 at the time!   Pat was fortunate in that there was a call-off in the Junior team so did manage to get to the International.   Eddie got a consolation race in Italy later in the year but he was not happy.   It takes a lot to rile him and he said nothing at all.   But that summer he trained harder than ever, and specifically for the track and improved his times considerably – almost 9 seconds from his 3000m and 11 seconds from his 5000m.    He raced more track that summer than usual and picked up many good scalps – he made his point that his improvements were not all behind him.   No drama, just quiet determination.   It was daft anyway to suggest to the athletics population that they would not improve much after the age of 29!

A tower of strength, almost opposite in temperament to Alex, they were very good friends.   Eddie moved to live in Prague in 1992 but as can be seen from the table above, returned virtually every year for major competitions and in fact is having a superb veteran athletic career.   He won the Scottish Masters championship outright as an M40 in 1998 leading the club to team gold; he won the M45 in 2005 and has also won the M50 title in 2007 and 2011 plus, the latest acquisition, the M55 championship in 2012!   .

Jim Orr was a Junior who was brought along to our regular Wednesday night training sessions by Alex Gilmour.    Like any other young athlete in the club at the time he had been in the shade of David McShane, a quite outstanding young athlete who had won every age group Cross-Country championship from Junior Boy level.   When I asked Jim what he wanted to do over the next year his answer was quite clear: “I want to make the Scottish Junior team fro New York next year!”    There were a number of Cambuslang runners in the group already and he fitted right in.   Jim was a hard worker in training but not a stupid one: if you ask some young athletes to to a particular session they do half as much again on the theory that, if one aspirin is good, three are better!   He was also a hard racer and no respecter of reputations.   If a big name was having a less-than-good day, Jim would take him or at least have a go.

On the country he had won two team gold medals as a junior with David McShane, Charlie Thomson and S Kenny in 1983 and 1984.   His first year as a Senior was 1984 and he added to the medal collection with a bronze team award after finishing thirty third.   He ran in five senior nationals and won three gold and two bronze medals: individually in ’86 he was eighteenth, in ’87 he was twenty fifth, in in ’88 fourteenth and in 1990 seventeenth.   In the four man cross country relay where it was cut-throat competition for the first team, he ran two in the second team but still collected his share of gold and bronze medals.   There were also medals in the District and County Championships as well.    Did he make the Junior team in ’84?   He certainly did with seventh place in the Junior Championship and in the race itself he was sixty fourth and a counting runner for the Scottish team.

On the roads he came into the Senior ranks just as the club team for the Edinburgh to Glasgow Relay was coming together and he ran very well in the race.   In brief, he ran in eight, won one gold, four silver and one bronze with the fastest time on the eighth stage in 1987 and third fastest on the third in ’83, on the fifth in ’84, on the eighth in ’89 and on the seventh in ’91.   Bearing in mind the quality of Scottish distance running at that time, these were very good runs.   He was also a good track runner with personal best times of 14:35 for 5000m and 31:21.8 for 10000m, both done in 1985.

So, what happened to Jim?   He seemed to have a whole world of athletics before him and his last race was the 1991 Edinburgh to Glasgow when he picked up a silver medal as a valued part of the Cambuslang team.   He was just 26.   The answer is that he just stopped for personal reasons involving work and family.   Running was an all or nothing activity for Jim, like most top athletes he needed to put in a reasonable mileage to get the performances and, having just got married in 1990, with the demands of work increasing, he couldn’t find the time to do that.   It should not be forgotten though that he was, like Alex and Eddie, a key member of the group that brought consistent major success to Cambuslang Harriers

.

Charlie Thomson was the same age as Jim and they had run in trophy winning Junior teams together but his career was longer.    Charlie has been a familiar figure on the Senior and now veteran scene in Scotland for almost 30 years now and although never an elegant easy striding athlete like some of the track stars, he has had a record of consistency of running at a high level that is probably unrivalled in Scottish endurance running.   His collection of team medals is considerable  as the table below shows.

The totals would have been higher had the competition within Cambuslang been less intense at times – there were occasions when he was inside the the top thirty in the National and not been a counting runner for a winning team, there were times when in the four stage relays he was top man in the second team when the first squad won the race.   I have also left out medals won as a Junior or Youth.  No District or County Championship or Relay Championship awards have been counted either or the number would have been at least doubled and there were no doubt awards in some of the Classics such as the McAndrew Relays and Nigel Barge races.

 Charlie was always better on the country and his record of consistency there is quite amazing: in his first twenty years as a senior his placings in the National Cross-Country Championships were as follows:   26, 20, 18, 20, 27, 12, 37, 18, 33, 17, -, 29, 12, 16, 12, 26, 18, 13, 29, 18.    Not a Scottish International, his best running came too late for the World Championships, never in the first ten, but – ten times out of 20 inside twentieth position, only two lower than twenty ninth and none at all as low as fortieth!

He didn’t do much running on the track but he did have a personal best for the 10000m of 30:53.4.   However, as a veteran athlete Charlie was third in the SVHC Championship in 2008 and has won many individual and team awards since then.

Finally for this page, David McShane was the man that all the young athletes of the time measured themselves against.   Coached by Scottish National Coach Alex Naylor, he had won National Cross Country Championships in every possible age group by the time he started racing with the Seniors: Youths title in 1982, Senior Boys in 1980, and Junior Boys in 1980 and 1981.   He really was a class act on the country and led club teams including Charlie Thomson and Jim Orr to National cross-country titles and team medals at Youth and Junior age-groups and as an individual was chosen to represent Scotland in the International Cross Country Championships in 1982 and 1984.

In the Edinburgh to Glasgow Relay, he only ran in three (1985 on Stage Seven; in 1988 on Stage Three when the team was third; and in 1989 on the third leg when the club was second.     He also won gold and silver in the National cross-country, the six-stage relays and the four man cross-country championships but his senior career was plagued by injury and he finally retired in 1992.   He was one who had played a big part in raising and keeping the team spirit and club morale high during this period when the club was just starting on a prolonged run of success.

Dave Thom reported on the events of 1992/93 as follows: “Moving into a new decade, many cynics thought that teh Cambuslang success story would end but, in spite of a number of major setbacks such as the loss of the sterling services of Des Yuill and Jim Scarborough in 1992 and 1993, the sudden death of Andy Beattie in 1992, the retiral through injury of club stalwarts Alex Gilmour, Jim Orr, David McShane, Mark Gormley and Graham Getty, the departure of Eddie Stewart to Prague they were to be proved wrong.”   And the club did go on to continue, and maybe in some respects surpass the achievements of the above men with Charlie and Eddie going on into the twenty first century but the actual generation of officials and runners who had started the ball rolling had disbanded.  I mean no disrespect to the men who ran throughout the previous years – Gordon Eadie and company would stand comparison with the best of any generation – but the men of the 80’s were special in their own particular way.

I was quite surprised in the mid-eighties when Mike Murray and Ray Cresswell came all the way down from Aberdeen to run in the British Milers Club races.   To travel 150 miles each way to race for less that two minutes, at your own expense, speaks volumes for their determination.   They were well worth their place in the races and they were highly respected by the other runners.   Both are mentioned in this collection of profiles by Colin Youngson who knew all of the runners mentioned here well.

“Most of Aberdeen Amateur Athletic Club’s best men have been profiled already (Alastair Wood, Steve Taylor, Mel Edwards, Bill Ewing, Fraser Clyne, Graham Laing, Colin Youngson, Rab Heron, Donald Ritchie, Peter Wilson and Jim Doig).   Aberdeen enjoyed two peak periods: between 1961 – 74 (three silver medals in the E-G, four silver and two bronze medals in the Senior National).   Then there was 1980 to 1989 (three gold medals and four bronze in the E-G, three bronze in the Senior National; two silver in the CC Relay and two bronze in the Six Stage Relay.)   A real sign of future promise came in the 1976 Scottish Junior National Cross-Country when AAAC won team gold with Fraser Clyne, Graham Laing, Danny Buchan and Steve Cassells.   However the Fast Pack for the Eighties must include Graham Milne, Mike Murray, Ian Matheson, Ross Arbuckle, Simon Axon, Chris Hall, Ray Cresswell and Dave Duguid.  

Graham Milne   a gritty determined runner with a strong finish, first ran the E-G for Aberdeen in 1972, finishing third on Stage One and handing over to Ian Stewart to launch that great athlete on his amazing surge to the finest stage record in the entire history of that event.   AAAC won team silver that year, and Graham played his part (once more on the first leg) when they obtained bronze medals in 1973.   A year earlier, Graham had won team bronze in the National.   After those performances, there was a long wait before his team became competitive once again with the best in Scotland.   In the interim, Graham moved north to Moray District.   He really liked Stage One of the E-G and was third again (for Forres Harriers) in 1978; and second (for AAAC), only two seconds behind Colin Donnelly in 1979.   Then in 1980, Graham won team silver in the Scottish Cross-Country Relay along with Edwards, Clyne and Laing.   He gained another silver medal in 1982 with Ross Arbuckle replacing Edwards.   In the Senior National, bronze team medals were secured in 1982, 1983 and 1986.   Graham’s best individual place was nineteenth in 1980.  It was bronze again in the Six-Stage Road Relay in 1981.   As a veteran, he won team gold in the National Veterans Cross-Country Championships and also in the Alloa to Bishopbriggs Eight Stage Relay (The Vets E-G!)

Aberdeen’s E-G team finished third in 1981 and also in 1982 (with Graham third fastest on Stage Four).   The  scene was set for a real triumph: Aberdeen’s first team gold medal in Scottish Senior events.   Graham was back on the first leg and came in only eight seconds behind second place.   By the end of the next stage, Graham Laing was not far behind the leaders, Bellahouston Harriers, and a race-long battle ensued between those two rivals before Aberdeen squeezed home forty seconds clear, having recorded the second fastest time ever of 3:35:40.   One of Aberdeen’s heroes that day was Craig Ross, who charged into the lead on Stage Four.   (Craig a 2:20 Scottish International marathon man, mainly ran for Dundee Hawks or Fife but this performance was the highlight of his time in an AAAC vest, although he also won the race with Dundee in 1989)

1983 was also the year that Graham Milne ran his fastest ever marathon (2:21:27).   He too represented Scotland in that gruelling event.   He proved his endurance further in two Jogles (1972 and 1982).   His other personal bests included 14:32.5 (5000m), 30:54.4 (10000m) and 66:57 (half marathon).   Graham went on to become a successful veteran runner winning Scottish championship medals in several age-groups.

Mike Murray   with his athletic loping stride, looked every inch a track specialist.   Indeed in 1984 he set an Aberdeen AAC record for 800m (1:52.4) and also ran 1500m in 3:50.58.    Mike was a member of the elite British Milers Club.   However, partly because he trained a lot with that hard man, Peter Wilson, Mike also became an invaluable part of his club’s road running team, not only in the 1982 John o’Groats to Land’s End Relay, but also in the Edinburgh to Glasgow which he ran eleven times winning six medals.  

Although AAAC won bronze medals in the 1981 E-G, when Mike tackled Stage Three, his best efforts were all on Stage Seven.   It had been obvious during the April 1982 Jogle that he was an excellent downhill runner, and the route on the penultimate stage allowed him a chance to demonstrate speed and flexibility.   Mike could be relied upon to maintain a gap, gain places or extend a lead.   Further bronze medals were gained in 1982, 1987 and 1989 but the finest achievements were in 1983 and 1986.   In both cases Fraser Clyne completed the sixth leg, passed on to Mike Murray and made it possible for Colin Youngson to hold on to the lead.   The result was two gold medals for the north-east club, both won in dramatic fashion.

Mike also won two bronze medals in the Six Stage Relay (1981 and 1989).   Then Metro Aberdeen broke away and Aberdeen AAC struggled in the E-G, although Captain Murray continued to do his best.   Yet he trained harder for a while after he turned forty and, having joined Metro eventually, was part of the team which won silver medals in the 1999 Scottish Veteran Harriers Six-Stage Relay.

Simon Axon   was a Welsh Junior Cross-Country International who moved to Scotland and ran for Inverness Harriers before heading south to live and work in Aberdeen, and to join AAAC.   He made his debut for North District in the 1984 E-G finishing fifth in a high quality Stage One.   In 1985 he turned out for Aberdeen and was given the responsibility of tackling the long Sixth Stage.   His new team finished sixth.   However other key athletes had made their first appearance for Aberdeen in the race that day: Jim Doig and Ray Cresswell as well as Colin Farquharson.   When Chris Hall joined too, the 1986 Aberdeen E-G outfit looked formidable.   Simon moved up three places to fifth on the difficult second stage, only sixteen seconds behind the fastest time.   This allowed Jim Doig to blister into the lead on Stage Three, and eventually Aberdeen AAC won by over a minute.   In 1988, Aberdeen led from Stage Three onwards and Simon kept a healthy lead on Stage Seven which was just as well because the last leg runner had developed hamstring problems and only finished 21 seconds ahead.   Still, that was a second gold medal for Simon Axon and he added a bronze in 1989 when he moved past ESH on the final leg.   In 1988 Simon had finished twenty second in the National Crocc-Country when his team finished third.

Simon Axon ran very well at longer distances too.   He completed the 1986 London Marathon in 2:19:53.   In 1987 he not only won the prestigious Inverness Half Marathon (65:44) in April, but also that June reduced his best time at Gateshead to an impressive 64:25.   Over 10K, he won the Aberdeen 10K in 1989 and 1990.

Although Ross Arbuckle has represented Cambuslang Harriers for much of his career, he started out with Aberdeen and in fact ran for Scotland in the 1980 World Junior Cross-Country.   Previously he had shown outstanding talent on the track as an Under-17 Youth (800m in 1:56, 1500m in 4:01.1 and 3000m in 8:42).   As a senior he improved to 1:53.5 and 3:55.8.

Ross won the three senior team medals with AAAC: bronze in the 1981 E-G; silver in the 1981 Six-Stage Relay and bronze in the 1982 National Cross-Country.   With Cambuslang, he went on to win team gold in the 1988 National (thirteenth finisher), a full set of medals in the Cross-Country Relay, including gold in 1987, and bronze in the Six-Stage Relay.   To this day he continues to be a modest, popular but very successful veteran athlete.   He won several team gold medals in the National Veterans Cross-Country, and frequently represented Scotland in the annual Masters Home Countries Cross-Country International.  

Ray Cresswell   always had considerable talent and as a Junior ran 1500m in 3:58.4.   His Senior bests include 1:54.24, 3:50.0 and 8:24.82.   In the E-G, he was part of a winning team in 1986 and 1988 (when he was fastest on Stage Three, moving from third to first.)   In addition he won bronze medals in the 1988 National (twentieth finisher) and the 1989 Six-Stage Relay.  

Ian Matheson   was another brilliant young athlete who trained immensely hard.   He was rumoured to be covering 100 miles per week at the age of 16!   Ian won East District Cross-Country titles as a Senior Boy (1980) and a Youth (1982).   Before the age of 20 he could run 5000m in 14:46, 10000m in 30:49 and the steeplechase in 9:30.7.   He continues to hold the AAAC Senior club record for 5000m (14:18.9).   However his real forte was as a hill runner, since he represented Scotland in the 1989 World Championships.   In the National Cross-Country Ian won team bronze in 1988, and added another bronze in the 1989 Six Stage Road Relay.   He also ran well in the E-G, helping Aberdeen towards victory in both 1983 and 1988.

Chris Hall, an eccentric, flamboyant Welshman, joined Aberdeen in 1986.   There was no doubt that when in the mood he was a classy performer.   In the E-G, he won gold in 1986, bronze in 1987, gold in 1988 and bronze in 1989.   Chris also won team bronze medals in the 1988 National (eleventh finisher) and the 1989 Six-Stage Relay.   After he moved to Dundee and ran for the Hawks, he won another gold medal in the 1991 Cross-Country Relay.   Chris was very successful in road races.   For example, he won the Aberdeen 10K in 1991 and 1992 (29:57).   His track bests included 14:20.58 and 30:26.26.   In addition, Chris ran a half marathon in 65:02.

Dave Duguid   a stylish athlete, ran well as a Junior and went on to record Senior best times including 8:39 (3000m), 9:13.9 (3000m steeplechase), 31:04.8 (10000m) and 68:36 (half marathon).   He won the Aberdeen 10K in 1988.   In the E-G, he won bronze in 1987 (as did Rob Taylor and Gary Zeuner) and gold in 1988 when he kept the lead on Stage Four, as well as bronze in 1989 (with Rob contributing again).