Valley man leads Billericay Striders to win Cross Country League

In the early stages of Finn Valleys development Gerry and Kevin O Doherty played a full and active part in the various team success the lads from Glencar,Letterkenny have retained a close link eith club affairs in the intervening years Gerry now as a team leader with his English club and Kevin currently working in China and refereeing soccer games each wekend .Are there any other former club members out there that would like to get in touch Picture shows former Finn Valley athlete of the 1970's ! Gerry O'Doherty receiving the South Essex Cross Country Shield as club captain of Billericay Striders from Howard Williams Chairman of the Essex Board of Athletics. Everyone at the club (including another former FV man John O'Brien) worked hard to win the shield that they had last won ten years ago.

After finishing a poor 3rd team place in the first fixture back in Oct we worked at improving the team results over the winter months to get a 2nd and three 1st places to win the league today with our best result of the season.This was the first time in ten years for Billericay Striders to win the Sunday XC league.

Everyone really performed today when the pressure was on --- nobody let me down. We had our our best available team with the exception of Kieran, disappointed to have missed out through injury, and one other guy who was in Portugal competing for the GB orienteering team.

My task now as team manager is to keep the squad together and to bring through some of our junior runners to this level and retain the title next year -- then to push on to a higher level . Remember this is a running club as opposed to an athletics club and a lot of the guys and girls who competed today are relatively new to the sport and very few of them competed at all when they were younger. A few of the younger guys will get selected for the Essex team for the inter counties later in March. Fantastic to see runners of all ages getting such great satisfaction out of a good team performance.

Pictures.

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