The 2018 North East Youth Development League Review

U13 Boys 1500mt race NEYDL match at Hexham

The 2018 North East Youth Development League season ended several weeks ago,
however we felt it would be interesting to reflect on the performances by Morpeth Harriers & Athletic Club,
both on a team and individual basis, in order to measure our strengths against others,
and to provide a basis of knowledge to enable progress in the forthcoming year of 2019.

This year’s Division 1 competition saw us finish second to an outstanding and much travelled Harrogate AC squad, who won three of the four matches, finishing second in the match at Whitley Bay.

For our own part, for the first time since the league began, we failed to win a match,
we finished third in the first two, and second in the third and fourth matches,
giving us a total number of eighteen league points, to Harrogate’s twenty three.
We were however, a good four points clear of third placed New Marske.

Whilst Harrogate managed a total of 3,203.5 match points, the only club to exceed 3,000 points,
we managed 2,656 points, which points to the fact that the champions had covered the events more effectively.

New Marske, who finished third behind us, managed a total of 2,433 match points,
and fourth placed North Shields Poly, who were the only club to win a match other than Harrogate,
managed a better match points total of 2,581, not far adrift of ourselves.

Although former champions Blaydon also managed a good total of match points in 2,395.5,
they faced the drop into Division 2, along with Chester Le Street, who had a league record low
of 914 match points, only managing four league points, one in each match.

On looking back, despite stringent efforts by our hard working Team Managers,
Mark Brown (Boys), and Dave Thomas (Girls), we just couldn’t quite match the efforts of Harrogate
in overall event coverage, however we did manage to pull out all the stops, some more than others,
in order to finish in a very respectable runners up spot, although we did have other clubs snapping
at our heels below us throughout the campaign, a factor that we should watch out for in future
as we go forward to 2019.
​
We are grateful to Dave Thomas for providing the following statistics below,
which present a clearer picture of where our strengths and weaknesses were,
in the hope that we can achieve more success next season.

Statistics