At a Southern Women's League meeting at Guildford, where four of the five clubs had won their opening division one matches, the highlight was provided by an AFD athlete who did not win her event. Shirley Austin set an Irish record for the pole vault.

The bar was set at 3m30, but the re-measurement supervised by Roy Dyer, Aldershot, Farnham & District's internationally experienced official, which is mandatory for purposes of ratification, revealed the true height to be 3m28.

Austin, originally from Tipperary, who has lived in the UK for 10 years, had a previous best of 3m20, but even her new mark left her second in the 'B' string of a strong competition to Windsor, Slough, Eton & Hounslow's Katherine Callaghan (3m40) who finished fifth, two places ahead of her, in last summer's South of England Championship.

Austin's AFD colleague, Noelle Bradshaw (bronze medallist in the South of England), was beaten in the 'A' string by Larissa Lowe of WSE&H (equal sixth in the Inter-Counties last year), 3m50 to 3m40. Bradshaw did manage to win the javelin (41m09) and Vickie Foster, the Inter-Counties bronze medallist, took the shot with 13m97.

Sarah Pickett, Surrey silver medallist the previous weekend, triumphed with 46.0secs in the 300 hurdles for U/17s and Leonie Smith was victorious in the U/15 1,500 metres. The newly crowned Hampshire champion was overtaken by Megan Foley of Havering Mayesbrook with 200 remaining, but counter-attacked off the final bend and smoothly went away for a winning margin of 2.1 seconds and a time of 4mins 47.4.

The scarcity of wins meant that AFD ended Saturday's proceedings in third, an unfamiliar position for the former league champions and 2000 runners-up.

Victories were even fewer for the men when contesting the opening round of the British League Cup at Bournemouth on Sunday.

Dan Acheson made up a considerable deficit when moving from third to first along the home straight of the 800 which he completed in 1min 54.5 and Andy Buchann claimed the pole vault with 3m80.

Although beaten in the 400 hurdles, Andy Clements, with 54.6secs, removed half-a-second from the personal bests he set when retaining his Hampshire U/20 title.

Richard Batchelor, in the 5,000 metres, was another runner-up for AFD, clocking 15mins 45.3.