The Box Hill men's State League team had a close tussle with Eastside in round 9 of State League competition earlier tonight. Final scores were not available at the end of the night and will be calculated tomorrow, however it appears that we might end up being beaten by Eastside, although we were well clear of Ballarat/Bendigo and Ivanhoe.

Once again we suffered from a large number of holes in our team with no one in the walk, long jump, javelin, discus, shot and 110 hurdles and only one 400 m hurdler.

Chris West started the night well with a win in the 400 m hurdles in a season's best of 47.8 (hand) while Cameron Baker just cleared 3.60 at his third attempt for second place in the pole vault. Nick Brudenell jumped his first high jump qualifier of the season for equal second and then the 200 m runners, Marty Duke, James Fildes and Andrew Wilcox finished second, third and fourth in the 200.

Michael Jones continued his good recent form to win the 800 from Tim Heron (3rd) and Simon McNamara (4th).

Julian Dwyer made a welcome return to win the 5000 in the smart time of 14:10. Graeme Olden finished about 5th in 14:58, while Scott Jackson qualified in about 15:35.

The 4x400 team convincingly won the relay at the end of the night, but we have to wait for AV to calculate the final points to find out whether or not it was sufficient to get us a win.

Irrespective of the result, we should still hold on to second place on the ladder, however we will need to win next week to assure that we hold second place.

The women's team kept their unbeaten record intact with another comfortable win.

Next week is the last round of State League for the season with the finals on 8 March and 15 March.