A 1966 World Cup Final performer who helped create a top city running club

In addition to helping set up the club, Victor Sylvester, who passed away in 2016, was a player in the Royal Marines Marching Band which entertained the crowd from the Wembley turf.

Along with Sylvester, Antoinette Rendle and the groundsman at the newly built Bushfield School were amongst the club’s founder members.

Rendle has been running with the club ever since and is active to this day.

Bushfield came about as a result of mass house building, and were one step ahead of the early 1980s running boom.

This helped lift their membership to over 100. To this day membership has never dropped below that total.

Bushfield have produced some talented athletes and have enjoyed plenty of local success.

As a founder member of the Frostbite League the Joggers have finished top 10 in two of the past three seasons.

Phil Martin joined the club in 2013 as a novice and has since become one of the top veteran runners in Britain, with a British Masters Marathon Championship and an England vest to his name. Although Martin has since moved on to Peterborough Nene Valley he still devotes a lot of time to helping out at Bushfield

Long term member Brian Corleys is a serial top 10 finisher and has won races on the road and cross country wearing a Bushfied vest, while Eric Winstone continues to do battle with the best in the country in his over 65 age group.

Yvonne Cooper holds many of the ladies club records including a marathon best of 3:08.37 in London in 2009, while Tracy McCartney set a club veterans 10km record when clocking 39:12 at Long Sutton in 2018.

Bushfield have a huge age range amongst their membership.

Youngsters as young as six train with the club and George Dawson, who is now 87, has completed over 100 parkruns.

The club have met the challenge of Covid 19 head on organising many socially distanced events including one mile and five kilometre handicap events and a five mile league.

Few will forget the enthusiasm and exuberance of Ron Firth who was the club’s longest serving chairman, and it’s all change at the top at the moment with Paul Atherfold taking over as chairman from Becky Witton.

Looking back over the past few months club vice chairman Chris Hopewell said: “Over the period of the current pandemic we have shown what a great club Bushfield Joggers is.

“Right from the first lockdown we had coaches and members providing filmed workout sessions, live boot camps on Facebook and various club competitions. This enabled us as a club to be together virtually, keeping the great ‘Bushy’ spirit alive.

“Although we’ve had to temporarily stop them again, we reintroduced our junior club nights when the first lockdown ended and these were well attended with new members joining in.”

The Juniors section of the club have had a presence on the local racing scene since 2011 but formed as an official club in 2018.

“We are one of the only clubs in the area to take children from as young as six,” Hopewell added. Going forward we are looking forward to reintroducing COVID secure club nights and hope to strengthen the club by attracting new members.

“We are also investigating the possibility of introducing a new local running event.”

* Anyone interested in joining Bushfield Joggers should email chairman@bushfieldjoggers.co.uk.