DEPLETED Morpeth Harriers were still too strong for their rivals as they retained the handsome Royal Signal Trophy for the eighth successive year in the North-East Road Relay Championships at Gateshead.

The Northumbrians, denied the services of leading athletes Nick McCormick and Tom Ranger because their coach, Lindsay Dunn, felt that the new course at Saltwell Park was hazardous, beat a young Gosforth team of six by over two minutes.

Aware of Dunn's pre-race criticism, North East AA officials asked Gateshead Council to inspect the course and make any necessary repairs to the paths, and in the event there were no mishaps.

Morpeth, who in the past have had so many runners available they were able to split their teams on the old Team Valley course, turned out their strongest available six at Saltwell.

They led from start to finish after Dan Sammuels opened with the fastest lap of the afternoon. He had a tremendous duel with North Shields Polytechnic's junior international Ryan Stephenson to give his team a four- second advantage.

Teessider Martin Scaife returned to the scene of his Saltwell 10K triumph last month to increase Morpeth's lead to a commanding 45 seconds, and valiant efforts by Gosforth to force their way into contention were to no avail as the Northumbrians ploughed on relentlessly.

Morpeth's hopes of a double were quickly dispelled in the veterans' race when, after Les Atkinson gave them a first-leg lead, they found themselves a man short, lying in third place at the end of the penultimate circuit.

By that time Sunderland's second-leg runner, newly-crowned North-East over-40 cross country champion Brian Rushworth, had clocked the fastest time of the race.

He opened up a virtually unassailable 77 seconds lead, and they went on to win by over four minutes. Rushworth, who won the North-East senior men's cross country title a record ten times, was 33 seconds quicker than the next fastest runner, team-mate Dave Robertson, a former London Marathon veterans' champion.

Host club Gateshead Harriers won the women's relay after a thrilling final leg. Anchor-woman Claire Harrod found herself trailing Jarrow and Hebburn's Gemma Campbell by 37 seconds, but gradually clawed back the deficit over the three kilometre circuit to overtake the leader and win by seven seconds.

The championships went off without a hitch and North-East AA road race secretary Kevin Carr said: "There were no problems at all with the new course.

"All the comments afterwards from the runners were positive and they all seemed to feel that the new, traffic-free course was very interesting.

"Gateshead Harriers and Gateshead Council are to be complimented on doing a very good job."