JONATHAN Edwards was the star athlete as Hunts Athletics Club carried last year s excellent form into the first meet of the season, despite multiple injuries and withdrawals. Edwards threw a club record 41.08m at Saturday s meeting in Braintree, adding 7.

JONATHAN Edwards was the star athlete as Hunts Athletics Club carried last year's excellent form into the first meet of the season, despite multiple injuries and withdrawals.

Edwards threw a club record 41.08m at Saturday's meeting in Braintree, adding 7.65m to his previous best, and also won the B string discus event. The two victories were enough to win him the Athlete of the Match award.

After being promoted as champions from Division 4 last year, Hunts were confident of a strong showing at the season opener, and got off to a great start when Paul Hayball and Wayne Dubose won both strings of the shot putt. Hayball later added victory in the A string discus, winning by over five metres.

On the track, Matt Leadbitter's hard winter of training seems to have set him up for a successful season as he recorded a personal best time of 50.1sec in the 400m, shaving 0.3sec off his 2005 time to win by a clear four seconds. Peter Downhill was also dominant in the 400m hurdles, taking the win by three seconds. Hunts enjoyed another winning double in the A and B races of the 3000m steeplechase, as Shane Hunt and Steve Wellman led their respective fields home. James McLaren kept up his good form by winning the 100m B race comfortably in a time of 12.2sec, and coming second in the 200m in 24.9sec. He then joined Karl Jackson, Dave Leadbitter and Matt Leadbitter to win the day's final race, the 4x400m. Two powerful runs from the Leadbitter brothers brought Hunts from behind to win by 5.5sec.

Coach Wayne DuBose hailed the club's performance: "This is a great start to the season for Hunts AC and, once the team is strengthened with athletes missing from this match, a second successive promotion looks a real possibility.