Hastings, relegated from the Southern League division one last season, finished joint first with Aldershot in their home fixture at the weekend.

Mark Rivers scored a brilliant hat-track of victories in the sprints. He clocked 11.2sec for the 100m, 22.5sec for the 200m and 49.9sec for the 400m. Steve Baldock, older brother of Olympian Sean, won the 800m in 1min.55.3sec. Lee Emanuel, in his first year in the under-20 age group, won the 1,500m in a personal best 3min.58.7sec.

There was victory by 18 points for Brighton in the division four match at Withdean. The match involved four of the top six teams in the league, including leaders Blackheath and second-placed Watford.

Brighton won all but two of the track events. Sam Parsons, who is still in the under-17 age group, had a tremendous battle with Horsham's Duncan Rogers in the 400m hurdles. Both clocked personal best times of 61.5 and 61.9 seconds respectively.

Dan Brooker, Paul McKeown, Benardo Venturi and Lee Elliott dominated the sprints winning the A and B 100m, 200m and 400m.

Andy Thompson continued his excellent long jumping this season, winning with 6.69m. He was then second to talented Horsham triple jumper Andrew Nicholson, leaping 12.19m. to Andrew's 12.21m.

Veteran Bob Willows, who was a regular member of the Brighton and Hove team in the British League more than a decade ago, came out of retirement and scored valuable points in the throws.

Spare a thought for the Horsham Blue Star team, who gained promotion from division five last season and are sixth in the table after two matches. In a high-powered match they were fourth so will drop several places, but they did well and kept in touch with leaders Blackheath, finishing just five points adrift.

Crawley women finished third in their division one match but Horsham, Brighton and Hove and Worthing all slumped to disappointing fifth places in their matches.