The Swindon Harriers senior men’s team will be hoping to maintain their dominance as they search for their fourth straight Oxfordshire Cross County League title.

The men’s side has won the last three league titles, securing their third in March by a record margin of 500 points over Newbury and Oxford City, and had three runners in the individual top ten, as well as Courtenay Chessell who was the top over 40 runner.

They begin their pursuit of yet another title this Sunday at Cornbury looking to pick up where they left off last season when they had four wins out of four.

Team manager Bryan Clinton said: “I fully expect us to do the business again.

“We’ll have the Byrne boys plus the likes of Ben Lines, Seb Reynolds, Ethan Pierce and many others in virtually the same squad as we had last winter.”

Lines took a large chunk out of his personal best last weekend as he ran a time of 32 minutes and five seconds in the Lightning Bolt 10k near Chippenham to finish second and move up to fourth in the Wiltshire rankings.

He said: “I was kind of hoping to get down to 32 minutes, so I am really happy with that.”

His clubmate Harry Woods also finished third in the race, as he improved from 35:16 just over a year ago to 32:27, which puts him sixth in the county and third in the club behind Lines and fellow junior Ethan Pierce (32:20).

The senior women's side are excited for the challenge of competing at the next level after their league title last season.

The senior women won the Oxfordshire Cross Country League Division Three title last season, with a side led by individual bronze medallist Chloe Powell, and will now be competing in Division Two as the season begins on Sunday.

Team manager Bryan Clinton expects the team to push straight on and compete again for promotion as they head into life in a higher division.

Clinton said: “I think we are now stronger than last season with Emma Hines having joined us and we still have Chloe, Felicity Webb and Jade Bennett among others. Hopefully, they will be pushing for promotion again.”

The club picked five individual medals and five team ones with the young athletes’ section as Charissa Griffiths-Clack won silver in the U11 girls and Harry Burdekin matched that in the U13 boys.