Marathon man the 23rd player to play a double century of Hassocks games
There is a new member of the Hassocks 200 club with the marathon man James Westlake becoming the 23rd player to make a double century of appearances for the Robins in senior football.
Westlake has reached the landmark across three spells with the club since Mickey Jewell first brought him to the Beacon from St Francis Rangers midway through the 2010-11 campaign.
2011-12 was Westlake’s first full season with Hassocks. He played more games than anyone else as the Robins finished fourth in the Southern Combination League Premier Division table, their highest ever finish.
Westlake returned to St Francis in the summer of 2013 having made 102 appearances, scoring 16 times. After two seasons at Rangers and a brief spell at Haywards Heath Town, Westlake was lured back to the Beacon by Mark Dalgleish and Phil Wickwar in autumn 2015 with Hassocks deep in relegation trouble.
His capture coincided with a club-record run of eight successive victories which went a long way towards helping Hassocks pull off a great escape from falling into Division One.
Over the next four-and-a-half years, Westlake began to concentrate more on his running career than his football.
His feats in that field need no introduction. In 2018, he won the Worthing 10k with a course record, was the seventh British male home in the London Marathon with a time of 2:24:19 and represented England at the Toronto Marathon – all of which earned Westlake a spot in the Mid Sussex Times Top 10 Sportspeople of the Year.
Westlake’s second spell with Hassocks came to an end with the curtailed 2019-20 season, having played a further 93 matches and scored 14 more goals, giving him a total of 30 from 196 career games.
He spent the 2020-21 campaign at Loxwood as part of Spencer Slaughter’s coaching team, helping the Magpies to the final of the Supplementary Shield last season where they were beaten by Isthmian League-bound Lancing.
Following Slaughter’s departure from the Plaistow Road hot seat in September, Brad Sweetman was swift in convincing Westlake to return to Hassocks, where he needed just four more appearances to make the 200 landmark.
Needless to say, the return of a player so popular with the Beacon faithful has gone down very well. Everyone will now be hoping to see Westlake push towards the 300 mark – when his running allows, of course.
