SIMON Fricker bounced back from an injury-wrecked season to head a healthy Team Solent medal haul at the South of England Track & Field Championships in Portsmouth.

The 27-year-old strongman came good with a 50.95-metre discus win, which not only wrote its way into the club record books but was also a best-ever throw from his home county of Dorset.

To cap an excellent weekend, Fricker struck bronze in the shot with his second biggest put of all time - a highly respectable season's best of 15.19.

Team Solent chairman Mike Smith reported: "Simon was injured all last year but he's back now and throwing very well again. It's the second time this summer that he's thrown the discus over 50 metres and to be putting over 15 metres in the shot is great.

"He's so pleased to be back after the problems he's had and he says there's still more to come."

Fricker's double coup helped make it the most lucrative South of England Championships in several seasons for Team Solent.

In all, the south coast club totted up five medals with Dan Turner clearing a season's best 2.05 for high jump gold, Ashley Swain striking silver in the pole vault and London import Ruth Brereton taking bronze in the 400m hurdles in 61.37 seconds having won her heat in a season's best 61.28.

Swain, pictured right, could and probably should have completed a hat-trick of golds for Solent but was tactically outgunned in a head-to-head with Shaftesbury Barnet's Ian Tullett.

Coming into the competition in its later stages, the two favourites easily cleared 4.80 at the first time of asking but then Tullett failed his first attempt at five metres while Swain went clear.

Although the bar is usually raised in ten-centimetre graduations, Tullett's fellow competitors - including Swain - gave him the nod to attempt 5.05, which he cleared successfully while the Rownhams lad opted to move on to a higher level.

In keeping with the ten-centimetre rule, the bar was then raised to 5.15 which Tullett failed and Swain ran through three times, leaving the Shaftesbury man victorious.

As expected, one of the weekend's tastiest track performances was supplied by Basingstoke & Mid Hants' outstanding 400m prospect Robert Tobin, who recently defeated Iwan Thomas at Loughborough.

He struck gold with a season's best of 47.02 seconds, comfortably inside the B standard 47.19 for next month's European Under-23 Championships in Poland (July 17-20).

The Todd Bennett-coached Southampton University student, 19, is still chasing the A standard and will now turn his attentions to this weekend's AAA Under-20/23 Championships at Bedford.

Smith, former coach of Iwan Thomas and Roger Black, reported: "Robert ran very sensibly and was a bit unlucky not to have gone faster.

"It might have happened had Newham's Mark Brown (a 47.51 heat winner) been running, but he didn't turn up for the final."

Robert was not the only Tobin to earn a place on the medal podium. His older sister, Helena, also did herself proud, clocking a massive personal best of 2.07.11 for silver in the women's 800m.