THESE five girls were the ones to have around you if you suffered an accident.

They formed the team from Blackbird Leys, Oxford, which won the Oxfordshire Nursing Cadets’ Junior Cup at the annual St John Ambulance Brigade competitions.

The competitions for nursing and ambulance cadets were held at Wood Green School, Witney, in 1970.

Pictured with their lucky mascots are, left to right, Jane Gardner, Maureen Lambe, Carol Epton, Anne Whitty and Rebecca Denson.

They and their rival nursing teams were challenged to deal with a fictitious incident involving two women preparing food in a kitchen.

One woman collapsed to the ground with a heart attack and as she fell, she struck the second woman, breaking her leg and gashing her arm.

The Blackbird Leys team clearly impressed the judges, as they were awarded first prize.

Ambulance cadets in the competition faced an equally challenging task.

They had to deal with the aftermath of a road accident, with a crashed car and a seriously injured passenger.

The passenger, a member of the Casualties Union from Abingdon, was said to be cut and paralysed from the waist down.

The rescue teams were given 15 minutes to do as much as they could to help the ‘victim’.

Banbury ambulance cadets were the winners, but the Blackbird Leys ambulance team did not come away empty handed – they won the Wynee Cup for the neatest uniforms.

The cups and trophies were presented by Richard Early, president of the Witney division of the St John Ambulance Brigade and a well-known name in the Witney blanket industry.