News

24th September 2011

We Fought The Law, and The Law Won!

The Winter Series got off to a flying start today with a good attendance, grey, but otherwise perfect, conditions, a flurry of new members and some really exciting shooting too.

The first mark in the sand was put down by John Tennison, scoring a very creditable 15/43 on his second card. For a while, that was looking a possible winner. Then Rob Law shot all of them, a 15/45 on his second card of the day. So now it was Rob's turn to have a nervous hour or two and many came close, but nobody quite equalled his score. Then on the very last card, up popped Paul Jones with a full-house of his own. On the same card, Gary Crofts secured third place for himself with a billiant 15/44 score - taking just 16 cartridges to kill all 15 birds.

The shoot-off between Rob and Paul see-sawed back and forth, first with Paul taking the lead, then Rob, then Paul, then back to Rob - who evenyually ran out the winner. Very well done to both of them and congratulations to Rob on his early lead in the series.

9th October 2011

Club Members Shine At Little Barrow Shoot

Today was the annual fund-raising shoot for Little Barrow Table Tennis Club, an event that the club has supported for some 39 years now! And once again, club members were well represented amongst the winners, with Russell Jones and John Tennison taking 1st and 2nd in the Open event and Mark Davies being the runner-up in the Intermediate class.

Russel Jones (Winner - Open) Tom Hopkins (Winner - Intermediate) Stephen Dodd (Winner - Novice)

The Intermediate event was won by Tom Hopkins and the Novice event by Stepehn Dodd - always nice to see young talent coming though. Watch for those names in the future!

29th October 2011

It's Beginning To Feel A Bit Like Winter!

Today's second shoot of this year's Winter Series was marked by a slightly more wintery feel to the weather. After a spell of exceptionally warm autumn weather, today's cold wind took many of us by surprise - winter woolies will definitely be dusted off for the next shoot. But on an exceptionally well-attended day the shooting was a bit below par, and for the first time since May nobody put in a full-house score.

As usual, it was John Tennison who was the first to throw down the gauntlet, scoring a brilliant 14/42 score on his very first card. Over the next couple of hours three other shooters, Gary Crofts, Russell Jones and Russell Pierpoint all matched John's early score, but nobody, it seemed could beat it.

But late on, on his fourth card Tom Crowther managed a 15/44 - just one second-barrel - and that ended up being good enought to win the day. So Tom gets his first 3 points for the Winter Series and John, Gary, Russell J. and Russell P. all get 3/4 of a point each for sharing 2nd and 3rd place. Well done to all.

26th November 2011

Winter Series? What Winter!

Well, the winter chill we felt at last month's shoot didn't last very long and today was a beautiful sunny late autumn day, mild but with enough wind to make the shooting very interesting indeed. Attendance was a bit down on recent shoots, probably down to people getting their Christmas shopping done.

Anyway, this was the third Winter Series shoot so the competition is starting to warm up too. Daryll Worman took to the field in blistering form, carding a 15/44 score on his very first line, just that one second barrel denying him a perfect full-house. Tom Crowther managed to equal that on his second card of the day. And then, for card after card after card nobody else could beat or even match that score. The wind was making things just a lttle bit too tricky.

The second-last card of the day saw Gary Crofts come up with a 15/44 of his own. But unfortunately for Gary, Tom Crowther, shooting on the same line registered a full-house 15/45. So in the end it was Tom who took first place, with Daryll and Gary sharing second and third, well-done to all three.

And so at the half-way stage the Winter Series is still wide open and there will be plenty to shoot for when it resumes in January. You can see the full Winter Series rankings and the overall year's scores on the Downloads page. Don't forget that our next shoot (on 10th December) is our Christmas shoot - so bring along your prizes for the "bring-a-prize-take-prize" and your silly hats and as many mince pies as you like!

10th December 2011

What a difference a year makes!

Last years Christmas shoot had to be abandoned because our trap refused to work in the Arctic conditions. Today could not have

been more different, only a slight nip in the air, with beautiful winter sunshine, at least for the first half of the day.

In fact the bright sunshine made visibility a bit of a problem and shooters struggled to find form, with the early cards shooting

straight into the sun. Tom Crowther took an early lead with a 65/75 on his first card, but improved this to 69/75 at his second

attempt. Many cards came and went and it began to look like 69 might just be good enough. The appearance of some cloud

cover solved the problem with the sun, but also produced a very sudden drop in temperature which seemed to unsettle many.

But then on a late card, both Mark Davies and Gary Crofts shot 69s of their own, thus forcing a three-way shoot off. This proved

to be quite an exciting affair in itself, with the lead changing hands with virtually every shot, or so it seemed. In the end it was

Tom who ran out the winner, with Gary coming in second and Mark third. Well done to all three.

Keith was busy again with his camera - so be sure to visit the Photos page if you want to see his handywork. Next time it's back to

the Winter Series, that's on the 14th January. Please note that the full fixture schedule for 2012 is now available on the Fixtures

page. So, all that remains for this year is to wish all our members and guests, and their families a wonderful Christmas and a

very happy and prosperous 2012.

14th January 2012

Gary Crofts crowned Champion (again!) and Keith Hegarty the Most-Improved Shooter

The start of our new year was marked by the most beautuful winter sunshine today and just enough frost to remind you that the Winter Series was

only half-way through. But first-off there were a couple of awards to be presented. The trophy for the Most Improved Shooter this year has gone

to a very well deserving Keith Hegarty. Keith managed to improve his shoot average by over 16 percentage points, well done Keith! For the

third year in a row the Club Champion crown goes to Gary Crofts - and with an average score over the whole year of 95.3%, who could argue

that he doesn't fully deserve it? Superb shooting from Gary who keeps on raising that bar for all of us!

On to the shooting, and the frosty sunshine caused a few headaches, particularly on the earlier cards which were shooting straight into the

full sun. But this was our only 10-bird shoot of the year and so it was pretty much guaranteed that only a full-house would be good enough.

The first of these was provided by Tom Crowther on his first card. Inevitably Gary Crofts matched this on his first card too. Many cards came and

went, the sun playing a major role in the proceedings.

Russell Jones came so close to joining Gary and Tom in the lead with a 10/29 score, just second-barreling his next-to-last bird. But the only

people who could match Gary and Tom's scores were Gary and Tom themselves - both carding a second full house apiece. And so a shoot-off

was required between Gary and Tom.and it was Tom who just sneaked the win. So it's 3 points to Tom, 2 to Gary and 1 for Russell for the Winter

Series and with 2 more shoots to go, it's looking like a 3-horse race between Gary, Tom and Rob Law still with an outside chance. Talking of Rob,

it was nice to see him back on his feet today after his operation - hopefully next time he'll be fit enough to resume his bid for the Winter Series.