Cheshire's Fast-Trap Team Wins Bronze at the National Inter-counties ABT Championships, Beverley C.T.C, 9th October 2016:

Report by Andy Pownall on behalf of the Cheshire Fast-Trap Team:

06:55 hours and our dogs start baying in the farmyard; I realise that this heralds the earlier than planned arrival of three of my teammates. At least everyone is keen. The four of us pile into Dave O'Donnell's rather smart Porsche and we set off for Beverley C.T.C. 09:00 hours finds the four of us sat over hot drinks and a variety of breakfast snacks at Beverley, these are soon polished off and by 09:30 hours we begin to wonder where the other two teammates are; fortunately we hear they are not far away and all six of us arrive at trap C ready to shoot at 10:30 hours.

The first 25 goes quite well and we feel we have made a good start, this confidence is soon shattered as we all suffer a blizzard of "no birds" on trap D and most of the teams scores are affected. Scores pick up again on trap A, and then slight loss of good light for trap B puts us all in low spirits.

We gather for a team photo. Then, after looking at a stationary score board for several minutes, we decide to head for home feeling sure our score would not come close. Imagine our surprise to discover on Monday morning that Cheshire had come third and Bob Gallagher, our team high gun, had comfortably taken D class.

Team scores were Bob Gallagher 86, David (Fred) Thornley 84, Steve Johnson 83, Andy Pownall 81, Dave O'Donnell 80 and Fred Whitehurst 75; as the best 5 scores from 6 count, the Cheshire team's total score was 414.

Yorkshire came first and runners up were Lancashire.