MR & MRS TRIUMPH

(L-R) Marvin & Jackie Houghton, Ken Rimington, Malc Craven

Nottingham & District Gun Club were our hosts for the All Round Championships, and this year’s entrants were to be treated to the first ever shooting of English Sporting on N & DGC’s newly acquired land.

Sadly for the umpteenth time this year the weather gods were not smiling on us with cold and grey conditions, but hopefully soon we will see something of a summer.

The Ladies event was to be a straight race between Rachel Willcock from Leicestershire who had recently won the English Sporting and Jackie Houghton from Lincolnshire who had narrowly lost in a shoot off for the Ladies ABT title. Jackie at home on her favoured trap disciplines took the lead from the off scoring 23(DTL), 21(ABT) and a very tidy 24(SKT) to give her a nice cushion on Sporting which gave Rachel virtually no chance of catching her. Jackie recorded 16 on the Sporting and that was enough for her to take the title finishing on 84, Rachel having to settle for the silver medal.

Junior Champion - Ed Redmile - Lincolnshire

Edward Redmile from Lincolnshire was surprisingly the only junior competitor but still recorded a very steady 75, the high spot being a 24 on the Skeet. This is Edward’s first East Midlands Junior title and I’m sure we are going to see more of him in the coming years.

In Veterans it was a very close thing with Notts competitors Ken Rimington and Dave Sayer all square after the first three disciplines, with Dave’s favoured discipline of Sporting to come you would have thought it was his title for the taking, but Ken had other ideas scoring a near faultless 24 to take the Vet’s honours with a score of 90, three clays in front of Dave who finished second, Malc Craven from Lincolnshire completed the placing’s finishing third, the highlight of his round being a straight on the skeet.

In Seniors John “JJ” Lee from Leicestershire set the bench mark of the day shooting early on scoring 91, but later in the morning both Russ Hufton from Nottinghamshire and Marvin Houghton from Lincolnshire both added a couple more to the leading total, Marvin clocking up a couple of straights on the DTL & Skeet with his downfall being the Sporting where five clays escaped the gun.

So to the shoot off, ironically the discipline drawn from the hat was sporting and it was an eventful day for the sporting layout, born only two weeks earlier thanks to staff and local shooters who had created a superb shoot on the land formerly known as Oxton GC. Alan Blackbourn from Lincolnshire was the first ever shooter to straight the course and now it was to be the venue to decide the destination of one of the oldest East Midlands Championships.

After one round in the shoot off the pair were still locked together and it wasn’t until the duo moved to stand 4 could they be separated, Marvin straighted it and left Russ no margin for error, sadly for Russ one of the crossers beat him and it was all over, the honours went to Marvin, Russ second and John Lee taking third.

Many thanks must go to Nottingham & District for doing such a great job, especially on the sporting layout. Now you too can try out the Sporting layout totally free of charge, on Tuesday 5^th June to celebrate the Jubilee Bank Holiday Nottingham are giving away a free round of 75 Sporting clays to everyone, all you do is provide the cartridges.

The next East Midlands event is back at Nottingham next Sunday (27^th May) for the Single Barrel; telephone entries are now being taken.

Check out the East Midlands FACEBOOK page for more photographs.

PRIZE MONEY

AA 1^st – John Lee

A – 1^st – Marvin Houghton

A – 2^nd – Alan Blackbourn & Adam Curtis

B – 1^st – Dave Thurlow

C – 1^st – Bob Firth

C -2^{nd  _}  Mark Lewis