Nottinghamshire Sweep the Board

I don’t think since the day I came up with the Directors Trophy format on a late night dog walk did I ever envisage that it would be so warmly embraced and considered to be so integral to the East Midlands Intercounties series.

I must admit it has taken a few years to become a real consideration to some counties, but I think it’s fair to say, that in its 7^th year it has finally become an important side event, with counties selecting their teams with a view of adding league points to their running total.

This year has been by far the most exciting, annual achievers Suffolk falling by the wayside early in the competition left the door wide open for former winners in 2013 Notts, Lincs and Northants, the latter for a few years having weakened their chance’s by failing to field trap teams.

So the scenario for the Intercounties ABT held at Nottingham was simple, any of the aforementioned teams coming first was just about going to clinch them the Directors Trophy, Lincs held a one-point lead over Notts and Northants, so the scene was set and the unknown quantity of a Northants side in the ABT for the first time in many years.

As much as the whole thing was a mouth-watering thought, Notts had other ideas, and in the first squads out posted a just about unbeatable target for other counties to aim at. Lincolnshire next out couldn’t get a decent blow in and fell well short of the needed total, then counties throughout the day equally failed to match or even endanger the Notts total.

Later in the day the Northants team arrived fresh from a leading score in the National Intercounties All Round, which incidentally they went on to win, but again fell short of a challenging score, but enough to squeeze into a surprising runner up berth, outpointing Cambridge by a single target.

So its many congratulations to Ricky Crowshaw, Russ Hufton, Paul Meakin, Rob Denoon, Lee Clements and Adrian Snell for taking the Senior title with a score of 367/400, also many congratulations to Northants who I think surprised themselves by claiming second spot, so well done to Julian Williams, Mick Russell, Mike Rolstone, Leon Gill, Simon Vogel and Glen Thompson.

In the other team categories, it was pretty much the same story, GB shooter Rachel Parish dominated the ladies event with a superb score of 90, Megan Gamble and Jenny Hilton dong the remainder of the work to get the Notts girls over the line beating nearest rivals Lincolnshire.

In Vets the Notts quartet cruised to victory with Mick Feather top scoring on 93, Ken Rimington got the clinching score of 91 to win by 18 targets over Lincolnshire, Ash Parfrement and Paul Brown completed the winning line up.

Notts completed the clean sweep by taking the junior team title with a nine clay victory this time over nearest rivals Leicestershire, James Cheung top scored on 92 and also took the Junior High Gun Trophy, Jack Richards recorded the deciding score to gain victory.

With such a domination of the event shown by Notts it was no surprise to see that they had leapfrogged Lincs in the Directors Trophy league table to take the title, and the six best scores they needed came from 2 seniors, 2 vets, I junior and 1 lady, which I think endorses the point that the Directors Trophy is a real team event, and anyone regardless of category can have an effect in the end score.

The final reckoning showed a narrow 1-point win for Notts (35 Points) over Northants (34), with Lincs third (32), the final table is shown below.

	FIT	ESK	ESP	DTL	AR	ABT	TOTAL
BEDS	6	2	6	0	5	0	19
CAMBS	0	3	8	4	5	3	23
LEICS	8	1	5	2	3	6	25
LINCS	5	6	4	7	6	4	32
NOTTS	7	7	3	8	2	8	35
NORFOLK	0	5	0	6	0	6	17
NORTHANTS	0	8	7	5	7	7	34
SUFFOLK	4	4	2	3	8	0	21

 

Well that’s about it for this season, with just the ZZ Helice at Rugby & District this coming Sunday October 30^th.

Once again many thanks to Carl and all the team at Nottingham & District Gun Club for a very enjoyable day.

I’m pleased to say that the fixture venues for next season have already been decided upon, these can be found on the East Midlands CPSA website by clicking on the link below, or via the regions Facebook page.

Link for Fixture Allocation for 2017-

Link for Full Team Results -

Prize Money

1^st A Class – Richard Gilbert

2^nd A Class – Phil Barnard & Julian Williams

1^st B Class – Mick Feather

2^nd B Class – Rachel Parish

3^rd B Class – P Newton

1^st C Class – Jason Linnell

2^nd C Class – Jamie Dodd

3^rd C Class – Rob Denoon

1^st D Class – Richard Morris

2^nd D Class – Laurie Cookson

3^rd D Class – Leon Gill

4^th D Class – Jackie Houghton