NOTTS ARE HOT IN THE ICEY COLD

As per tradition the East Midlands Intercounties ABT held at Nottingham & District Gun Club sees the curtain come down on another highly entertaining and a hard-fought series of six shoots in the battle for the Directors Trophy which is now in its 9^th year.

Going into the shoot Team Suffolk held a healthy lead and it would take a disaster for them to throw it away, but history shows Suffolk don’t do disasters. Northants had a glimmer of a chance as did holders of the trophy Cambridgeshire, but with the early scores in and even with the majority of Team Suffolk stuck on the A1 in heavy traffic the writing was on the wall long before the Suffolk shooters arrived.

Early in the proceedings Notts Seniors had set a hefty target for the others to aim at, basically giving those chasing Directors Trophy points little or no chance of overhauling Suffolk. Russ Hufton top scored for the team on 96/100 and was ably backed up by Lee Clements 87, Rob Denoon 88, Rachel Parish 89, Kevin Warner 91 and Pete Arnett 88 to give them a team total of 364/400 giving them victory.

Senior Team Runners-Up Norfolk

Norfolk with a good track record in this discipline just failed by five targets to catch Notts and had to settle this year for the Runners Up berth, Russell Houghton top scored for Norfolk on 92, Paul Owen 84,   Jason Matthewson 88, Andy Bowers 89, Simon Owen 89 and Richard  Gilbert 89 completed the Norfolk line up.

Ladies Team Champions - Lincolnshire

In Ladies it was a two-way scrap for honours with just Cambs and Lincolnshire fielding teams which saw the Lincs quartet of Janet Stennett 74, Jackie Houghton 73, Caroline Hawkins 52 and Elena Taylor 82 run away with things and score a commanding victory finishing with a team score of 156/200.

Junior High Gun : Oliver Sampson - Nottinghamshire

Sadly in Juniors four counties tried to enter teams but were unable to field sufficient numbers to have a team competition, but it did leave us with a closely fought battle for the Junior High Gun honours and with all the scores in, two were locked together on 77 with a third just one clay behind, so it was to be a shoot off to decide the winner between Alex Banning of Northants and Oliver Sampson of Notts with Oliver just prevailing.

Veterans Team Champions - Lincolnshire

Wrapping things up Lincolnshire Vets overcame all with a narrow three clay victory over nearest challengers Norfolk and Suffolk. Lincolnshire recorded a team total of 181 with John Winn top scoring on 92 with great support from Dick Cooper 89, Norman Smith 83 and Richard Gray 87. Unluckiest shooter of the day goes to Veteran Ken Rimington from Nottinghamshire who recorded a hugely impressive top score on the day of 97/100 but unfortunately the remaining Notts shooters just couldn’t get enough to back up Ken’s score to give them victory.

A huge vote of thanks to everyone involved at Nottingham & District, especially the refs and ground staff that endured all types of weather for the duration of the shoot, and as always we would like to thank all the East Midlands shooters that have again supported us throughout 2018.

A good crowd stayed behind for the presentation.

In the final reckoning of the Directors Trophy points, as expected Team Suffolk cruised over the finishing line to give them their sixth victory from the nine years this competition has been running, runners up were Northants and Directors Trophy holders from 2017 Cambridgeshire finished third, the full and final standings are shown below.

Usually that’s our last shoot of the season, but we still have the rescheduled ZZ Helice at Rugby & District Gun Club on November 25^th, to book on please contact John Nightingale direct on 07770551491.

	ESP	SKT	FIT	DTL	AR	ABT	TOTAL
BEDS	4	4	7	0	7	0	22
CAMBS	6	6	8	2	4	4	30
LEICS	0	1	4	7	0	0	12
LINCS	3	5	3	5	5	6	27
NOTTS	2	3	2	8	3	8	26
NORFOLK	7	2	0	6	0	7	22
NORTHANTS	5	7	5	3	8	3	31
SUFFOLK	8	8	6	4	6	5	37