EAST MIDLANDS INTERCOUNTIES SKEET

HELD AT NORTHAMPTON SHOOTING GROUND

ON SUNDAY 23^RD OCTOBER

 

The met. office doesn’t always get it right and this was certainly one occasion that we hoped the weather forecast would be wrong as it was predicted that torrential rain would fall.  It was not wrong – those arriving at the ground told tales of standing water on the roads as windscreen wipers struggled to cope with the volume of water falling from the sky.

 

With 20 squads entered there could be no deviation from the appointed start time so our team manager, Chris Bone, had no option but to brave the elements on a 9.20 am squad.  A bit of rain (massive understatement!) is no problem to Chris as 1 ½ hours later he was back in the clubhouse with a 95 on the board.

 

By the time our next squad went out things were looking up. The rain had started to ease and eventually the sun broke through but, of course, never satisfied we couldn’t decide whether this made it better or worse as the sun made picking up the targets much more difficult particularly from peg 1. 

 

In spite of the conditions some big scores were beginning to appear on the scoreboard but we were well pleased with the consistency of our senior team scores.  Matt Robinson was top scorer for Lincolnshire with a 96 followed closely by Chris on 95, Richard Cundall 94, Simon Vogel 93, Richard Thompson 92, Mike Burton 91, Eric Cundall 86 and Mark Porter 83 so we finished on a team score of 561 which, not unusually for us, put us at the top of the leaderboard for a while but with the mighty Suffolk and the home team, Northants, still to go it was always going to be tough.  In the event Suffolk just swept the board with some massive scores giving them 581 and Northants 572 so we finished in 3^rd place.

L-R: Mike Burton, Matt Robinson, Simon Vogel, Marvin Houghton

The veteran team fared rather better with some early scores from Doug Moore of 95 and Marvin Houghton 93.  This was improved upon by Brett Aisthorpe’s 94 but not enough to overcome the Leicestershire veteran team who posted a 96 and a 95 so we had to settle for second place but one cannot be personally disappointed with scores at this level – it is really good shooting.

L-R: Richard Thompson, Jackie Houghton, Saira Boardman, Mark Porter

L-R: Eric Cundall, Paul Stennett and Brett Aisthorpe

 

Richard Cundall (left) and Doug Moore (right)

A disappointing day for the ladies.  Saira Boardman was on fine form until the sun on layout 3 caused visibility problems but she still finished on a very respectable 86 with Jackie Houghton on 77 and Liz MacGreggor White on 71 but sadly this was not enough to compensate for a magnificent score of 93 from Nottinghamshire’s Hayley Denoon who shot in absolutely the worst conditions of the day on the early squads and her team mate, Olivia Stevens who also finished on 86.

 

It was not an easy shooting day but, in spite of the abysmal weather, everybody had a smile on their face and there was the usual spirit of friendly competition between the counties.

 

With 6 out of the 8 counties still in with a chance of winning the much coveted Director’s trophy, there was everything to play for.  Two of the counties, Nottinghamshire and Norfolk, soon fell by the wayside as for various reasons they were unable to field their best teams.   In addition, Northamptonshire, who had only been able to field a team in one other event so were not in contention, could very easily put a spanner in everybody’s works by taking points from those who were vying for the top slot.  When the final numbers were crunched Suffolk’s monumental scores were enough to give them the maximum 8 points making them the overall winners but our consistent scoring beat Northants by one point giving us 7 points and putting us in second place.  Disappointing to be so close but gratifying to know that we actually got to be this close so all of our teams should be congratulated on a job well done.

For all the results click here.

For the final Director's trophy standings click here.