Pipe band season opens
IT WAS a successful opening weekend of the season for Argyll pipe bands at the Gourock Games on Sunday.
THE NEW competition season got off to a winning start for Argyll pipe bands.
Traditionally the season opener in the west of Scotland, Gourock Highland Games saw 33 bands compete across the grades.
Last year’s Grade One champion of champions and runners-up in the worlds, Inveraray and District Pipe Band, came out top in the Grade One contest – but not as comfortably as some might have imagined.
They were pushed all the way by Scottish Power Pipe band led by Pipe Major Chris Armstrong – with the bands separated by just a single point on ensemble preference.
In the junior ranks, Oban High School under Pipe Major Angus MacColl won both the Juvenile Grade A and B competitions, with Dunoon Grammar School in third place in Juvenile A, led by Pipe Major Craig Wilson. Newly-revitalised Dunoon Argyll Pipe Band – an amalgamation of the former Dunoon Argyll and Cowal pipe bands – came a creditable fifth in Grade Four.
Winning Grade Four and entering bands across many grades up to Grade One was the phenomenal Johnstone Pipe Band.
Notable as much for the sheer number of players at its disposal as the quality of performance, the band includes a number of pipers and drummers from Argyll.
The competition bandwagon rolls on to Paisley this weekend, where Inveraray and District, under Pipe Major Stuart Liddell, will be defending the Grade One British title they won last year for the first time.
They will be joined at St James Playing Field, Paisley on Saturday May 20 by bands from all over Argyll and the isles for the first major contest of the season.