Competitors take on each other in individual handicap competition

THIS week the Hinckley Air Rifle League’s emphasis moved away from teams to the shooters with the shooting of the individual competitions at Ashby Road Sports Club.

The league’s membership was split into four roughly equal groups based on the shooters’ averages over the season, plus each shooter was assigned a handicap, again based on their average, with the intention of giving all the shooters a reasonable chance of winning.

Group ‘A,’ for the league’s top shooters, was kicked off by Todd Astill who didn’t need to use any of his handicap to score his 30.4. The three following shooters – Jon Storer, Andrew Cryer and Phil Hood – all shot reasonably well but their totals of 28.6 (28 before his handicap was added), 29.9 (29.3) and 29.5 (28.3) respectively weren’t ever going to be good enough. Paul Huddlestone’s 30.2 (30.2) put him into second place in the group, a position that remained unchallenged by the next four shooters, the best of which were Glen Dainter’s 29.8 (29.3) and John Bray’s 29.2 (28.3), but Pete Finney supplanted him with his 30.4 (29.4), to book a place in the two shooter final, although Darren Hicks missed out on displacing him, with his last two shots failing to ring the bell, leaving him on 29.7 (28.3).

Todd did very nearly as well in the final, scoring a 30.3 (30.3) but Pete came nowhere near to emulating his first round performance scoring just 28.4 (27).

Group ‘B started strongly with Dave Brown’s 30.3 (29.3) and Bob West’s 30.2 (29.2) but the following shooters didn’t come close to this level until Seamus Moore’s 29.9 (28.1) and Glenn Foxon’s 30.3 (28.3). Rob Forman achieved the highest score of the night with an excellent 30.5 (30.5) whilst the final two shooters, Mike Sansome and David White, missed out on a place in the group final with 29.8 (28.2) and 30.2 (28.2) respectively.

Rob Forman’s score gave him a deserved place in the group final, where he was joined by Dave Brown, who got the nod ahead of Glenn Foxon thanks to countback. Rob shot first in the final where he again shot excellently, scoring 30.4 (30.4) and whilst Dave again did well, but not quite good enough, scoring 30.2 (29.2).

The first notable score in group ‘C’ came from Nigel Jackson who scored 30.3 (29.3), after which Jackie West added a 30.0 (27.1), Daniel Lakin scored 30.2 (28.2), Alf Shore also scored 30.2 (28.2), and Innes Droomer achieved another 30.2 (28.2). This looked like being something of a nightmare for the adjudicators with three shooters on the same score tied for second place but fortunately for them the last shooter in the group, Lorraine White, scored an outstanding 30.3 (30.3), to join Nigel Jackson in the final.

Nigel did markedly less well in the final but, thanks to his handicap, still achieved a reasonably challenging 30.0 (27.0). Lorraine’s response went reasonably well but the outcome was in doubt until her fifth shot scored a clean bull, allowing her to take her total to 30.1 (28.1) and win the group.

Robert Good opened the shooting in group ‘D’ with a first-rate 30.2 (29.2) and whilst no other shooters in the group came close to matching his actual score, there were four shooters – Elaine Metcalfe (25.0), Olivia Wainwright (24.0), Paul Barwell (26.0) and Darren Statham (27.0) – who all reached 30.0, thanks to their handicaps, and Bertie Bugden who came close with his 29.6 (26.1).

Of the four shooters on 30 it was Olivia who countback favoured, giving her the opportunity to shoot first in the group final, where she repeated her first round score of 30.0 (24.0). Robert didn’t do as well as previously, but he did do just enough to take the win after scoring 30.1 (27.1).