Day 19

Following a night of torrential rain the team were expecting a dousing first thing but all remained mostly dry for the final two ranges of the Gibson at 300m and 600 yards. The level of scoring remained high with seven of the team achieving 150’s (including the 800 metre shoot from yesterday). This included a very chuffed captain who declared that he believed this to be his first 150 ever!

This leaves one shoot left in the grand, the Gatineau, which is squadded in an effort to level the playing field, according to the position of shooters in the Grand Aggregate. Most of the team are in the ‘hot’ detail, with a smattering shooting in other details.

Notable events this morning were mercifully thin on the ground, possibly because some people appeared to be more tired than they should have been. David Armstrong managed to lose Nigel Ball for a while when taking him to the 300m range but thankfully he was found safe (if not sound) shortly afterwards.

The Grand Aggregate at the end of the Gibson shows Kent Reeve from the USA in the lead with Fazal Mohideen two points behind. Jon Underwood is one point further behind making him 5th but with a ‘shed load’ more V-bulls than the leaders. Other top ten Grand Agg GB names are Emma Nuttall 6th, Jane Messer 8th, and Ian Shaw at 10th, all with five points off in total. In the Coulter Aggregate (for U25′s, based on the Grand up to today), Will Broad came 1st and Lindsey McKerrell 2nd. More silver for the team!

Certain team members chose to supplement lunch with cold pizza from the night before, much to the disgust of John H. who wanted to throw them away, only for him to be observed about five minutes later happily tucking in!

And so the first team match of the DCRA Meeting, the Outlander. The DCRA had cunningly changed this shoot to 600 and 900 metres instead of 600 yards and 900m. This resulted in a lot of old hands telling the Adj he was wrong to demand attendance at 600m only to be proved wrong and we all had the opportunity to shoot at a novel distance (660 yards). The bull is proportional but the aiming mark and inner are a bit smaller. Two broadly even teams were entered for the match so that everyone could be given a trialling opportunity for the subsequent matches. However, at the last minute, the incapacitated Nigel Ball and Emma Nuttall had to drop out of the GB ‘Red’ team, which meant that the two coaches (Matt Charlton and Bruce Winney) had to step in to replace them. Surely this would tip the balance in favour of the GB ‘Blue’ team and, for that matter, the USA who looked to be fielding their strongest line-up.

The match itself was interrupted by a thunderstorm (just as Will Broad had fired 13 v’s to count and had two shots to go). Here if there is lightning within 10km of the range, the Canadian military close the range until 30 minutes after the most recent lightning strike. This they did, but not in time for Jon Ford, who had to have several team members remove the biting ants that had decided to crawl up his legs as he shot…

After a long enforced break, punctuated by multiple captains’ meetings to discuss conditions, shooting was allowed to continue in order to complete the 600m distance in conditions that were steadily getting wetter. 900m, which would have been the more useful distance to shoot for America Match preparation, was abandoned. The Red team ended up with a superb 597.84 out of 600. All three points were dropped by the two coaches (as you might expect, the full-time firers having done themselves proud) but the Captain did put in a captain’s innings as last man down, knowing very well that he had to get a 74 or a high-vee 73 to have a chance of beating the Americans. He duly did his duty with 10 vees and we won by 5 V-bulls, with the range staff desperate to close the range in advance of the approaching storm as they waited for him. The GB Blue Team came third.

Once we had made it back to the hotel and unloaded the vans, the management team settled down to look at scorebooks and pick the team for the Canada match on Friday afternoon. Other team members decided to opt for different dinner options and a quiet night (much needed for some) before the final shoot in the grand (the Gatineau – 15 shots to count at 900m) and the first of the full blown international matches against the Canadians as well as the Americans and Japanese.