The End

The morning of the America Match dawned and the team arose with most well rested and ready for the match. The team had been announced the night before and rifles had all been cleaned in readiness for some pre-shoot blow offs. Breakfast was had at the hut and then everyone assembled at the 300 yard firing point (apart from Phil Chapman-Sheath, who was to be our scrutineer in the butts for the morning). The course of fire for the match is fifteen to count at 300 and 600 yards, and 800 and 900m. The wind conditions were quite still and it was the hottest day of the meeting so far. 300 yards started reasonably well, with the Canadians dropping 2 points out of 600, GB 3 and the US 6. This was followed by another high scoring range at 600 yards. The US went clean, the Canadians dropped 4 and unfortunately we had a V bull on the wrong target to drop 6, leaving us with a tough task for the afternoon. A rough firing point had caused the left target team to set up on the left of their point, where the closest 31 number board (about 150 yards away) was unfortunately in line with target 32, making it all too easy to cross-fire. There will be target numbers on the stop butt again next year.

After a lunchtime spent cooling down in the hut, we turned up to 800m to work hard and dropped three points. Unfortunately the US only dropped one point and so we had to do our best to go clean at 900m to give us a chance. We didn’t quite make it and dropped a further two points for a total of 2386.318. Unfortunately for us this wasn’t good enough as two of the other teams shot superbly. The Canadians, in one of their best ever shoots, finished with 2391.292 and the US were on 2392.339, a record score beating GB’s 2006 total by 19 V bulls. A special mention must go to Jon Underwood, Angus McLeod and Alastair Haley, who all put in 300′s in this match, and have all gone clean in all four DCRA team matches (675ex675). Pat Vamplew noted that, in performance terms, only one point had separated three of the teams over 480 shots – an extraordinary match. The standard of team competition over the past four days had been remarkable and the Americans and Canadians had pushed us so hard in the other matches that they richly deserved their results in this last one. It was a good feeling to be able to congratulate them after having carried the other matches with the highest ever aggregate score.

After a brief prize giving, we all returned to the hotel for a quick turnaround before taxis came to take us to the Murray Street Kitchen for our final team dinner. Excellent food and drink were consumed, various team members were congratulated and thanked and almost all fell foul of the Kangaroo Court before, at last, a little exploration of the nocturnal offerings Ottawa and Hull had to offer.

There was no lie-in the next morning as kit needed to be packed, the hut cleared up and fridges and other items returned to storage. The Captain also added some footwear to the Shoe Tree (as is traditional) before the team drove back to Toronto. We arrived at the airport with four hours to go before the flight took off, only to be faced with an initially efficient but eventually frustratingly slow check in, punctuated by a few gift presentations by the Captain. Three and a half hours later we were able to start the run through security’s fast track to get to the boarding gate just in time. All the team made it safely to the gate just in time and so ended a fun, demanding and successful 2014 GBRT tour to Canada and the USA!

Or so we thought…

British Airways managed to rub salt in to the wound of the Toronto experience by not delivering the Adjutants bag at Heathrow, with Paul W suffering a similar fate. Not only did this delay the team further, but BA even managed to mess up the claim reports too, swapping the names on the claims round and (really special this one) managing to quote the same bag tag for BOTH claims… resulting in the Adj getting Pauls luggage, and once he had sorted out the mess, then receiving his own two days later!