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Once more, all the vans departed the hotel at times suitable for their first shoot of the day, some more ‘suitable’ than others depending on the length of the lie in! We started the day shooting the President’s, at either 300m or 500 yards. The President’s is equivalent to our Queens II but everyone shoots it here. The combined score with the Letson is what determines the Governor General’s finalists and, unsurprisingly, everyone was keen to shoot well today! Conditions were generally quite benign leading to 28 fifties in 40 shoots. This also included a 50 for Martin Townsend, which was his first for the meeting and means that everyone has had at least one possible. Score of the morning was from Alastair Haley, who managed a 50.10, joining Paul Wheeler in the perfect possible club.

Following the morning’s shooting came a tie shoot between Jane Messer and Jon Underwood at 800m to determine who would win the trophy for Monday’s aggregate. Both took the risky option to cut ordinary 5s in their sighters and proceeded to get all five shots in the bull. However, Jane managed a superb 25.5 and duly beat Jon into second place with his 25.3. Another trophy for the team.

The afternoon’s conditions were even more benign and 18 out of the 20 shooters managed to get a 50 at 800m: unfortunately, not quite a clean sweep. 600 yards didn’t go without a few hiccups either: David Armstrong, despite describing the shoot as a “turkey shoot” prior to getting onto the point, had his first miss in years, after he forgot to change his sights but at least it was a sighter! As the results came through at the end of the day, it looked like fifteen of the team had made it into the Governor General’s final on Saturday (with Will Broad leading the way with 255.33). Unfortunately Jane has slipped to second in the Grand but Emma Nuttall has now moved up into third and we still have nine in the top 20. Seven went clean on the day, with Nigel Ball leading the way on v-bulls, having now completely banished his tendency to throw his last shot out to the left.

A quick turnaround was then required so that everyone could be back at the hut by 6.30 dressed in full Number Ones. This was so that the final preparations could be sorted out for the traditional cocktail party the GB team holds every year. This year, like every year, the theme was Pimm’s and the party involved a lot of chopping and making up of canapés. Transporting them from the hut to the DCRA tent in the rain proved to be quite interesting, but it was gratifying to see a substantial majority of the competitors at the event.

Most of the team then returned for a relatively quiet night before the last day of the Grand. Everyone will be involved in the two evenly matched Outlander teams in the afternoon, in which we hope to learn lots ahead of the big matches. Let’s hope that the promised rain tomorrow doesn’t turn into thunderstorms to interrupt shooting tomorrow…