I’ve only once made an Inter-Regionals team and that was for the MFTA when someone didn’t turn up, I ended up scoring a point and MFTA won by two points!!!
I think that will be the only time I won’t be shooting on a spare with the way things are going. That said I know my place, on a bad day I’m C Grade, on a good day I’m A Grade, I thought I’d evened out a bit over the last season but a couple of months off seems to have killed me.
My seated position is good, solid and rarely with a wobble unless I don’t get the front foot solid, my kneelers have gone to rat shit, I could have always counted on getting 4 but not any longer. My standers are usually 50-75% on an average day but I’m trying to improve that all the time. I don’t head out thinking or even wanting to be Jack Harris because I simply haven’t completely lost touch with reality; like I said I know my place.
No doubt a few of you will be thinking well that’s a bit self-defeating Martin, not really, I’m brutally aware of the highest level I’m going to hit and you know what, I’m OK with that. Getting to A Grade one day is my goal and I’m more than happy to have a good go with Phil. I’ve won some trophies and had some great days out, along with meeting a load of cool people. I enjoy touring around with Phil, having a laugh, making some videos and taking pictures but I’m still serious about getting back to MY top form, we’ll have to see how this season goes.
It was another 5.30am start but this time I’d remembered my food from the fridge and my camera bag, so it was a slightly better start. I kept myself amused by shouting text messages to my new TomTom to send to Phil, even tho he was sat next to me, childish I know but we both laughed at it for saying out loud all swearing I was doing. Even though I had my food this time we stopped off for a double sausage and egg with a drink, I knew this would put Phil to sleep and 15 minutes later he was out like a baby and nodding like a baby bird with a heavy head, always makes me laugh and never gets old.
We dropped on the site, helped out and booked in on a spare for group 5, not the best because if it was anything like yesterday the targets will have been battered again by the 48 people before us. I checked the power on the gun, along with the zero, I really didn’t fancy wasting a load of lead on the plinker because the weather was pretty much the same.
I was indeed correct, the targets were absolutely battered but you could get a better reading off them than yesterday, defo right to left at the start and up to 100mm of it! I did my best to stay focussed and not let the misses knock my duck off and it was working I was putting some nice stuff together and only missing due to the wind, I could live with that after yesterday. Yeah defiantly better, this helped picked me up a fair bit so that was me dug in for the day. I missed the long stander but got the 25mm, in fact, I hadn’t missed a 25mm stander all weekend, mega! By target 18 the wind was really picking up and the course was just as long as yesterday. On Target 18 I was hanging off the back of the right-hand side of 8.
It landed on the join between its paw and neck, I’d guess that was about 140mm of wind, there’s no way it felt like that much and I thought I was defo overcooking it to start with but thought what the hell, that’s taking some wind. Everything was kinda going OK until I get to the bowl at the bottom where I dropped 6 alone. That was tough going but at least I didn’t do as bad as I did yesterday and the course was a bit better than yesterday but still too long for the weather and lacked a creative edge I usually look for. It was that long I ranged a target at 40yds and looked up for the standing sign!
I’ve no idea how Dan did a 37 but well done to him but I did watch Nathan at the start miss 3 on the first 2 lanes and then not miss another, that’s some shooting.
