Secretary’s Weekly Report

Sportsman club members Bob McKie & Gary Heslington with Nick Adshead at Messac marking at Sheffield Tommy Johnson presenting Robert Dawson with the Vanrobaeys sponsorship for the Fougeres race

Another busy week with everything focussed on the Messac National. It came as no surprise that the club entry levels significantly dropped for the second race of the season. After a difficult first race and poor Saturday club racing there has been some major impacts across the UK racing scene. The lack of sunshine and the continued cold edge to prevailing Northerly winds has caused real problems even more so when associated and aggravated by unpredictable atmospheric disturbances. Our little gladiators when managed professionally do perform unbelievably well but “mother nature” can be devastating as we have experienced once again.

On Wednesday the 1st June members met up at our HQ with their entries for transporting early Thursday morning to Sheffield.

We ended up with 14 member’s sending 89 birds and overall there were 118 birds entered by 16 members in Section N. In the Open there were 6304 birds entered by 737 members. Once the birds were loaded we made the presentation of Vanrobaey sponsorship prizes to Driver, Dawson & Dawson who won 1st Sportsman FC and 1st Section N in the Fougeres National. Many congratulations again to the partnership. Everyone was also keen to congratulate club member Tommy Johnson, from Newton Aycliffe who topped the Durham Combine from Eastbourne. An excellent performance by Tommy and his son Wayne whose birds have already topped their Federation several times in Saturday racing this season.

Back to the Messac National which is also our Club Show race and although we had 59 birds in the show from 17 members many of the birds entered have fallen foul of the tough racing. I estimate that no more than 35 show birds have made it to the starting line.

There is some excellent prize monies to fly for:

1st £150. 2nd £75. 3rd £45. 4th £30
Single £10 Nom. winner takes all £140

So anyone lucky enough to still have birds competing we will try to keep you appraised of how this aspect of the race shapes up in real time.

Looks like another hard race today Sunday 5th June with the birds liberated at 0940am in no wind after a one day holdover. They cleared the race point well. Best of luck to everyone.

Bob Mckie