This is the main competition of the year for county teams. Thirty-one had entered for the competition held over two days at Bisley. Sadly no sun this year — instead plenty of clouds to keep us company.

Suffolk’s squad of ten for the main events was augmented by three extras who’d volunteered to help out and to shoot in the first and only individual competition of the weekend: The Jarvis. This is shot at 300 yards with two sighters and fifteen shots to count. It was won - as ever — by a top score of 75.12 followed by a tie-shoot. No one from Suffolk quite reached that level, but Sid Broughton deserves an honourable mention and quite a lot of teasing for dropping his last to count for a 74.

The Short Range Match: Suffolk tried a new tactic this year - the war of the sexes! Four girls on one target and four boys on the other. A deliberate decision was taken to have dedicated coaches, rather than swapping over for coaches to shoot. The day was also made much easier for John Horton acting as adjutant and Sid Broughton and John Foulston staying on to register keep.

Conditions were overcast and damp, with drizzle in the afternoon, and a light and generally benign breeze.

The range of scores was relatively tight by our standards but only one 50 was surprising for the conditions. The result was virtually identical to last year’s — one less point on the score and one place further down the rankings. We had again made the cut for the top 25 teams to shoot the long range match - but only just.

THE LONG RANGE: The only change to the team was swapping the coaches around — Andy coached the boys and David the girls. We didn’t make use of our best wind coach (Robin) as he will not be available during the main meeting so this was an opportunity to try out other combinations. The weather was cold and windy but fortunately no rain. We drew the centre of the range for both distances and coped reasonably at 900, but struggled at 1000 in conditions that got a lot more tricky by the end.

Again, a very similar final result to last year — a team score of 1100 and 19^th place (2001 — 1101 points & 22^nd). Another ten points would have moved us up to 11^th place so we were not far off the pace, but still at the wrong end of the pack.