11th September 2008
With a few days of experience behind us, Thursday saw us return to the team matches in a hope to raise our games before the America match. The first match consisted of 2&10’s at 300 500 and 600x and despite the unusually crisp morning, it didn’t stop us brits from wearing our shorts and flip-flops. The Australian’s had a good laugh at us while enthusiastically telling us that they were ‘shivering like a dog sh***ing razorblades’.
We split into four teams and the coaches battled with an unusually strong 300x morning wind that had thankfully eased a bit by the time we got to 600. The Australian Green team had a convincing morning win only dropping 2 points to finish with a staggering 1198.70. Their gold team came in 2nd with an 1193.66 and the Bald eagles were just behind them on 1193.63. Our English XX Lions team of John P, James, Emma and Dave D, coached by Trem came in 4th on 1192.62 with James and Dave going clean each scoring 300 ex 300.
Our other three teams came in 6th, 7th and 8th with scores of 1190.62 (under Hinch), 1187.52 (under Langley) and 1185.58 (under Webbie).
Emma had a hard time in the morning suffering from being bashed by her rifle every time she fired. Her cheek piece needed altering nevertheless it was rather amusing when she came off the firing point announcing that she needed to ‘shave her butt’ to solve the problem!
The second team match of the day was a 2 and 15 at 1000x and as luck would have it, the wind flags were pointing opposite directions and the looming cold front meant that there was no mirage to help…interesting! However it was not as interesting as Webbie’s shoot . After getting down and missing his first two sighters, a closer inspection of his gun revealed that he had got down with 10 left on the wind! Catching the wind flags mid-fishtail Jonny pants cranked it back to a half left and proceeded to get Webbie a perfect X…he said he didn’t need the sighters anyway!
What we thought was an afternoon of pretty average scores actually turned into quite a successful sweep with 3 of our teams taking first, second and third. The English XX crowns (Andy, Tom, Kelvin and Stephen coached by Jeremy) came in top with a 585.19 ex 600. The Roses (Susie, Willy, Jane and David A coached by Hinch) came in second with 580.18. The Unicorns (Ed, Webbie, David L and Holly coached by Jonny pants) were in third with a 579.20. The Lions were not far behind with a 574.9 and finished in 6th. David L got the highest individual score of the team on a 147.6 and this was also the top score on the entire range.
Six of the team were invited to Bob Gamboa and Dennis Flaherty’s RV for steaks the size of plates and some very good Californian wine; most of the rest went to the “all you can eat” Chinese buffet. Alex’s language skills came in handy when trying to procure some wine glasses. When we got back to the accommodation, we played charades, and much hilarity ensued, particularly when Emma took to the floor to act out “Roxanne”!