First time picking up any firearm and shooting with it in several weeks – which is both good, because that’s the fun part of the sport, and bad, because dear grief but there’s a lot of rust. I don’t even want to think about rifle yet, so I shot pistol, and really just plinked. My goal in air pistol remains shooting a full match without missing the aiming mark, and today did not take me much further towards that goal. 74 , 84, 69!, 77, 84 , and 83 to give a total 471. Bleh.
The match itself was a bit of a mixed bag. Daniel’s coming along well, he put in 541 today. Once that man sorts out his head, and maybe his sway, he’s going to nail 570 very bloody fast. Shane Flynn and Iain Nash finished within a point of each other on 555 and 556 – nice to see the potential new DCU Captain giving the established old DURC Captain a bit of serious competition. Brian McEllistrim, the third of the Musketeers, came in at 532, a ways down the field from the other two, but his form is good. Given a bit more training time, I think he’s going to come on pretty fast. Whether he can get that time and captain UCDRC at the same time is another matter though.
Sean McFadden is breezing up through the scores the same way Susan did when she started – 538 today and by early next year, he’s going to be knocking on everyone’s door. Good. People are getting far too complacent again!
Meanwhile, last year’s DURC Squad didn’t show in strength, and worse, other than Paul who’s where he was at six or seven months ago on 518, those that came have dropped their standard a ways – Bernard, Karl and Tommy were both well into the 400s. Comes from not picking up a rifle between the Colours and now. Still, they have a few months to get back up to speed.
Best part of the match, however, was Julia Kaiser, who’s training in UCD for a few months, putting in a 589 with a 100/100. And that’s below her standard. It’s about time we got in someone who could put a solid boot into a few top-level arses to shift them off those laurels! š š