Article: 2010 FITASC Championship of Oceania

16 N.Z. shooters made it to Renmark-Berri (2 ½ hrs North-East from Adelaide) for the 22nd Oceania Sporting Clay tournament. Fortunately to reach Remark you have to travel thru (well near it anyway) the famous Barossa Valley and some of us took full advantage of the wine tours and tasting for a few days preceding the event. Two soft practice fields, set purposely to trap the unwary, were set up for Friday with competition commencing on Saturday for 3 days. The set up was 8 (old style) par cours each one of 25 targets from 4 shooting stands, Saturday and Sunday you shot 3 par cours each day, and Monday 2, totalling 200 targets. The opening ceremony was a little disappointing for us as everyone was in No.1’s (several wearing poppies as a mark of respect for ANZAC weekend, appreciated by some Aussies) after the superb Maori welcome and challenge in Rotorua for the last Oceania we thought the Aussies would try to top that, no flags of nations, no national anthems and as is normal a small gift to shooters was missing. One can only imagine they were still getting over the incredible efforts they had put in for the World Champs last year and were still recovering from all that work. On the other hand though they threw all manner of targets at us and being a relatively flat ground employed towers, cherry pickers, high stands and speed. One stand had a 20 meter cherry picker which was 76 meters from the stand, the target was on edge and driven down landing 50 odd meters to your right. Probably a 60 meter+ target. Most of the guys seemed handle it ok shooting 3 or 4 out of the menu. I think it was the ‘biggest’ target there, but every trap was either tilted over, had the spring wound right up or had the targets doing a couple of things in the air making them very tricky and hard to read. As usual we were made to feel very welcome with the usual banter and bull…. filling up the down time, catering and refreshments were up to the normal Aussie standard and most probably put on a pound or two. Two of the N.Z. shooters departed from the norm this year and had camper vans, one unfortunately seemed to be in all sorts of strife most of the time, and poor Ian Swale had erected his awning only to have the wind come up and blow it over the roof of the camper while still attached at one end! At one stage Gordon MacPhee in fits of laughter, struggling to tell the assembled multitudes what he had seen, and I’m not totally sure of the order, but Ian and Richard Foster standing on the shoulders of the other trying to get in the camper window, yes the keys were locked inside!! Gordon was just a bit slow to get his camera out! On the social front some of us had found, on our last visit to Renmark a stunning little restaurant right in the middle of the bush, the Mallee Fowl, old wooden tables, rabbit traps holding table numbers, just ask Ray McFarlane how real they were as he, while trying to set one to show a couple of townies, sprung it on his thumb!! The place was full of Australian outback memorabilia stuck in every spare space, the food, cooked on a huge hotplate and grill in the middle of the restaurant, was superb. Some of us went for a second night when the Aussies booked it out and it seemed to become an engagement party for Carla Battistella and Jeff Zammitt, Jeff who incidentally on talking to Ray Bishop about duck shooting immediately booked a ticket to N.Z. for opening weekend. They were in my squad and what a great couple, Carla has been following Jeff around for a while and has now started shooting, even shooting a 20/25 which a lot of experienced shooters couldn’t match.
David Alley and Thomas Bishop were top New Zealanders home overall each on 164/200, followed by our other two juniors, James Canard and James Rastick. Thomas Bishop, only a young junior with many more years before moving into seniors, is making junior sporting shooting very healthy indeed, add to that the two James’s gaining international experience things are looking good. They were shooting well, and finished on 157/200 a piece, and what a thrill it was to see the two boy’s foot it on those big shoot off targets in front of an appreciative gallery. Sox Pilipesidis won the event on 183; current World FITASC Champion Damian Birgan was second one target behind on 182. In other classes, juniors took 2nd. 3rd. and 4th. Thomas Bishop second outright and James Rastrick over James Canard in a shoot off. Graeme Brown (148/200) won Super Vets with Gordon MacPhee 3rd. (141/200)
In the teams New Zealand took silver in all the categories except Ladies where we disappointingly didn’t field a team. The open and Veterans teams, I must say were convincingly beaten, some might say thrashed, but our Junior team was beaten by 1 target 486/487, and the old super vets too by 1 target 417/418 a very good effort, showing the Aussies had a real fight for the clean sweep.
This shoot was also the final of the Oceania Cup; it’s a culmination of the Oceania tournament points plus one of the two Grand Prix’s that were held in Geelong and Alexandra. In the Seniors Damien Birgan was first, followed by Sox Pilipasidis then Chris Brown, Renae Birgan won ladies, Juniors was won by young Aussie Paul Adams with N.Z.ers Thomas Bishop second and James Rastick third. In Vets we managed a 15th with Allen Alley, 19th Ron Madden and 20th. Neil Winsloe, room for improvement I think. Super Vets faired better with Ray McFarlane 1st, Bryan Rafferty (Aust) 2nd and our own Graeme Brown 3rd with Gordon MacPhee 4th. Richard Foster 5th. and Ian Swale 7th.
We are hoping that people get on board and try for these International cups as there is plenty of opportunity to shoot the qualifying matches, remember you only need to shoot two of the three, only one, the Oceania being compulsory, one is always held in Geelong, next years Oceania is due to be held in New Caledonia around Easter and our Grand Prix, hopefully in March and being hosted by Wanganui.
Ron Madden for the Sporting Committee.