Rushden & District Air Rifle League

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It is with great sadness that we announce that the funeral of our late friend, Stephen Catling, will take place this Friday 25th November at 1pm. The service will take place at: Nene Valley Crematorium, 305 Doddington Road, Wellingborough. NN8 2NX Flowers from family-members only please. Any donations in Steve’s honour, can be made to a charity of your choice. Those who want to wear a splash of a colour in celebration of Steve’s life, may wish to go with green… the colour of Gt Doddington F.C. where Steve served as Secretary.

Congratulations go to Rushden Athletic ‘B’ team captain Nicola Souter, who was in impressive form at Bedworth & District’s Open Shoot last Sunday. Nicola finished with an amazing combined score of 100.9 from a possible 101 points - shot across a mix of bell and paper targets. Nicola’s near-perfect round helped her secure two awards: • Best female shooter • Top shooter overall Best of all, Bill looks really over the moon about Nicola taking the bag of loot! Great to see a good number of RADARL shooters in attendance, including some faces from the past.

Our new website is now live and nearing completion - with lots of new content in the “About Us” section. Several sections are still being worked on - please report any errors / issues via the “Get In Touch” page.

When navigating around this new website, there may be times you want to get back to our “Home” page. There’s several ways to do this, but perhaps the quickest way is found at the top of each page:

Click the RADARL logo

As of this morning, “easy-to-print” fixtures sheets are now available from the “Downloads” page. The fixtures are laid out in a couple of different A4 formats and designed for easy printing on white paper. They can also be enlarged to A3, if you have access to a large-format printer or MFD.

The new RADARL ScoreSheets are now available to grab and print from the “Downloads” page… Colour and GreyScale versions of the ScoreSheet are included in the same file.

Due to the unfortunate closure of the Irthlingborough Club, the fixtures listed across this website and via the printable sheets on the “Downloads” page have all been rejigged. Nicola and I have made up envelopes for each team containing a starter-pack of: • Printed ScoreSheets for the new 5-a-Side / 10-Shot format • Fixtures Sheets (including 2-venue and 3-venue versions - just in case Ryan & Tracy find a new venue) • Practice Night ScoreSheets These starter-packs have been handed out to most of the teams already. The Finedon and Irthlingborough teams will find their envelopes waiting for them at their matches this Friday (7th October), care of Stephen C / Roy M. A couple of new files have made their way to the “Downloads” page: • Practice Night ScoreSheets • Electronic Version of the RADARL ScoreSheet The latter works on almost any device that can run Microsoft Excel - e.g. most Laptops / iPads / Android Tablets / even some SmartPhones (though probably not a great experience on a really small screen).

Solid shooting from Ath ‘C’, saw them take the first win of the season. Visit here to see the scores. The Excel ScoreSheet has been updated to fix an annoying bug - grab a new copy from the downloads page. The league table is on hold for now - as it’s having a behind-the-scenes makeover… I hope to have everything in place ahead of next weekend’s matches. Big shout out to Kevin Hawkings - again offering emergency air to shooters in need ;-)

Well done to Finedon Gladstone, who secured their first win of the season tonight. The scoresheet suggests quite a close match - with Finedon’s captain bagging the top individual score of the evening. Finedon’s score of 221 also matches the Ath ‘C’ winning score of last week. Click here to check out the latest results. The revamped League Table page is now live, improving on what we had before by: • Offering a simpler, cleaner layout that’s easier to read on a phone or tablet • Adding a separate “Team Statistics” panel - giving insights into how each team is performing • Improving the way conceded matches are handled and shown • Laying the groundwork for faster & easier updates to this website going forwards

Really pleasant evening of shooting between the two Rushden Athletic teams on Friday - with both teams making a dent in the club’s stash of Abbot Ale and racking up some beautiful fives. The scores are now live on the October fixtures page. There’s also some new experimental graphs underneath the tables on the League Table page - not much to see yet, but should get more interesting as our teams get more matches under their belts.

Another fun evening on Friday saw Earls Barton in good form - raising the bar with the highest team score of the season so far. This makes things very interesting in the league table - as all teams are tied with 2 points, 1 win and 1 loss! So as things stand, it’s just small differences in team averages that separate 1st-to-4th place - and the new team line-ups hold the promise of more surprises to come as the 2022/23 season rolls on.

So with the festive season upon us, it was nice getting the Rushden Athletic range decked out with some lights and tinsel before our match last Friday. We’ve resisted the urge to play any Xmas music so far, but might bow to peer pressure and bring out Wizard, The Waitresses and that legend, Noddy Holder, during our next couple of visits to the range ;-) This week’s notices: • Our good friends over at Bedworth are holding a small-scale, pre-Xmas shoot during the evening of Tuesday 13th December. As always, RADARL shooters are welcome to take part. Please get in touch with Jon or Nicola Souter, if interested and we’ll share more details. • Congratulations to Nicola Souter, who on Friday, scored the first perfect 50-point round of the season. With the move to the 10-shot format this season, it’s been interesting seeing everyone adapting and improving, as we settle back into Friday nights away from the TV ;-) It’s also been encouraging to see quite a few RADARL shooters edging towards the elusive maximum, with several racking up scores of 48 in recent matches. It’ll be interesting to see whether anyone else can equal Nicola’s unbeatable score before season’s end. • Any RADARL shooters at a loose end on Friday 16th December are welcome to join our end of year fun shoot at the Rushden Athletic Range from 8pm. Price of entry is just a little something nice to stick on the nibbles table.

The fixtures page has been updated with details of the pre-Xmas fun shoot… no prizes, no certificates, just a bit of fun with your fellow RADARL shooters and kudos for any high scores.

Many thanks to all those who attended the Xmas fun shoot last Friday - the biggest gathering of RADARL shooters for several years. Every RADARL team was well represented, alongside some new shooters, helpers and spectators… the bar staff tried to gate-crash the party too ;-) Sincere thanks to all those that made this event possible - felt like a nice flashback to simpler times. Click here (or the image below) to view the final scores:

In the mean time, have a great Xmas - see you when matches resume in the New Year.

Wishing all RADARL shooters a very happy and successful 2023 - both inside & outside the shooting range. Due to some rescheduling, the first RADARL match of 2023 took place on Friday 6th January and included some notable performances... Congratulations go to Richard Stead, who set a new personal best of 49 during this match… and the second highest score of any RADARL shooter in a 2022/2023 league match so far. Nicola Souter has also had a storming start to 2023, recording her second perfect maximum 50 score of the season. p.s. If you’ve got an announcement or “shout-out” you want to see here - please call Jon or Nicola.

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The league table and fixtures have been brought bang up to date tonight. Recent matches give me reason to call-out some more fantastic performances from RADARL shooters… That’s all the updates for now… wishing you all a great night of shooting this coming Friday, whether you’re on or off the blackcurrent juice.

Congratulations go to Andy Corney, who racked up a mighty impressive 49 points against his opposite number from Earls Barton on January 20th. Nicky Mayell started her birthday weekend celebrations off in style on Friday 3rd February, setting a new personal best of 48 points. Nicky’s whistle was wet with Guinness & Black ;-) Nicola Souter got called-up to shoot twice and went on to achieve two perfect 50-point rounds in the same match. Nicola was drinking similar stuff to Nicky - just without the Guinness!

It’s taken a while, but the RADARL 100% club has finally gained a second member this weekend - and with a growing number of our shooters having scored 48+, it’s likely only a matter of time before more shooters join the 50-point hall of fame. Who will be next to show the bell no mercy? Perhaps we should start a sweep stake!

Congratulations go to Nicola Souter, who continued her run of great form with another perfect 50-point round this weekend. To his surprise, Jon Souter became the second Shooter to rack up a 50-point round in a league match. This was despite some “gusty” conditions arriving in the range towards the end ;-)

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The scoresheet from last night’s match at Earls Barton made for interesting reading - with the scores all tied after everyone had shot - and only a single point different once the lowest scores were dropped. Also another notable performance to shout about… Ian joins the following group of shooters in the “nearly home and dry” category, who’ve all scored at least 47 points in a league match this season - knocking on the door of that perfect 50 point session: Kevin Hawkings Steve Clark David Attfield David Turner Nicky Mayell Richard Stead Andrew Corney

Some nice shooting from Ian Catling last night saw him achieve a new season PB (personal best) of 48 points.

It doesn’t seem possible, but just a few weeks now remain until the 2022/23 shooting season draws to a close. It really seems to have flown by this year. Before we wind the season down for the summer, a couple of postponed matches remain to be shot: • Finedon vs Ath ‘C’ ( Venue: Earls Barton / Original Date: 2nd December 2022) • Ath ‘B’ vs Ath ‘C’ ( Venue: The Ath Club / Original Date: 17th March 2023) If these matches could take place before the middle of May, that’d be fantastic. We can then focus on setting up some friendly summer shooting events ;-)

Wishing all at RADARL a very happy Easter break... …just take it easy on the Mini-Egg Martinis.

Well done to Earls Barton on their win on Friday night. Friday night’s match between Finedon and Ath ‘B’ was postponed - a new date will be set in due course.

Friday night’s match between Ath ‘C’ and Finedon was postponed - a new date will be set in due course. A fixtures list has been added for May and will be populated when dates for the rearranged matches are set.