County Astor Cup Heat & Final Results – 2022

County Astor Cup Heat – May 8th 2022

The ASTOR is an NRA competition in which the chosen teams from every County compete at the Imperial Prize Meeting in July. Selection of those teams takes place in May in a series of County heats, and the Hertfordshire heat was held on Sunday 8th May.

A warm late spring day welcomed the four teams with fast changing, fickle winds and the clearest of sight pictures. WPRC, having made a forced substitution for Nick Verduyn testing positive for Covid two days before, were looking to repeat their last success when winning selection in 2017.

Dropping 13 points at 300 yards, was not a stunning start, but this was repaired in part with a solid 500 yard shoot, only dropping 7. The finish at 600 yard, was enough to get the job done on a difficult shooting day, and a total of 597.56 saw us through to our seventh Astor final since 2001.

Praise was heaped on super-sub James Dalley, who dug deep to return an excellent series of scores.

WPRC Team was:

Alistair Bullen – Captain
Ashley Coleman-Cooke
James Greenway
James Dalley
Colin Skellett
Tom Stevenson

Bob Jackson – Coach

Team scores were as follows:

WPRC                              597.56
North Herts Rifles        589.53
Old Berkhamstedians  589.42
Old Haberdashers        575.46

Full score details on http://www.hertsra.org.uk

County Astor Cup – Final 2022

Having won the County Heat in May, WPRC represented Herts for the seventh time in the Astor County Championship final at Bisley on July 15th.

Competition in this event is always daunting, and with Colin Skellett withdrawing at the last minute with a detached retina!, Super-sub James Dalley was called to duty again. Our team produced their third best final score, but by our own admission we were a little below our best on the day.

Finishing with 607.63, placed the team 12th ex 17

Details of the result were as follows:

WPRC TOTAL

James Greenway            100.6
Alistair Bullen                 102.12
James Dalley                   100.10
Ashley Coleman-Cooke 101.11
Nick Verduyn                  104.13
Tom Stevenson               100.11

Team Aggregate             607.63
Coach: Bob Jackson

Note: Thankfully Colins detached retina responded well to emergency surgery and he was back shooting again in late August, (and still knocking them in the middle)