Thick fog made the journey to Griffin Lloyd for the ABT County Final a slow one but by the time the Powys team started to shoot most if it had lifted and the clays were flying well.

 

There has always been some friendly rivalry between Gwent and Glamorgan and after looking at the winning County trophy, they were the only two County names on it since 1996.  Was this year going to be the same with one or the other taking the cup back home with them - time would tell !  

 

Powys certainly started off strongly with some good solid first round scores of 23 a piece for Rob Parry and their Junior Barry Griffiths.  There was a good opening round as well for Clive Roberts from Dyfed with a 24, and John Campbell (Glamorgan) also starting with a 24 but it looked like Gwent were struggling a bit.  The first squad out for them were pretty consistent with four of the squad shooting 20, a 21 and 19 following but they had to raise there game plan if they wanted to take the trophy from Glamorgan this year.

 

Martyn Tozer (Glamorgan), last years Captains High Gun winner, started off quietly with a 19 but he made up for it on the 2nd and 3rd round with 24 on both, although unluckily for Martyn he missed his last target out on his 3rd round for a straight!

 

Gwents Geoff Seabourne let just one slip away on his 2nd round but it was their veteran - Trevor Griffiths, who showed them the way by posting the first 25 straight in the competition in his second round.

 

Now Clwyd who arrived quite late, but just in time, had bought with them one full squad and a smaller squad of just 3.  It was this smaller squad of three that had Robbie Garrod in it and he seemed to have settled in well with a 23 in his first round then a confident 25 in his second.  It was a long journey for the Clwyd boys with some of them not having had much sleep at all, but they were quietly chipping away and maybe not everyone was aware of the scores they were putting in.  Robbie went on to put another 25 in on his last round giving him a final score of 95 and taking the Senior High Gun trophy- shown below.

There was a little battle going on with Gwent Junior Tom Costin and Barry Griffiths from Powys with Barry leading with 42ex50 compared to Tom's 41.  Tom put in a superb 24 under pressure in his 3rd round followed by a 23 in his last giving him the Junior title again with an 88 and Barry having to settle with runner up on 85. Well shot lads! Look out you Seniors!

 

Unfortunately as Tom didn't have a Junior partner with him from Gwent, it was left to Barry Griffiths and Tim Hawkins to take the Junior team title for Powys - they are pictured below:

 

A late replacement in the Glamorgan Veteran team meant that Russell Lloyd joined Stan Bruford and together took the Veterans shield, just piping Gwent to the post by one clay,169 to 168.  Yet again for the 2nd year this trophy had not been returned by the winners from 2006, poor show boys.  The winning veterans team is pictured below:

 

Although they took the Team title, it was Trevor Griffiths from Gwent who stormed away with the overall Veterans title with a cracking score of 90.

 

Jackie Lewis retained her Ladies title for the second year running, finishing with a very respectable 70 and with her fellow County lady, Jackie Jones, took the Ladies Team title as well.  The winning ladies Powys team are pictured below:

 

The individual winners - ladies High Gun Jackie Lewis, veterans High Gun Trevor Griffiths and Junior High Gun Tom Costin are shown below:

 

One last trophy to be decided was the Captains cup.  It was a good win for Dale Oram from Gwent finishing on 89, 4 targets clear from Rob Parry.

 

But back to the Seniors. By the time Brian (number crunching) Davies and Angie Goodman had finished putting the scores together it was quiet obvious that the tables had turned this year - but not quite the way everyone had expected.  The Clwyd boys let out a huge cheer when they heard they had won the Inter Counties ABT Final with a big margin of 14 targets.  Now there was going to be a new and different name on the cup after 12 years.  Clwyd were the new ABT Inter Counties Champions - the victorious team are pictured below:

 

Full Results:

 

Position	Result
Senior Team Champions	Clwyd   514
Seniors Runner-Up	Glamorgan  500
Seniors Third	Powys   496
Seniors Fourth	Gwent  493
Seniors Fifth	Dyfed  468
Ladies Team Champions	Jackie Lewis & Jackie Jones (Powys)
Veterans Team Champions	Stan Bruford & Russell Lloyd (Glamorgan)
Juniors Team Champions	Barry Griffiths & Tim Hawkins (Powys)
Senior High Gun	R. Garrod   95  (Clwyd)
Captains High Gun	Dale Oram  89 (Gwent)
Ladies High Gun	Jackie Lewis  70 (Powys)
Veterans High Gun	Trevor Griffiths  90 (Gwent)
Junior High Gun	Tom Costin  88 (Gwent)

And whilst it may look like Dyfed didn't win anything...they did.  One of the bottles of wine from the raffle went to Teg!  It was good to see them at the Final though.

 

Many thanks to those who bought raffle tickets to go towards a Colts trophy at next years Final.

 

JK, family and staff at Griffin Lloyd did a wonderful job again at providing a great days shooting to which we are all grateful.

 

On a personal note, I didn't have time to thank the Powys Junior Tim Hawkins for removing the bird that had attached itself to my radiator grill on the way to Griffin Lloyd! Thanks Tim !