OFs shot down as College clean up

Anyone else within earshot or email range of the Hon Sec will therefore be vividly aware the OF rifle team has enjoyed a successful full-bore season.

It is fair to say, that following last year’s .22 tussle with the College – a dead heat broken only by Air Commodore John Ford deploying high-echelon military skills to force a win for the OFs on countback – that we were confident of a righteous victory against the whippersnappers.

And, not remotely daunted by the absence of some of the OFs’ star shooters – due to reasons of varying degrees of feebleness – the team, despite numbering only five at one stage, blithely pressed forward.

So it came as an unpleasant surprise to discover the OFs were on the business end of a shooting match drubbing the like of which has not been seen since Wellington’s Waterloo game of squares.

In fact, some of the OF team have shamefully tried to claim they were being forced to use the very same Brown Bess which was won by John Halahan when College triumphed in the Country Life tournament.

Nonetheless, the OFs bravely battled using College rifles while the College team mostly used super state of the art titanium and spacesuit alloy weapons originally designed by Swiss mathematicians etc etc. Note to Hon Sec – Perhaps redrafting of match rules?

In fairness, we were thrashed, with not one of the Old Boy shooters even outscoring the College’s tail end Charlie. Only the irrepressible Halahan, the ever-gifted but seldom seen Ford and the veteran Horton presented anything but puny resistance.

A special mention for David Gower who, shouldering a .22 for the first time since marksmen climbed down from the rigging, scored a highly creditable 172.

SOFRC’s Brian Smith presents the trophy to Malcolm Todd

Shooting master Malcolm Todd got so over-excited with his team’s performance that he was sick for three days, unconvincingly citing food poisoning (see above mention of varying grades of excuse).

The only slight blemish on the day was some OFs felt it a less than sporting gesture when, after dinner, Gwen Randall suggested the team had performed shamefully and produced a cane, an original dating from Laurie Rimmer’s era.

The National Grid later reported a power surge from the Framlingham area caused by a spontaneous wave of nervous energy released by the simultaneous, instinctive clenching of 12 sets of buttocks.

Victorious College Team
Back (l-r): Matt Tubbs, Adam Howard-Dobson, Tom Chapman, Robert Lintott;
Front(l-r): Maddie Bryant, Rosanna Walker, Alex Walker.