The Lancashire and Cheshire Club Competitions were held at Eccles on Saturday and Sunday 1st and 2nd March. The entry had been chosen by Mike and Christine and, for the first time since 2017, we entered both the Print and PDI sections.
Pre-Qualification for the Nationals
These are the two annual competitions from which the L&CPU choose their best clubs to go forward to represent the Federation in the national events, that’s the Club PDI Championships to be held at Warwick in July 2025 and Club Prints Championship which will be held at Blackburn in October 2025.
The entry:
The PDI sections are Open PDI, Nature PDI, a total of 24 images.
The Print sections are Colour Print, Mono Print, Nature Print, a total of 24 prints.
Every Federation sends 2 clubs to Warwick and Blackburn, plus the top eight from last year have a bye, making 38 clubs to take part in each event.
How did we do?
We had already secured a pre-qualification to enter for the 2025 Warwick event because we came in the top 8 clubs at Warwick 2024, so the heat was off.
We were very keen to do the best we could to qualify for Blackburn as well. In the print judging, three sections, we were looking for an average score of 13 to feel we were in a comfortable position, but in the mono and nature sections, we only had an average of 12. We knew it wasn’t good enough. Several clubs were potentially ahead of us. We needed a very big score in the last round to be in with a chance, in fact, more than a 13 average, which I don’t think we ever managed before.
We managed an average of 13.5 !! giving a total for all 3 print sections of 300.
Brilliant, but it would still be close. By this time, Christine had become confident we had made it but Mike hadn’t. When the section totals were added up, we came in third place over 3 print sections. Chorley, in first place, had a pre-qualification in the bag, so Poulton and Oldham go through. We’ve secured our first outing to Blackburn!
We had a lot of 13 scores, so I have only included, in the gallery, those images scoring 14, 2 in PDI from Christine and Jane, then, in prints, 4 images from Aamir, Andrea and Gill.
Mike will send out the full results by email, but any members who is registered for the L&CPU website can log in and see them.
Images Scoring 14 (out of 15)
Top row: Brothers (Jane Henthorn), Full Stretch (Aamir Sabzwari), Watcher in the Mist (Andrea Wilson),
Bottom Row: The King’s Man (Christine Widdall), A Night at the Abbey (Gill Brett), Nit Picking (Gill Brett),
The Judging
Our thanks go to the L&CPU for their organisation and to the team of judges who worked hard for two days, choosing their favourite images. Every judging team has a different dynamic. We may believe that our strength lies in our sport, nature and portrait images, but, on this occasion, the sport and nature marks were lower than we expected and the misty images did well. But that’s why we try to put in as many of our best images as possible, including various genres and treatments. We know that some members will be disappointed with their individual marks and others delighted. Remember, it’s par for the course and another day, it’s a different dynamic!
Above all, we must all feel very proud of the standard that our members achieve and hope that we can encourage everyone to do as well and even better over the coming months, by mutual help and guidance at appraisals. Thank you to everyone who provided images for us to choose from, and if yours didn’t get chosen this time, please keep on keeping on!
Final Club Rankings
Taking all 48 images and 5 sections together, the final Club Rankings were:
1st Chorley PS: PDI 305, Print 322, Total 627
2nd Poulton le Fylde: PDI 294, Print 310, Total 604
3rd Oldham PS: PDI 291, Print 300, Total 591
42 clubs took part in PDI and 21 clubs took part in Prints.