Eight members gathered at Warwick University last week to support the Oldham PS entry in the PAGB Interfederation Inter-Club PDI Championship 2010, which we had qualified to enter by beating allcomers in February in the qualifying round. (It’s worth noting here that Wigan 10 did not have to qualify as they had automatic entry because of their win at Warwick last year).
Mike and I had different objectives…his was to win, or at least to get into the top eight clubs after round 2, which contest the final, mine was not to come bottom. But in any event, we did our very best and our members did us proud. After the first two rounds, we were lying in 9th position, 3 points behind the eighth place club, with a combined score of 188, being 93 points in Round 1 and 95 in round 2.
Now our objective became to win the Plate competiton, which is contested by the 29 remaining clubs who were not in the top 8. We knew this was a big mountain to climb. Some clubs set out to win the Plate and save all their best stuff to the end, which means they lie lower down the rankings after rounds 1 and 2 and can therefore come up from the rear. This is what happened.
The Plate competition is separate from the earlier rounds and you can only use 4 images from the earlier rounds. We added another four of our best images and increased our score to 99 points. The winners had 104. We were fifth, a bit disappointed but had not by any means disgraced ourselves.
The top 8 clubs fought a hard contest in the final, with Smethwick winning only one point ahead of Wigan 10, who were leading by one point up to the last image!
Chorley, the other L&CPU club were 4th in the Plate with 100 points.
Our selection in the Plate ws as follows:
“Artic Tern”, Mike Lawrence 13 points
“Gannets Landing”, Stuart Woodward 13 points
“Gerbera”, Christine Widdall 12 points
“Dark Secret”, Mike Lawrence 13 points
(these four had all scored 13 in the earlier rounds)
“Clown”, Maureen Glynn 12 points
“Temptation”, Christine Widdall 12 points
“Castlerigg Stone Circle”, Matt Aspden 12 points
“End of an Era”, Alan Morris 12 points
In the earlier rounds we also used work from Christine Woodward and Shaun O’Hara.
Thank you to all club members who offered their work. We had a fine selection of work and it was difficult to choose the final bank. In the end, we went with pictures we knew had a track record in the main, so please support the club by entereing external competitons, such as the L&CPU Annual next year.
We had such a great time and it was an absolute feast of the best photography the UK is producing right now, so we will try to go back next year, as competitors or even just as spectators.