rugeley Archives | Rugeley Rifle Club

Young Guns take aim at Rugeley

3 November 20243 November 2024 by RichHin Club News

Fourteen young shooters took aim at Rugeley Rifle Club’s Young Guns competition this week. With two days of training over Wednesday and Thurday, final practice and competition took place on Friday. Shooting Air Rifle, Air Pistol and .22 Rifle, the young shooters worked through more than two and a half thousand air pellets, and a thousand rounds of .22 ammunition. The competition marks a continuing partnership with Vysions Youth Service.

Each discipline competition saw the top 3 shoot a final to establish medal placings. Medallists received a Rugeley Rifle Club patch, along with gold and silver medals and a patch for third. The Overall competition was a close-run fight, with only 27 points separating the top 5 shooters and a tie for the lead between Phoebe Haughton and James Hallam, which had to be broken on countback of Air Rifle scores, with James gracious in defeat. Connie O’Brien placed third, having had a mishap in the Air Rifle shoot which cost her as many as 17 points – enough to have put her in the lead overall.

	Air Pistol	Air Rifle	Smallbore Rifle	Overall
1	James Hallam	Aiden Coghlan	Connie O’Brien	Phoebe Haughton
2	Phoebe Haughton	Phoebe Haughton	James Hallam	James Hallam
3	Joel Sherratt	Connie O’Brien	Phoebe Haughton	Bogdan Dubita

Congratulations to overall champion Phoebe, who wins a years free membership, along with free ammunition and targets.

Four young women stand in an airgun range aiming target air rifles at paper targets.

Four young women stand in an airgun range aiming target air rifles at paper targets. An adult range officer supervises the firing point.

Enjoy a Warm Space at Rugeley Rifle Club

9 December 202313 December 2023 by RichHin Club News

Rugeley Rifle Club is pleased to extend its trial of Warm Spaces on Sundays from 11am-4pm for over-65s.

Call in for a hot drink, a social atmosphere, food served by Vysions Youth Volunteering and a social atmosphere, plus the opportunity to try Benchrest shooting!

The club is open every Sunday from now until April, including December 24th!

British Shooting Finals for Rugeley Pair

4 December 20235 December 2023 by RichHin Competitions

Paul Watkiss and Izzy Ward were in action representing Rugeley at the second round of the British Shooting Air Series this weekend.

Athletes fire target air pistols in an Olympic Final style match at the Aldersley Leisure Village

Shooting two relays – one on Saturday and another on Sunday – the better score is used to qualify athletes for an Olympic Final on Sunday.

Shooting Air Pistol, Paul placed third on his Saturday relay, with 560, and managed a consistent 559 on Sunday, finishing second in that relay.

In the final he was eliminated in sixth place, missing fifth by just a point.

On the Air Rifle squads, Izzy placed 5th on Saturday with a massive new Personal Best of 591.3. She placed 9th on her Sunday relay with 580.6.

Full results at British Shooting

Rugeley shooters represent at Welsh Airgun Championships

9 November 202327 March 2024 by RichHin Competitions

Shooters from Rugeley Rifle Club collected medals in Cardiff this weekend at the Welsh Airgun Championships. Held at the Sport Wales centre in Sophia Gardens, the meeting rolls in three days of shooting with three matches. Competitors participate in the Cardiff Grand Prix; an AirOShoot qualification match (in which top scorers can qualify for the Super Final in Belgium) and finish with the Welsh Open Championship.

Shooting Air Pistol, Pavelas Voitiukevicius placed 2nd in the Cardiff GP on Friday, before placing 3rd in the AirOShoot qualification match on Saturday – climbing in the final to win silver. On Sunday, he qualified for the final in the Welsh Open Championship match, narrowly missing a medal to place 4th.

Paul Watkiss placed eighth in the Cardiff GP and qualified for the Bronze medal match in the Mixed Pairs, where he finished 4th with randomly-allocated partner Ina Gulowsen Knudsen. Paul finished 12th in the AiroShoot match and 17th in the Welsh Championship.

Kiril Voitiukevicius placed 5th in the Cardiff GP, and qualified for the final of the AirOShoot match, finishing 7th. He placed 23rd in the Championship.

On Air Rifle, Zoe Perkin placed 12th in the Cardiff GP and 10th in the AirOShoot match, finishing 25th in the Championship.

Megan Bamsey claimed silver in her AirOShoot and Cardiff GP matches, whilst Mike Bamsey placed fourth in the Cardiff GP and won silver in the Welsh Championship.

Three medal winning shooters stand on a podium with their medals — Pavelas takes silver at the Welsh Airgun

A young man aims an air pistol at a shooting match — Pavelas takes silver at the Welsh Airgun

Rugeley awarded Performance Club status by NSRA

20 October 202320 October 2023 by RichHin Club News1 Comment

Rugeley Rifle Club is delighted to have been registered as an NSRA Performance Club.

Scan of a certificate showing that Rugeley Rifle Club is registered as an NSRA Performance Club

NSRA Performance Clubs are those with an ethos of competition and athlete development. Achieving recognition as a Performance Club is testament to the hard work by the club committee and members in developing the facilities to allow quality training activities – particularly the new club room, training building and availability of electronic targets at 10m and 50m. It also recognises the effort by the club’s volunteer instructors and coaches, not only in developing athletes, but also providing support and continued development for instructors and coaches.

A cone depicts a performance pathway, with clubs feeding into performance clubs. These lead to Regional and National squads, culminating at a World Class Programme.

Top 5 finish for Paul at NSRA-Eley Final

15 October 202315 October 2023 by RichHin Competitions

Rugeley member Paul Watkiss placed fifth in the A-Class 10metre Air Pistol final of the NSRA-Eley Postal competition this weekend. Having shot two postal stages at the club, Paul qualified with the top 15 shooters nationally for the final at Bisley.

Well shot Paul!

Rugeley RC joins the Fediverse

14 October 202314 October 2023 by RichHin Club News

We’re delighted to announce our newest social channel – the Fediverse! Using the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, this site is now also an ActivityPub instance. All news posts from this site will be accessible, and users can follow our feed from their accounts on any federated server. Find us at “rugeleyrifleclub@www.rugeleyrifleclub.org.uk”.

ActivityPub is the foundation underlying a new type of social media, where users can run their own servers or join other public servers, which can all communicate with one another – think of it like email. You can send an email from an Outlook account to a Yahoo account. You are not limited to sending email only between Outlook addresses.

No single company controls the “fediverse” – the community of “federated” ActivityPub servers. Anyone can create or join a server – large or small – and follow their friends and interests on that server and other servers. There are a variety of different types of instance. Pixelfed is oriented towards image sharing, much like instagram. You may have heard of Mastodon in the news – which is more like Twitter. If you’re interested, the easiest route is to visit joinmastodon.org, pick a server (it really doesn’t matter which) and have an explore. mastodonapp.uk is a UK-oriented server, which may be a good place to start, but you can access accounts on any server from any other server and you can move your account later on if you want to.

Victory for Zoltan in club Through the Ranges competition

19 September 20231 October 2023 by RichHin Club News, Competitions

Zoltan Papp won Rugeley’s 2023 Through the Ranges competition on Sunday.

Shot Prone over 25yards, 50metres and 100yards, the competition tests shooter’s abilities indoor and out.

A trophy is awarded to a target shooter — Zoltan wins the Kershaw Trophy in the 2023 Through the Ranges competition

National Selection and Championship Finals for Hemingway

23 August 20234 September 2023 by RichHin Club News, Competitions

Rugeley member Rich Hemingway had a sterling weekend at Bisley, shooting for Wales and qualifying for the Final of the British Prone Championship (the “Earl Roberts Championship”) at the close of the NSRA’s 2023 National Meeting.

On Friday, Rich warmed up by comfortably making it through the First Stage of the Earl Roberts, placing 9th of the 50 who qualified. That afternoon he went on to shoot in the Home Countries International, competing for Wales against England and Scotland. Wales narrowly placed third, close behind Scotland. Rich had the second highest score in the Welsh team, just a point behind Sian Corish – who was awarded the “Tartan Dragon” trophy for highest Welsh scorer.

Rich Hemingway with the 2023 Welsh Home Countries Team
photo credit: Eleanor Shorey theshorey.co.uk

On Saturday morning, competitors took to the range for another early start to contest the Second Stage of the Roberts, from which 40 qualified to the final. Placing 27th, Richard entered his first Roberts Final, making him the first Rugeley or Staffordshire shooter to compete in the final for some years.

Shooting a Double Dewar course – 40 shots each at 50metres and 100yards – the wind picked up significantly, as is appropriate for championship finals! In gusty conditions, many competitors struggled to keep their scores above 190, with a smattering of big flyers (including 4s and 6s!) seen along the range, especially on the 100yard portion. Keeping their cool amongst all of them though was 2022 champion Lina Jones, who retained her title with a score of 772. Rich finished his debut Final with 756, placing him 20th.

Trophies galore at County Championship

8 August 202316 August 2023 by RichHin Club News, Competitions

Rugeley cleaned up at the Staffordshire County Championships on Sunday with members winning nine trophies.

Richard Hemingway retained his title as County Champion, ultimately earning five separate trophies – the Association Cup (Overall Confined Championship), the 50Metre Challenge Trophy, the Miniature Rifle Cup (A-Class Champion), the Michelin Cup (best 100yard scores in A-Class) and the Greatrex Cup (top NSRA County Medal holder).

Deb Truman became Staffordshire Ladies Champion. Graham Delaney won D-Class, with Lee Featherstone runner up. Paul Watkiss narrowly missed out on a medal, placing fourth in C-Class.