Roseville Rifle Club Australia

It was back on 24^th December 2024, that we received this email “The NSW Rifle Association Board regrets to inform members that, due to ongoing works, the New South Wales Rifle Association 149th Annual Open Championships/King Prize 2025 will be postponed. The event will now take place from Wednesday, 25th June to Sunday, 29th June 2025.” And so it was that the NSW Kings was not held in the height of summer but in the middle of winter. For some people, forgoing the summer Kings meant less sunburn, less heat exhaustion (particularly in shooting jackets), less mirage, and of course fewer “southerly busters” spoiling the shooting. So what we got instead was very cold mornings (8c), short days, high winds (gusting to 50km/hr forcing cancellation of 2 stages), layers and layers of clothing and whale-watching during migration season. It was an interesting competition with the high winds and changeable flags (pick ups / drop offs / heavy gusts) separating the field particularly in the McIntosh leadup. This was the stuff legends are made of – particularly when, in the leadup, the TR winner dropped 18 points in 2 days. Those that joined the competition for just the Kings don’t know what they missed (the TR Kings winner Chris Schwebel having dropped just 1 point in 3 days).

Shooting at Hornsby, the Roseville shooters are not exposed to winds like that – but everyone from Roseville tried hard and persevered completing the competition – let’s just say it was character building.

While there were 200 competitors in the Kings – this year we had a reduced number of Roseville Rifle Club members representing the club. At the 2-day McIntosh Leadup and 3-day NSW Kings Roseville was represented by Adrian Bonanni in TR-A (this was his last competition as a Roseville shooter as he now moves to the Malabar Range) and Janet Beale in FTR. In the 3 day Kings event they were then joined by Roseville members Chris Sefton and Tim Walter in TR-B.

The best details for our competitors included Chris coming 4^th at 700m with a 50-5, Tim shooting a 48-5 at 700m, Janet coming 2^nd at 600m with a 79-3, Adrian scoring 3 possibles (50-5, 50-6 and 50-6 at 500m, 700m and 800m). Janet came 7^th in the McIntosh Leadup and Adrian came 15^th. Then in the Kings, Chris, Tim and Janet were in the top 15 in their discipline.

Janet Beale