Roseville Rifle Club Australia

It was a cold and very blustery day that would make Winnie-the-Pooh truly say “Happy Winds-day”.  So it was that 28 July saw the annual W S Josephson (Joso) teams match held at Hornsby Rifle Range. This is such a great teams competition and is truly unique. This is probably the largest “any-age” TR team shoot in NSW at this point with 10 teams of TR shooters (5 shooters + wind coach). Amazingly, outside of school comps, this is probably the youngest “average age” team events in the country with over half of all the TR shooters under the age of 30. And there were even 2 F-class teams.

This Joso competition is when the top shooters from the AAGPS schools that compete in rifle shooting pit themselves against, and get to meet, the regular club shooters. For those that don’t know AAGPS = Athletic Association of the Great Public Schools of NSW.  In shooting, the AAGPS is represented by:  Shore School (SCEGS); The Kings School; Sydney Grammar; The Armidale School; Sydney Boys High; Newington College; and Scots College (note: There are other AAGPS schools that don’t shoot so are not listed).  The official GPS Rifle Shooting competition commenced in 1905 but results of the National Rifle Association competition are recorded from 1893. The AAGPS decided in 1903 to formally admit Shooting. So shooting is one of the oldest AAGPS school sports.

Enough about history, lets get back to the Joso. Roseville was highly involved in the 2024 Joso in various ways…

Roseville helped in the setup and running for the day:

• Rob Trodden was Range Officer
• Adrian Bonanni was Butts Officer
• Janet Beale supplied the drinks and helped with the food
• Dmitri Kazakov was helping with the Hexta system (stats etc)
• Alan Patrick, wearing his NRTSCMA hat, was helping to make the range as best as it could be (including blowing the cut grass off the 300m pavement)
• Tim Walter came to assist on the day
• Christian Lemoy came to assist on the day

But Roseville was also quite involved in the shooting activities:

• Eva Patrick organised the NSW Veteran’s FTR team
• Eva Patrick and Janet Beale shot in the “NSW Veteran’s FTR team”
• Dmitri Kazakov shot in the “NSDRA – Green team”
• Alan Patrick, Nigel Russell and Skye Russell shot in the “NSDRA – Purple team”
• Paul Russell shot in the “GPS – Orange team”

I think Mother Nature won the competition – the wind was sufficient to prove to our Malabar friends that YES Hornsby really does have wind sometimes. No-one in the talented field went clean for the day. To give you an idea of the conditions, there was only 1 possible in all the F-class details for the whole day, and in TR which had the large field of 54 shooters, there were only 9 possibles at 300m, 6 possibles at 600m, and 2 possibles at 800m.

Special call outs to:-

• “MDRA Red Team” who won TR and “NSDRA – F Class Emerald” who won F-Class division.
• Paul Russell was the 2^nd highest scorer across the GPS TR teams (only a few centres behind the top school shooter)
• Janet Beale was the 2^nd highest scorer across all the F-Class teams
• Eva Patrick and Janet Beale came 2^nd and 3^rd respectively at 800m across all the F-class shooters (they were behind the 1^st place F-open shooter by only 1 & 2 centres respectively)

Thanks to all who helped and/or competed. See you next year!

Janet Beale