The Northern Ireland Inter-Service Cadet Rifle Meeting took place at Ballykinler on 27-29 September 1996 in customarily dreadful weather conditions. Perhaps the wrong type of rain or leaves on the scoreboard were responsible for the ensuing confusion over prizes, but it took some weeks to ascertain that Andrew Pollen and Lee Mitchell had, between them, taken all of the major individual awards. Andrew Pollen's Champion at Arms title was commendable, he being the fourth consecutive Campbellian to achieve this honour, and the youngest competitor to be recognised as Northern Ireland's best cadet marksman for some years.
Montgomery of Alamein Battle Shoot, Individual 1st(The Royal Irish Shield):
Lee S. Mitchell
Target Rifle, Individual 1st (The 500 Yard Shield):
Andrew P. Pollen
Champion at Arms (The Northern Ireland District Challenge Cup):
Andrew P. Pollen
This season also saw the welcome return to local shooting of Royal School Dungannon which, for the first time in some years, entered a team in the Ulster Schools' Smallbore match at Campbell in December. Despite the partiality of the host coach, however, Campbell just edged ahead of BRA to reclaim the shield.
Continuing in 'the skin of their teeth' genre, a team of eight travelled to RSD in March for a friendly fixture. Campbell won by only two points against a rapidly improving RSD team which had only been practising regularly since September 1996: 1534 v 1532!
The newly-structured reintroduced House Shooting also took place in March in the .22RF range on disks. The winners were Dobbin's; Chase's were 2nd and Davis's were 3rd; Lytle's were 9th out of 10 teams - the adjudication was, alas, scrupulous!
Early in the summer term both the Earl Roberts Cup and the CCRS Fullbore Shield were lost in the most undesirable of circumstances: undefended. These were won last year in full Commonwealth competition, but a severe lack of fullbore range time prevented two of our best ever teams from attempting to retain them.
The autumn and spring leagues on Wednesday evenings for Form 3 were very well attended this year, and produced such an unprecedented display of marksmanship that the selection of junior cadets for Bisley was almost impossible; every one of them seemed to be able to shoot! Ultimately, Conor Quinn, Andrew Collins, Philip Ayre, Robyn Ward, Ryan Caughey and Jonathan Bleakley were selected to travel to Surrey and, should they decide to continue to practice, they have bright futures ahead of them in the team.
On 10 July, a few days after the end of annual CCF camp, 21 boys travelled to the Royal Engineers Combat Training School at Gibraltar Barracks in Surrey. With its proximity to the excellent range complex at Ash, this provided a base for a valuable pre-competition practice and surgery for four days. This, it had been felt, was essential due to the lack of fullbore practice enjoyed by the team this year; in fact, 1996-7 saw fewer range days than any season in recent years. Various attempts to ameliorate the problem failed to overcome the fundamental difficulty which Campbell CCF appears to have in providing a dedicated team, which competes successfully at this level, with adequate practice time.
Nonetheless the main results from our predominantly young team in the NRA Schools' Meeting were as follows:
Royal Irish Rangers Trophy 1st team
Inniskilling Cup 1st Andrew P. Pollen
Green Howards Country Life 3rd team
Reserve 4th Andrew DG. Ginn
Ashburton Shield 5th team
Devon 5th team
Public Schools' Snap Shooting 5th team
Rutland 6th team
Bearing in mind the above comments and the fact that in excess of 60 schools competed in this meeting, these results were creditable and not a little frustrating for the boys. They have begun to be dissatisfied with merely showing their faces at Bisley, being aware now that they have the potential to perform extremely well. Their place in the Ashburton Shield was similar to that of last year.
In addition to the major team events, Campbellians were awarded a total of 23 individual prizes by the National Rifle Association for commendable individual achievements during the Schools' Meeting. The winners were Andrew Pollen, Michael Robinson, Andrew Boyd, Russell McKeague, Andrew Ginn, Simon Crunden, Andrew Bogle, John Taylor, Lee Mitchell, Edward Smyth and Conor Quinn.
Alastair Smyth and John Taylor were also both selected to fire on the Irish team, Alastair achieving the highest Irish score in the National competition.
Six boys remained at Bisley from 19th-28th July for the NRA Imperial Meeting, an important series of competitions which attracted in excess of 1000 individual entrants from throughout the world. For Andrew Pollen, Lee Mitchell, Andrew Ginn, Andrew Boyd and Chris Wilson, this was their first Imperial and all shot well, making rapid progress. Andrew Pollen was selected to receive sponsorship from Royal Ordnance for the duration of the Imperial Meeting and Lee Mitchell was selected as a reserve. Andrew is the first Campbellian to receive such sponsorship.
This was Alastair Smyth's fourth Imperial competition, and his best to date. He won medals in the Donegall (at a distance of 300m),the Century (500m & 600m), the Admiral Hutton (900m), the Corporation (1000m) and the Young Rifleman's Aggregate. He was also selected to compete with the UK Inter-Services Short Range and Long Range teams and the AG Bell team against Canada and South Africa. As an Atheling, he assisted by coaching during the Vizianagram Match (Lords v Commons) and was part of the Atheling team which, unusually, enjoyed a sound victory over the Canadians in the first stage of the Rex Goddard Match. Alastair spent the month of August in Canada, on tour with the Athelings. There he was a member of the most successful Athelings squad for many years, winning all of their team competitions, and he further distinguished himself by winning eight more individual medals in the Dominion of Canada Rifle Association open meeting (these were awarded for the Alexander of Tunis, the Gatineau, the Letson, the All-Comers Aggregate, the Gzowski Aggregate, the Klondike Aggregate, the MacDonald Stewart Grand Aggregate and the Short Range Aggregate).