I attended this competition for the first time and as the title suggests this was a Club rather than an Individual competition. It was held locally so there was no excuse for not going – oh and I am a member of one the competing clubs too !
The day consisted of the top two clubs from each federation in GB plus last year’s eight finalists, this meant that Lancashire & Cheshire had three clubs in Warrington, Wigan10 and Chorley in attendance. Unfortunately, both Warrington and Wigan10 didn’t quite make it to the last eight this year but ChorleyPS did.
The competition involves each club having 12 images scored by three judges and totals totted up to select the top eight clubs. The images on view were simply fantastic from start to finish with many deservedly being awarded the coveted 15 points, indeed some great images were only scoring 12 or 13! Pastel images seemed to be favoured with many of them scoring well throughout, there also seemed to be quite a glut of Mountain Hares on view too.
When the eight finalists were announced most of the country’s top clubs were represented with the Smethwick, Dumfries, Arden, Catchlight clubs all there alongside local club ChorleyPS. The final consisted of more images being scored and placings given based on these points alone. The overall winners were Cambridge CC ahead of rookies ‘Non Pareil’ in second; Chorley were 5th=. The placings could not have been tighter with 1 point separating all but the top 2.
Personally, I had two images in the final round; the old favourite ‘Silverback‘ scoring 14/15 and a newer image ‘Whispering Waifs‘ scoring 12/15 (both shown below).

Whispering Waifs
Silverback – 26 points

Another view of proceedings by Joan Blease can be viewed here.