It was a full house for the NCPF Club Championships at Clara Vale on Sunday 11^th February 2024, with the kitchen and hall well utilised and groups of people making and re-meeting friends from across our region, while everything was well prepared by the NCPF team who had been on site from 8.30am setting up.

In fact, “setting up” had progressed in the background for at least 5 months prior to the big day, with a re-draft of the rules endorsed by the Competitions Sub-Committee and simplified adverts and invitations distributed to all 43 of our NCPF clubs.

Another significant planning pre-event was the review of our spreadsheet marking and recording system, which had a total re-write. This served us very well on the day, allowing a potentially difficult tie-break to be managed easily, and with full competition results plus individual club results distributed to entrant clubs, and the club results being on the NCPF website, in less than 24 hours.

Photographic work for the 24 clubs who entered were split into Projected Digital Images first, followed by Prints. Prints being shown to judges on a lightbox while also being displayed as full PDI’s for the audience.

The results came to a tie for the PDI section with Gosforth CC and Keswick PS both achieving a score of 253. Using the new spreadsheets the lowest scores for each team were removed and new total counted, this action had to happen for 10 separate counts before a difference of 1 was advised on behalf of Gosforth who were declared winners.

Keswick PS had a clean sweep for the rest of the competitions, winning the Print Competition with Saltburn PS coming second.

Both Best Individual Prizes also went to Keswick, with Best Individual Print going to Bob Given of Keswick PS with ‘Anna Clears’ and Best Individual PDI going to Alan Walker of Keswick PS with ‘Bobcat Hunting Prey’.

Thanks go to all involved especially our honourable judges Dave Coates, George Ledger and Stephen Fowler; the sub-committee team of Alan Forster, Alan Wilson, Margaret Welsh, Jim Welsh, Joe Finlay, Linda McGregor and Joseph Duffy; spreadsheet maestros Phillip Dove and Alan Parker; plus help from Vera Singh and John Gilkerson on the day.

Indeed, other than a tiny issue with the hand-held scoring devices (easily fixed by swapping them out) the entire event worked seamlessly, with multiple verbal and written positive comments from the attending audience.

Results are available here. The top 2 clubs shall be invited to attend PAGB Inter Club Competitions representing our region with £100 being awarded to each club from NCPF to help with expenses.

Thank you for reading and to those who took part. We hope all clubs will enter the “Annuals Competitions” – Invitation packs shall be with clubs soon.

Alan Wilson
NCPF President and Competitions Officer