LEICESTERSHIRE NOTES
by John Ghent
Well this is the first column in 2014 and another bumper and diverse edition! I know I tend to have big gaps in between them but I like the news to be worthwhile and also of a good quantity, covering all bases from the Leicestershire South Road to the North Road and a little bit for the channel guys and gals to get their teeth into!
It was really nice to be invited up to judge a show with Darren Shepherd at the Ruddington Club just before Christmas, we had a good chat with a few of the lads there and it was the last show in their calendar so there was a bit of pressure on us both to deliver a good result! We were judging the young cocks and young hens, we both narrowed down our final 10 and as there were 8 prizes to be given we compared lists and dished out the prizes based on our joint opinion. The cocks were a doddle as we both had written down several cocks the same and this was then narrowed down further until we got the winners sorted! The hens were a different matter altogether and out of about 10 picks each we only matched on 2 so it was a case of looking at each other selections and as we get along very well, we came to a decision for the hens that we were both happy with! There didn't seem too many complaints when the fancier came back upstairs so who knows, we may get an invite at the back end if this year if we're lucky!
Something that I have been planning for a while seems to finally have come to fruition and that is a little piece on the past and the present. A club named the South Leicester Flying Club is engrained in Leicester's pigeon racing history, firstly on the North Road for over 40 years and more recently it has become one of the major forces on the South Road in Leicester. So, how have things changed? Time to look at the South Leicester Flying Club, Then and Now.
The Leicestershire North Road Federation was made of many clubs from all over Leicestershire and over the years one of the strongest clubs was the South Leicester Flying Club, with it's various Headquarters mostly being within a stones throw of the city centre. It was a real city fanciers club with lots of the fanciers living in terraced houses in around the city's suburbs. The radius did increase over the years and many flyers from Braunstone and some more outlying areas came to fly against the South Leicester's cream! As time went by the formation of the Braunstone Victoria and the New Parks impacted somewhat on the South Leicester's domination in the inner city, but, nevertheless, it remained a strong club until it ceased to exist around the the turn of the century. My Grandad started in the South Leicester in the early 1960s and was hoodwinked by Cliff Merry into becoming the clock setter! Cliff was a South Leicester stalwart until his health deteriorated in the late 1980s and to show how much he was appreciated by the club members he was awarded a decorative plate, which is shown in the photograph, for his service to the club.
The decorative page presented to Cliff Merry
I don't think there is anything better than to earn the gratitude of your fellow fanciers and club members, and Cliff certainly did that, holding many roles in his years with the club and this is when clubs would carry around 30 flying members, with velocities worked out manually, so no easy task for the secretary, or the clock setter for that matter! Back in the days when the race programme featured one race a week and a 2 week gap between old birds and young birds, most of the flyers flew the full programme, mainly on the natural system. The Championship races were the tried and trusted Perth, Fraserburgh, Thurso and Lerwick (so not everything has changed) and there were no comeback races on these Championship race days, you either sent to them or didn't send at all! The same as today, there were fanciers that would hold out for Thurso and Lerwick and their season would revolve around these, one very interesting race was the Lerwick race of 1978 when many birds were lost at sea and reported on a German trawler which was destined for Denmark! Sam supplied me with a letter that Cliff received from the RPRA regarding one of his birds being stranded and that they had brought it back safely to the UK. In a future article I am going to run a feature on "Lerwick to Leicester" and I will elaborate further on this letter then. So, old school fanciers, terraced houses, Toulet clocks, lots of beer, lots of pigeons and a cracking weekend social; that was the South Leicester of old, what about the South Leicester of today?
Cliff's terraced yard in Hawthorne Street, Newfoundpool, Leicester.
Having had humble beginnings a few years ago, the South Leicester South Road Flying Club can now confidently say it is one of the biggest in the city, possibly not the county but certainly the city. Last season saw the club tip over the 400 bird mark. With the advancement of ETS and the growing popularity of National racing, the club scene is not like it was in years gone by and many members use the inland racing provided to get their pigeons ready for BICC, NFC and of course, MNFC races. That said, the sprint demons have a great time in the South Leicester with over 20 weeks of racing down to 150 miles, and the Underwoods, Lee Allen, and Baz Lovell all battled it out for top honours in the Federation last season, all three of them being South Leicester members. Baz's brother Rich and wife Lindsay are instrumental in keeping the club at the forefront for Leicester fanciers and with a radius which covers the whole of the county, there is ample opportunity for the club to possibly grow even further. I can honestly say there is a real buzz on basketing night in the Old Aylestone Social Club car park and even though ETS exists it still takes a fair old while to mark all the birds due to the amount of fanciers sending! It is also testament to the club members that flyers from other clubs come to socialise after they have marked birds at their own clubs a few miles away, be nice to get us all under one roof in the future, good old pigeon politics may make that slightly difficult for the next few years though! As in any strong club, competition is fierce and as well as the sprinters we have Jerry Wright, a MNFC winner, Derek Leitch who is well respected in the MNFC circles especially at the distance, Summers Bros who are Section winners and runners up in the last two seasons and Pete Oliver who plys his trade in the BICC and had Section success in 2013. These are just a few of the fanciers that make this club so strong, sorry if I have missed anyone out, I could do a biography on every fancier in the club as they all have something to give!
So there we have it, the methods and technology may have changed from the old South Leicester but the competition is still stiff, if you want a challenge come and join us on Middleton Lane and pit your wits against some of the best that Leicestershire has to offer!
Onto some more current news now and the update of the Leicestershire South Federation. The Federation held it's AGM before Christmas with members from all the clubs present. Due to an excellent 2013 it was very much of case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Therefore, all chief officers remained the same with Graham Brown as Chairman, Steve Farmer as Secretary and yours truly as Federation President. To be fair I take a back seat compared to what Graham and Steve do for the Federation and I am honoured to be a part of the team that is looking to take the Federation forward into 2014. Once the formalities of the AGM were done and dusted, there was a general meeting where there were some excellent discussions on what we could do to improve the Federation in the coming season. One sticky topic was that of young bird racing, funnily enough it seems like it is a sticky topic up and down the country! With the Federation only sending circa 250 birds to each of the last 2 young bird races, we decided that something needed to be done to shake it up a bit and encourage more people to send. Yes we had losses and we know the dreaded YBS can be rife at that time of year but with having longer races at the back end of the calendar we thought we were probably shooting ourselves in the foot in the little as it didn't really allow people to get their later babies back into the programme. The same could be said of the old bird programme, again, towards the end of the year numbers were considerably down, no doubt due to the trials and tribulations of the National season being in full swing and the Midlands National double header looming large on the horizon. The programme we have put together aims to rectify all of these issues, the key items to take note of are; shorter races at the end of the young bird programme to encourage later youngsters into the fore, old bird and young bird Championship races earlier in the calendar of each programme, thus generating a bigger send and more prestige for the winner, and finally the introduction of 3 Any Age Races to bolster the send at the end of the old bird season and also give the babies some confidence in the basket. If it's good enough for the Belgians then it's good enough for us is what I say! So without further delay, here is the programme for the Leicestershire South Road Federation in 2014.
OLD BIRD
April 19th - Marlborough
April 26th - Salisbury
May 3rd - Blandford Forum
May 10th - Blandford Forum
May 17th - Portland (Fed Championship Race and 2013 Breeder Buyer)
May 24th - Marlborough
May 31st - Salisbury
June 7th - Blandford Forum
June 14th - Marlborough
June 21st - Salisbury
June 28th - Portland
July 5th - Marlborough
July 12th - Portland
ANY AGE
July 19th - Marlborough
July 26th - NO RACING
August 2nd - Marlborough
August 9th - Marlborough
YOUNG BIRD
August 16th - Salisbury
August 23rd - Blandford Forum
August 30th - Portland (Fed Championship Race and 2014 Breeder Buyer)
September 6th - Salisbury
September 13th - Marlborough
The any age races will have separate young bird and old bird results. The old bird points for the Fed Champion will be contested from April 19th to August 9th and the young bird points will commence on July 19th and continue to September 13th. We hope this will give an added dimension to the season and the feedback so far has been pretty good but as always if you want to have your say then come along to the meetings or get in touch with me. We're not mind readers so need to know what you are thinking if you want things to change!
Looking North again and my trusted sidekick Paul Smith, who always supplies excellent information for the Braunstone Premier. If your club wants their news in this article get it over to me by email or post and your fanciers can be highlighted along with the Braunstone guys and gals! So here is Paul's information word for word.
BRAUNSTONE PREMIER NEW YEAR NEWS
"Hi John,
Happy New Year to you and yours. As you know we had our presentation night at our club headquarters with a great night had by all who attended, we also had the New Parks Flying Club presenting their trophies on the night as well. I would like to say a big thank to my wife Bonny and three daughters Kerry, Amanda and Paula for all their help making the night a success. Also a massive thank you to Mick Moore's wife Christine and their friend Jean for the wonderful food they supplied. Thanks to Darren Shepherd for presenting the prizes and auctioning off some young birds to raise some funds for the club. The thanks continue, we had great support from many other fanciers, including Scott Summers and family, Dick Oram and family, and many other non members.
We paid out £60 a race in 2013 which gave a grand total of £1,140.
Highest prize winner was Mr and Mrs T. Augustine with 7 x 1st, 4 x 2nd, 4 x 3rd, 7 x 4th, 4 x 5th and 4 x 6th. They also took home the Scottish Averages and won £50 in the breeder buyer for a total of £389.
Runner-Up was M. Roberts with 5 x 1st, 6 x 2nd, 7 x 3rd, 3 x 4th, 2 x 5th and 4 x 6th, the young bird averages and 3 Gold Medals. This all gave Mark a prize fund of £323.
Mark Smith was up to the tale next with 3 x 1st, 3 x 2nd, 4 x 3rd, 1 x 4th and 2 x 6th, giving £176. Mark had the Joint Champion Old Bird which gave him a Gold Medal.
George Weston claimed 3 x 1st, 3 x 2nd, 4 x 3rd, 1 x 4th, 2 x 6th and the Lerwick Gold Medal. George also scored in the breeder buyer, giving him a grand total of £210.
Paul Smith and Ellis took 3 x 1st, 3 x 2nd, 2 x 3rd, 2 x 4th, 4 x 5th and the Joint Champion Old Bird Gold Medal, giving £160 in prize money.
Mick Moore and Son took 1 x 1st, 1 x 2nd, 5 x 3rd, 4 x 4th, 5 x 5th and 8 x 6th, a consistent performance securing the old bird average and £132.00.
Colin McManus took 1 x 1st, 1 x 2nd, 2 x 4th, 2 x 5th and 2 x 6th and £56.
Next comes Pete Webster and I would like to say a big thank you to Pete, he runs a weekly card to raise funds for the club, the presentation night and prize money amounts are down to Pete so again a massive thanks! Pete grabbed 1 x 1st, 2 x 3rd, 3 x 5th and 1 x 6th for a total of £55. Thanks also for the whisky bottle donation.
John Summers took 1 x 2nd and 1 x 4th, £38, D. Gray took 1 x 5th.
That's all for now John and appreciate you sending this for publication. A special mention for my Great-Grandson Alfie, he is only 3 years old and is always in the loft with a brush to sweep it. He got presented with a prize card for his pigeon "Alfie's Boy." This was after he had stood in line and shook hands with every winning member!
Good luck for 2014 season John.
Yours in Sport
Paul Smith
Thanks so much for these notes Paul, and good luck to you to! I am looking forward to getting on top of all the write-ups I have planned before I have babies in the nest, we all know how tight time can be at that time in the breeding season. Couple that with the residential property market really taking off in the LE3 postcode and my time is precious at the minute, I am in quite high demand for my estate agency skills around the West of Leicester but I promise to keep on top of it as best I can!
As always, news and views to me by email or post.
"Mush"
83, Newport Street
Leicester
LE3 9FU
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