No sign yet!

Thanks Keith and others for all your support,
I remember Paul Sullivan, Annie and I having a discussion which went on for about 4 days during a trip to Fraser Island in 1994 on how we (Australia) could win the world championships. Ofcourse we also often had plenty of similar discussions within the "Caravan" club (Brendan, Alan Peake, Annie and Stuart) . It took a few years to learn some hard lessons over many WBC's but we soon worked out that we needed some special team work. The usual system for the USA teams was they select very, very good shooters as they select from a much larger gene pool so they can tell their good shooters to just go out and shoot good. They add up the team score at the end.

Well that is all fine IF all 4 shooters just happen to get everything right for all 4 days. As most of us know in Benchrest that just doesn't happen very often. One issue that was glaringly obvious to us was that in nearly all previous team results it was the score of the last placed shooter in each team that severly hurt the overall team score. Didn't matter if the others won individually. So one of the plans was to focus on that and try to get all four shooters scores as close as possible. Everyone can have a bad day but if the bad days keep happening to even one of your team members then the overall score is lost. If you need further evidence of this this look at the USA A team this time. Their number 1 qualifyer seemed to be having trouble....for 3 days! Then at the end half way through the last day they gave him another rifle (from another team) and made the situation worse. All too late.

Our team work this time involved many facets. Some of it started 14 years ago. Some of it started at the end of our qualifying last November and more just before we left for SA. A lot of it started when all 12 of us got over there. We planned and discussed as 12 people and co-operated. Annie was the team boss but she didn't need to lay down the law. She just directed 2 or 3 meetings and took care of what was needed behind the scenes. No one got out of control even when the inevitable "things that go wrong" happened. She also had to jump in as an official for the Championships at the last moment and did a great job of that too. She is as much a part of this win as anyone. She just wished she was shooting too!

That co-operation of the 12 continued through the championships but it was up to each team of 4 to control their own scores so that meant each 4 man team had to have their own plans too. In the final result the B team had a rough trot this time but they still contributed to the overall performance. The C team had a fantastic result to come from 7th to 4th place overall on the last day and they really got their teamwork happening certainly on the last 2 days. All were part of the network. We were lucky we had a group of 12 shooters that were experienced and were prepared to forgo personal achievemnets and selfishness for an overall greater goal. I don't think the A team could have won the Gold if we only had one team of 4 shooters in SA.

Little things like team shirts do help and are important. We looked the part, behaved the part and in the end delivered. Even having two team uniforms impressed. Some shooters from other countries have told us the win was no surprise to them at all. From the outside we appeared and looked confident like the winners from the days we arrived. Looking back I can understand that. We did feel confident. This whole game is about confidence. Getting there and maintaining confidence is the trick without being arogant about it.

Anyway it's always good when a plan comes off and it's nice to gain the respect of your fellow shooters. For me personally I am very proud and grateful to Brendan, Paul and Craig in particular but also to David, Michael, Phil, Gavin, Rob, Fergus, Barry, Ray and Annie. That was a team of 13 mates to remember!

Stuart