Popular Coffs IRB Rimfire shooter, Greg Sutherland recorded one of the best wins of his target shooting career at Koolinghat rifle range near Taree on the weekend, whilst competing in a red hot field in the inter-club "Round Robin shoot", when he blew away the field to win.

The contest attracted no less than 3 Australian representative shooters one being an ex Aussie world teams champion member, John Matthews from Maclean in the entry of 36 of some of Australia's best shooters, however this did not deter Sutherland who let his brilliant target scores do the talking.

Greg Sutherland won by 3 points from Taree's genial Ron Brown with Aussie rep shooter Don Powell a further 3 points behind.

In the "Hunting Rifle" division this was won by the very consistent and popular Peter Nicoll from South West Rocks. in a very closely fought contest with only one point separating each placing with Ron Nutt and Ron Brown filling the placings.

According to Coffs ex-duel 2014 World Champion John Radford, the Koolinghat range is a notioriously difficult range to score well on and as Sutherland only lost 3 points out of 750, he is hopefully in line for bigger wins in future with Australian representation duties a further strong possibility in the future years?
He further commented the interclub"Round Robin Tournament" had been instrumental in producing both Australian and World Champion Shooters plus current world record record holders , resulting in the northern NSW region being most prominent in producing world class shooters! .... as they say "the proof of the pudding is in the eating' and the results in the last 6 years are there for all to see.

The shoot was held on the Koolinghat smallbore range which was totally burnt out 2 months ago in the recent bushfires with an estimated loss of $120,000, however the members have put in a herculean effort to partly restore the facility aided by generous donations from other clubs and shooters.

Coffs Harbour SSAA club at Dairyville were prominent with an early cash donation and competition targets with a value of $1,000 which set a great example, whilst a respected Armidale shooter gave a cash donation of $2,000 whilst many other donations of building materials were gratefully received from the very supportive Taree community.

This momentous Taree recovery effort led by Don Powell and committee, is a fine example of the "Aussie Spirit" to overcome adversity.

The shoot also saw very good results by a number of other Coffs shooters, namely Bill Buchannan 7th placing and Ian Thompson 13th placing which whilst not podium finishes were never less most meritorious in such a red hot field of some of Australia's best marksmen,

Well done Taree and Koorainghat !