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Save the Goat | |||||
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It is often said that you can tell much about a Society by the way it treats its animals. Southport Photographic Society can be justly proud of its stance at its annual grading of players, the latest of which took place on Monday 8th November. Southport are fond of football. In the absence of a strong local football team the Society fantasises on what might be; it regularly makes up its ideal football teams - from the lowly Southport Reserves to the World eleven. Oddly it uses its only ready supply of talent - photographers - in this quest. Judge Roger Pinn ARPS, MPAGB, BPE4* was well suited to this task. He had no idea about football either. Neither had he seen the images in advance. Southport have taken the bold step of inviting clubs to submit their images on a CD, and the judge makes his comments only on these XGA format images. Having had a once-through look at the images Roger was required to remove 11 of them (to form the Southport Reserves team). These images would receive 1 point. The judge was then invited to remove the next eleven (to be given 2 points); and so on until his last eleven received 8 points. He was then asked to select his 'man of the match' who would be declared the overall winner and given an extra point. Roger was not overly keen on sunsets, and so these made an early exit. The goat was 2nd in the list of thumbnail images, and once the 1st image had gone the goat was regularly highlighted. But 'no', said Roger, 'I like the goat; we'll keep him for a bit'. Regularly through the proceedings he commented Will the goat go? No, Not yet!. By the interval the goat was still in with a chance and certain members were endeavouring to form a "protect the goat" society. When the goat was next mentioned a cry went up "Keep the Goat"! Sadly after one more round "Bliss" was allocated a football team. We had lost 7 of our eleven players, and things were not looking too good. In the next round we lost 2 more leaving only Tony and Dorothy in with a chance. They both survived to the final round, when Roger was asked to name the "man of the match". Commenting upon how good all of the images were, he pointed to Autumn Glow by Dorothy saying "that's the one". Cheers all round; and an excellent individual result for North Cheshire. Prior to this South Manchester and North Cheshire were neck and neck. This final point put NCPS in front! The overall winners were Wigan 10, followed in descending order by Southport, South Liverpool, North Cheshire, South Manchester and Bebbington,, with SLIC and St Helens together holding up the table. A good night for NCPS against very strong competition. Dorothy's trophy was a miniature footballer. Our individual image scores are listed below. Sunset Jonathan Bawden 1 point Moelfre Trfan Gordon Robson 2 points St Peters Colin Pickles 2 points Flower Meadow George Beaumont 2 points Juvenile Night Heron Brian Bower 4 points Bliss Bill Chadband 5 points Fighting Gemsbok Steph Clack 5 points Walkway Brian Turnbull 6 points Oh Lordy, Not Again! John Ade 6 points Corridor of Light Tony Redford 8 points Autumn Glow Dorothy Redford 9 points Two cars carried the NCPS contingeant to Southport: Tony and Dorothy, Gordon and Joyce in one; Dave Akers, Jon Bawden, Joyce Streets and Bill Chadband in the other. Thanks to Dave, and to Tony for doing the driving. Bill Chadband |
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This report will appear in the next edition of Focus. It will be removed from this news section when Focus is published online. |
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