Yearling Nat winner Joe Brown with Sinead Cotter of Bucktons Feeds and Linda Marshall of Marshall Animal Feeds.
INFC YEARLING NATIONAL SENNEN COVE by Brendan McLoughlin –
The Irish National Flying Club’s Yearling National was originally due to be held on Wednesday 12th June this year but due to adverse weather it was put back almost on a daily basis as our race controllers scanned the weather forecasts awaiting an opportunity for the race. Eventually they gave the go ahead to mark the birds on Monday 17th June for a race on 19th June. This turned out to be an excellent call by the team as we ended up having one of the best Yearling Nationals for years, with a good spread in the result and with well over 1,000 birds on the day with lots more on the second day.
800 members sent 4474 pigeons to compete for £34,852 in pools and prizes and the birds were liberated in Sennen Cove at 8.30am in a light north- west wind. The race was sponsored by Bucktons Quality Racing Pigeon Foods and we are very grateful to them for their sponsorship.
1st North section, 1st Open J Brown Blackwatertown WE, Vel 1151, flying 303 miles winning £1336 and the Nelson Corry Trophy
The winner of the Yearling National sponsored by Bucktons this year is Blackwatertown’s Joe Brown who had a superb race here with 5 birds in the result at 1st, 7th, 25th, 63rd and 245th Open winning over £2,300 in the process. With two birds in the top ten he will also be the winner of the Sam Buckley Memorial Cup for the best two bird average. Joe is well known throughout the pigeon sport in Northern Ireland and is a very worthy winner of the Nelson Corry Cup. The yearling National is a race that many fanciers like as it is based on a level playing field with all birds being yearlings. I know that Joe is very proud of this win on what was a great racing day.
The winning pigeon is a Blue hen now known as ‘G8 Lady’ as this was the week that the G8 summit was being held in Northern Ireland. Indeed Joe has named all the birds he timed here after the G8 summit, a momentous occasion in N Ireland to match Joe’s momentous result. The breeding is Soontjens x Willy Jacobs from his stock pigeons. This yearling hen was raced as a Natural young bird and had only two young bird races which would have been comeback races later in the season. This year she started off on the roundabout and was paired for the Yearling National. With the race being put back a week she ended up sitting 6 days on a young bird. Joe’s aim was to have the Yearling National pigeons all sitting on chipping eggs going to the race. She got all races this year up to and including 1st Talbenny which wasn’t an easy one. When asked about feeding Joe said it was a mixture of several top brands which he mixes himself.
Full report in the Forum – Irish National Flying Club.
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