The JOE MURPHY Column
These past few weeks I’ve had a couple of conversations with fanciers regarding decline within the Scottish sport. If you study the race programme on the back pages of the BHW you will see that many Scottish federations are at the same race point. Last week this was just under the 200 mile mark to the Lothians while it is further into Fife, Angus and Dundee. How on earth do we not liberate TOGETHER like a combine. Surely if the all these Scottish birds coming the same way would be to our advantage. Once they get to the Firth of Forth the Midlothian; East of Scotland along with Pentland Hills birds would have dropped off at their lofts and the remainder would then travel north into their respective federations. This week you will see from John Baillie’s report that the East of Scotland; Midlothian and Almond Valley federations liberated together at Wakefield and had a great race (see reports below). Many years ago we had an amalgamation which included the majority of Scottish federations and this was a great success with (I think) 8 to 9000 birds competing. This weekend as you read this column the Scottish National Flying Club will be holding their first inland race from Buckingham so why not educate the birds prior to this national event. The Up North Combine has been doing this for years and their birds come right up the east coast with thousands of birds competing. We are coming to the time within our sport that if we don’t all go as one unit then our sport will diminish. At the present time Angus go with Dundee; we have 2 federations in Fife; then there is Almond Valley, Central Federation, North West Federation; Midlothian, Pentland Hills and Scottish Border. We need to spot all this petty infighting and think of our birds and the fanciers who are left within the sport. It is too late for the old bird racing but something can be done for the young birds before it is too late. I’m only stating what other fanciers have discussed with me if it happens only time will tell. Now for the results forwarded from the club press officers. By the way all the best to everyone who is racing with the SNFC this weekend hope you have a good race.
Results
Arbroath Racing Pigeon Club
From the Wakefield race flown on 19th May the convoy of 691 birds were liberated at 10-15 hours with no wind at the race point. In the Arbroath club 5 members sent 133 birds with Charlie & Glen Cameron keeping up their winning streak of 5 wins in a row. There winner was a yearling doing 1714 was a widowhood blue cock who won last week and now has 3 x 1st sections in the federation. He is inbred to the Castres of Leon Messiaen being from a self-bred grandson of the Castres when mated to a direct daughter. Castres is a member of the Barcelona Dynasty of Leon’s’ and won prizes from Barcelona 5 years in a row and is now a base pigeon at Leon’s. The next 6 positions were won by Kevin J Murphy who had a great ‘team’ performance; the 2nd club winner is sire was the Mealy Cock (Daniel