sport, local-sport, horsham rifle club

BARRY McCourt and Maurie Graham have been shooting at the Horsham Rifle Club on and off for 50 years. Last week they were honoured for their long service to the club with an award from club captain Geoff Evans. “I joined in 1957 and I’m still here – so it’s been about 60 years for me,” McCourt said. McCourt fondly remembers breaking a 29-year drought to finally clinch his first club championship in the 1980s. “It took me 29 years to get a championship out at the club – I didn’t think it was ever going to happen, but it did,” he said. “I had a few very close seconds, but it wasn’t to be. Like everything, you shoot on the day and hope you’re going to go alright. There’s always something to put you off, like wind. If you don’t read your wind you will miss badly.” McCourt remembers learning how to shoot from some of the more experienced members in his early days at the club. “We learnt from the old fellas,” he said. “They used to give you all the hints going and you had to make sure they stuck in your mind or you would never get where you wanted with your shooting. We listened and it paid off.” In 1981 McCourt was awarded with a life membership of the club – a moment he said took him by surprise. “It was a great honour to get a life membership,” he said. “It came out of the blue and I wasn’t aware of it. I was dumbfounded when it did happen. There were blokes 20 years older than me at the time and the award came from them, so it was an honour.” Graham first started shooting in Rupanyup at a young age before making his away to the Horsham Rifle Club in the 1970s. “I joined the Rupanyup Rifle Club when I was 15 years of age. I used to ride my bike in, gun on my shoulder, to the rifle range,” he said. “My father was a shooter. He wasn’t very good but I just took his gear and away I went. “When I was 18 I went to play that silly game of football for a few years before I was badly injured. I went back to rifle shooting and have been shooting on and off ever since.” Graham has completed his fair share of travel during his shooting career. “My ambitions were originally to shoot at as many ranges around the state as I could. I’ve shot at a fair few around the years,” he said. He also competed one year in Queensland. “I went to a competition there by accident,” he said. “You’ve got Australia’s best (shooters) at those places, it was tough. I shot B Grade and I went along for the fun of it. If you got a dollar you got a dollar, but those places are where you meet a lot of people.” Although both of these life long servants to the Horsham Rifle Club have different experiences, they both agree that it is the friendships they have made that makes the club so special. “It’s the friendships and the friends you make in rifle shooting that makes it great,” Graham said. McCourt said: “Everybody is a team member. It’s all become a great team effort to have the club we have now.” Read more: Geoff Evans awarded life membership to Horsham Smallbore Rifle Club

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