This Sunday The Annual Ace of Clubs competition took place at Talbot Green.

It`s quite a complicated competition, and this year 15 clubs entered - they were Beechwood Digital; Bridgend: Cardiff, Crai; Ebbw Vale; Gwynfa; Imaging 2000; Merthyr Tydfil; Neath; Newport; Pyle and Porthcawl; Swansea; Tenby; The Vale; and Western Valley.  All clubs enter a bank of 30 images before the day, and also choose their 10 first round images.

The first round consists of 10 images from each club which are marked out of 15.

Then, all clubs have to enter another 10 images which have to be different from the first 10. Of course this is where tactics now come in because, having seen the type of image the selectors do or don`t like you may wish to ignore some and choose others.  This second round score is added to that of the first round and the totals read out.

Oh! and I forgot to say that each team has a pair of laptop workers who are constantly renumbering the images before giving them to the projectionist.  Confused?? So were we!

The Vale was ably served by Terry and Ed on laptop helped (and,  no doubt hindered as well) occasionally by Mike Davies, Phil Ray, Gareth, Mostyn, Margaret and, of course, Jan.

After the first round The Vale were fourth But the top 8 were all very close.  We made one change for the second round as it was obvious that the selectors were favouring creative and definitely didn`t like landscapes.  After round two we were in the lead by 7 marks.

After these two rounds we stopped for a well deserved lunch and I gave strict instructions that everyone should eat fish sandwiches to help their brains!!

NOW, this is where you could get confused!  The top eight clubs are put forward into the battle for the Ace Trophy and the opportunity to represent Wales at the Warwick championships later in the year. The winners of the Shield and the club in second place both go forward.

But first the rest of the clubs have a separate competition for the 'Plate'  This was won by Pyle & Porthcawl, and accepted by Les Loosemore, their Chaiman.

 

Then all the leading 8 clubs pick another 15 images for the last round. These images must come from the bank of 30 images that each club starts with and maybe some or all of the high scoring images from the previous rounds. Tactics here again.   We picked our higher scoring images and added one from our spares.  Some clubs save their best images for the last round – we put more pressure on the rest by putting our best images in the second round.  It worked this time anyway!!

 

Wonder of wonders we won with 181 points and second were Bridgend with 175 points.

I`m including a gallery of all the images chosen. Just because we didn`t use yours today don`t worry. Another day and three different selectors and we would have definitely needed your images.  This was the first time we have entered since it`s been a digital competition and I thought it would only be a practice run !!   It`s all about picking a wide range of image types to have plenty to choose from.  We were also lucky because having not entered the digital competition before we were able to choose a lot of winners from the last few years, which other clubs had already used over the years and therefore had to ignore them. Next year will be different, because we`ll be having to use newer work. So, get out and take those photogaraphs!

 

Well done and thank you to everyone who supplied images.  See the trophy on Friday.

Jan