Presentation 2017 Press Officer’s Report

Looking back 2017 isn’t going to be a year that will be fondly membered by the majority of pigeon enthusiasts due to poor weather conditions, heavy losses  and young bird ailments. That said there have been some wonderful performances put up by some of our resilient members. Sadly a small number choose to blame the Midlands National whenever we have a less than an ideal race. Let’s be totally honest here, how many perfect days for cross channel racing do we get in a year? Not many that is for sure. This is simply because weather conditions over 400-600 miles are rarely going to be favourable over the entire route. With all of this in mind our race controllers have to manage situations as best as they can and only act on the guidance given by our weather advisors and unfortunately on rare occasions they do get it wrong because quite simply a forecast is exactly that a prediction of the weather conditions over the next couple of days and is never cast in stone. One thing I can say with total confidence is that there is no large pigeon organisation that makes more effort or invests as much money in getting the best racing that we can for our members and it is upsetting when a small number of our members fail to realise this fact.

What other things have the Midlands National’s Committee been doing behind the scenes? Well an extra transporter, a trailer and Van have been purchased to aid us logistically. The transporter was purchased from Francis Transport since they decided to take more of a back seat in the transporting of our birds to races. This I’m sure will see that in the future the Club should benefit from transportation savings as we take a more hands on approach ourselves in the forthcoming years. That said Mark Francis has been a fantastic supporter of our Club along with his dad Roy and is still there as an assurance policy whenever we need his help. Yes Francis Transport were a major player in raising the MNFC like the ‘phoenix from the ashes’ and we will always be grateful to them for that.

The One Loft race in 2017 proved to be a success as will be highlighted this evening by the attendance of a few of the highest prize winners in the series of races. The One Loft venture has very much proved to be something of a controversial subject but as fanciers grow older the appeal of these type of races will prove to be a great attraction and a good percentage of future profits will be used to attract more people into our fine sport by way of our ‘Flying Back to Nature’ project as already hundreds of schools have been visited to raise the profile of the racing pigeon. Surely this can only be considered to be a benefit to our hobby.

The Committee hopes that you have a lovely evening and that the quality of the racing in 2018 is an improvement on this past year. One thing is for sure the Mid Nat will be doing everything that it can do to achieve this aim.

Mike Lakin