Grappenhall (Mid Branch) won the 2019 competition at Holmes Chapel, narrowly beating the home team during an afternoon of generally fine ringing. This year featured the Trophy and new Novice competitions with eight teams entered from five branches, also three novice and one scratch band.
The judge was Dan Jarvis from Kent. Dan explained how he counted small or slight clips as half a fault whereas going beyond the correct place or a crunch is a full fault. These bells are easy for their weight but quite hard to ring with good rhythm and some are odd-struck which has been considered in the marking. All the teams could have used more rounds to settle in – it really does help and often produces a better result. The tenor was rung well by all teams and generally the rhythm was quite strict instead of being too flexible – which producing better performances. For the Call Change teams, Dan suggests if a row is not going well then move on to the next change more quickly.
The novice competition has a handicap system whereby any ringer who has rung a quarter peal inside is classed as an experienced ringer so faults are increased by 1/3, 2/3 or doubled depending on how many experienced ringers are in the team. The judging of the Trophy competition was much more critical on rhythm and the scores reflect this.
The Master Ben Kellett thanked Dan for providing excellent judging, relevant commentary and precise scoring.
Table of Results for both 6-Bell Competitions
| Place in the 6-bell Trophy competition | Tower | Final Score |
Order of Ringing |
Peal speed |
Judge’s comments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Grappenhall (MID) | 89.6% | 2 | 2h48m | Really quick and confident ring featuring long extents without faults. Plain Bob Minor has an unsettling rhythm and the team could have done even better with a more stable method. | |
| 2nd | Holmes Chapel (SOUTH) | 86.3% | 4 | 2h50m | Good speed and enjoyed the clear, open handstroke leads. Snippets of metronomic ringing made this Grandsire Doubles really nice to hear but quite hard to keep it there. | |
| 3rd | Chester Cathedral (CHESTER) | 82.1% | 8 | 2h42m | The Plain Bob Doubles took a while to settle in during practice. Really good leading which kept all the ringing together. The middle of each change was often slow causing the back bells to compensate. | |
| 4th | Scratch band | 77.9% | 5 | 2h47m | Most faults where at the beginning of the performance whereas the second half was much better. More time spent practicing at the start would have helped halve their faults | |
| 5th | Shotwick (WIRRAL) | 70.4% | 6 | 2h48m | Exactly 120 rows of Call Changes. Fairly slow rounds into slow call changes whereas it is often easier to ring odd-struck bells more quickly to get a better effect. | |
| Place in the 6-bell Novice Competition | Tower | FInal Score |
Score before Handicap |
Order of Ringing |
Judge’s comments | |
| 1st | Daresbury (MID) | 75.7% | 85.4% | 7 | The speed was very comfortable and the treble leading was especially good contributing to good and confident rhythm. | |
| 2nd | Nantwich (SOUTH) | 70.9% | 82.5% | 1 | Started a bit slow however benefitted from good, simple and sensible changes that helped the team. Treble and Tenor worked really well. | |
| 3rd | Prestbury (EAST) | 64% | 3 | Ten whole pulls of rounds then an ambitious combination of changes especially in the middle of the performance with a lot of bells changing leads and difficulty with the 5-4-6 rows. |