A ‘short’ history of the English Field Target Association

Around 1984 the sport of Field Target was in its infancy. Clubs around Great Britain were beginning to form and the sport was beginning to grow. Targets tended to be home made and ranges were anything from 3 yards up to 70 yards. As the sport began to get more popular clubs began to hold Open events and the magazines also began to take an interest. It became clear that there had to be a ‘uldmmon’ set of rules needed to be defined so that shooters knew what to expect as they traveled around. So some enthusiastic shooters got together and formed the British Field Target Council under the chairmanship of Mrs Chris Everett from Iceni. This original Council had Members from Wales, Scotland and a couple of newly formed English Regions. It soon changed its name to Association as more English regions were formed. After a couple of years it was thought that the Association was getting a little large and so it was decided that the English Regions would form the EFTA and give up their seats on the BFTA Management committee and instead let the EFTA represent them. After a couple of more years (around 1990 ) the EFTA began to realise that although they represented about 90% of all FT shooters in Britain they only had a one third vote of the governing body and Scottish and Welsh member regions of the BFTA Management Committee could out vote them. Alan Forrest had been BFTA Chairman for a couple of years was asked if the EFTA could revert back to the original position of each region having a seat at the BFTA. By this time there were now 7 English Regions but the Welsh and the Scottish regions agreed with the EFTA and voted to permit each individual region to have a vote. All the EFTA funds were passed to the BFTA and the EFTA effectively became diminished in it’s responsibilities, its only purpose was selecting an English team for international competitions. For this reason the EFTA had a representative on the WFTF Committee – Barry Longbottom – who had to look after the interest of the EFTA who then stood down in 2006. Mick Woodhead replaced Barry Longbottom and after several successful years at the helm stood down in 2015. During this period the WFTF grew from just a few countries to well over thirty. This increased the workload of the EFTA Management Committee to a point where it could not respond consistently in a timely manner. In 2016, to make the committee more efficient the EFTA was then made a sub-committee of the BFTA with the mandate from the English regions to promote their interests within the WFTF, to select the international English PCP and Springer teams, and to look into the EFTA hosting the WFTF World Championships when Englands turn arrived.

Note : This is an edited version of the original article supplied by Alan Forrest.