Twas the Night Before Torquay
Twas the night before Torquay and all was quiet ... except that was in the houses of all players from Phoenix who are preparing for the contest tomorrow.
An Early Start
If you see a few weary and tired looking people in black looking lost near the Riviera Centre in Torquay tomorrow morning, it's a good chance they are a member of Phoenix as we have an early start with a rehearsal booked for 8:30am.
Hopefully after a strong coffee or two and a nice gentle hymn tune warm up the band will wake up and we will be ready to take to the stage.
Our draw for the section is at 8:45am, with the section commencing at 10am. There are 17 bands in our section, and we're hopeful we will be able to follow up our successes of last year with a strong performance tomorrow. There are some very good bands in our section and the competition is going to hard, but we have prepared well and we're hopeful the adjudicators will take a liking to our performance.
Runners & Riders
4BarsRest have not included us in their pick for bands in contention, and lets not forget that this year is the first year back for the band in the Second Section, so this is not really that suprising. They have instead plumped for a top 6 of:
1. City of Bristol
2. Bodmin Town
3. Camborne Junior Contesting
4. Bream Silver
5. Otterbourne Brass
6. Ocean Brass
Dark Horse: Denmead Brass
Contesting is always a hard one to call and every band in our section will feel like they have a chance of getting a result. We're not giving up hope yet, we're keeping the faith as only last year we weren't given a chance and yet we walked away with the Third Section title.
A Few Thanks
We have a few thanks to make to a few faces who are helping us out tomorrow. Thanks to Glynn (trombone), Graham (cornet), Claire (cornet) and Colin (bass) for filling in a few empty seats. We're hoping that you've enjoyed your rehearsals thus far, and with a great result tomorrow we can twist your arms to stick around a little longer :)
A New Experience
Finally a huge thanks must go to our new MD, Tom. Tom is relatively new to brass bands and this will be his first contest with us and with any band in fact. Tom has worked tirelessly with us since Christmas and we're as preparred as we have ever been for a contest. The band is sounding great and full of confidence, which we'll take to the stage tomorrow.
Hopefully we can do ourselves and Tom proud tomorrow and bring some more silverware back to Crewkerne ... we'll report back on our progress in the next few days.
Released On 10th Mar 2017
