Big guns turn back the clock in Scotland

Kenneth Crookston reports from the Scottish Championships in Glenrothes

A look at the results for the National Championships of Great Britain in 1990, when George Lloyd’s English Heritage made its first appearance on the contest stage, recalls an historic day for Scottish banding, with the then CWS (Glasgow) Band taking the title north of the Border for the first time. Looking slightly further down, in fifth place that day was Whitburn, while that year’s Scottish Champion, Kirkintilloch, found itself languishing toward the bottom of the order of merit. Fast forward 20 years and the same three bands continue to dominate as much as ever in Scotland, and last weekend they reaffirmed this by finishing in exactly the same order as the Scottish Championships returned to the Rothes Halls in the Fife town of Glenrothes.

This was the 30th time that the band now known as Co-operative FuneralCare has won the Scottish Championships, while for conductor, Russell Gray, it was his third successive title, having won with Whitburn in 2008 and Co-op last year. As well as gaining a place at the Royal Albert Hall in October, Co-op will now be eligible to compete at the 2011 European Championships in Montreux, Switzerland. This was a victory built on the firm foundations of a terrific opening in which every detail was crystal clear, leading adjudicators, Chris Wormald and Brett Baker to comment that the winning performance was “outstanding”. Drawn to play number seven of the ten competing bands, Co-op did experience some uncertainty in the final tranquil section of English Heritage, but the coffin lid had already been nailed down on the band’s rivals by that time and there could have been little doubt that title number 30 was on the cards.