It might be seen as something of an anomaly that the least known of those travelling to the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne this month are the most experienced.

Bermuda?s four-man shooting team have been pulling the trigger for more than a couple of decades at venues all around the world.

And the Games Down Under will be nothing new to the likes of veterans Nelson Simons, Sinclair Raynor, Walter Trott and Ross Roberts who between them, and along with Carl Reid who isn?t in the current team, competed at the Victoria (1994), Kuala Lumpur (1998) and Manchester (2002) Games.

They?ve yet to earn a place on the podium ? but considering the full bore shooters don?t even have a range in Bermuda and the small bore team get to practice just two or three times a week at the Prospect range, that?s hardly surprising.

Yet manager Neville Trott, himself a long-time member of the Coral Reefs Rifle and Pistol Club which formed in the late 1960s and now as the only remaining shooting club in Bermuda caters to less than 20 members, believes the Island team can put up a good showing against some of the best in the world.

Small bore competitors Raynor and Roberts, shooting a .22 weapon from 50 metres, and Simons and Trott, whose speciality is the full bore calibre fired from a variety of ranges ? 300, 500, 600, 900 and 1,000 metres ? leave tomorrow along with manager Trott and coaches Lloyd Evans and Norman Pogson, hoping to use the next ten days or so in the lead-up to the Games fine-tuning more than a year of preparation.

?Because of the restrictions here, we?ve had to reach our qualifying scores overseas,? explained Trott.

?The small bore shooters qualified in Puerto Rico last November and the full bore shooters qualified in Jamaica last October.

?But they?ve all competed overseas quite a lot in the last year.

?They started to train last March with a trip to Barbados, then they went to Ontario in Canada in May, then back to Ontario in August for a couple of weeks and they were also in Jamaica for a couple of weeks.

?Of course, the full bore shooters don?t have a range here so they have to go overseas. But they?ve put in a fair bit of training. And all of the team have been to these shooting festivals before so they know exactly what to expect and the standard of competition they?ll face.?

Just in the last week two coaches came down from Canada to hold a four-day coaching clinic and time in Melbourne next week will help the local team put in some intense final practice.

The full bore pair are scheduled to compete at the Wellsford Rifle Range in Bendigo, about a two hour drive from Melbourne, while the small bore team will be based at the Melbourne International Shooting Club.

Fortunately for manager Trott and the two coaches, competition in the two events has been scheduled on different days, allowing the support team to alternate between venues.

Their first event is the 50 metre rifle prone pairs on Saturday, March 18 followed the next day by the full bore open pairs. Competition then continues throughout the following week.