Wayne Williams

WAYNE WILLIAMS

 

Wayne started racing pigeons when he was 17 years old at the Ivanhoe Pigeon Club. He became interested in pigeons through a flyer, Huey Shearer who lived across the road. Huey was like a grandfather to Wayne and gave Wayne his first pigeons to start his racing hobby. Wayne flew from the Ivanhoe Club from 1977, not having much success during his time there.

He moved to Epping in 1986 and joined the Thomastown Racing Club. Thomastown had approximately 30 members at that time. It was a few years before he actually won a club race. He raced against a number of well know flyers at the club, Dave Finnerty, Brian Englesman, Vince Canizzo just to name a few.

Wayne won his first federation young bird race in 1989. This bird was from a family called the Royals. The cock was from Huey Shearer and the hen was a Harkom bird. The Royal family was the main family that Huey had in his loft. He went on to win a number of federation places with birds bred from this cock. In later years he received pigeons from the Harkoms, also having success with this family crossed with the Royal family.

In 1994 Wayne joined partnership with Brian Englesman flying from Lalor and had a very successful year winning the National Federation, the 500 mile Federation and coming 2nd in the Old Bird points. The year flying with Brian helped Wayne a great deal in different ways of breeding, training, feeding etc. Whilst with Brian, Wayne was lucky enough to train with the Rat Pack (Englesman, Finnerty, Groves, Valla and Cox). The following year Wayne flew from his Epping home having a good season, winning 1st federation 500 mile and 2nd federation 150 mile receiving bird of the year.

This pigeon, a hen was bred from Harkom crossed O’Shannasey. This hen produced 2 open Hobart winners in 2000 and 2001. In 2001 this was the only bird home on the day.Today Wayne has families from the Harkoms, Englesman which are wickhams, Royals, crossed hoobens and jansen. When breeding Wayne has a number of Stock Birds, breeds around 90 – 100 birds per year with 2 year olds.

The highlights of Wayne’s racing has been winning the 500 mile federations, winning 2races on the same day, 1st federation Whaley and 1st federation from Launceston in 1998. The Whaley winner first federation bird was from a wickham cock and Harkom hen and
the Launceston first federation bird was a wickham cock and Harrison hen.