Sunday saw Greeba play host to the annual Windsor Trophy; a traditional round which comprises three dozen arrows shot at each of three distances 60,50 and 40 yards. The Windsor is divided purely on bow type with men and women shooting against each other. The weather apps suggested that conditions would be overcast with light to moderate winds giving way to sun by 11 o’clock. What the archers got was a sort of persistent drizzle with moderate to heavy winds and no sign of sunshine at all. With the end of the Outdoor season approaching the decision was taken to hold the shoot anyway and utilize the new (and expensive) waterproof targets.
After shooting six sighters Pete Mumford, fearing damage to his fletchings, decided to pull out of the competition. This left petite Joy Gough to go up against club giant Rhys Moore in the Compound division. Rhys was pessimistic about his chances of breaking his Club Record given the conditions and he was proved right. However bad weather or not, he dropped only 8 points at the first distance, 4 points at the second and 2 points at the third to take a comfortable win.
There was a decent Recurve field for once with defending champion Danny Cowin, Barbara Harris, Eric Lutes and Ralf Mitchell joined by guest archer Andy Bishop. Eric and Ralf were shooting the round for the first time. Andy was an unknown quantity but slotted into fourth place 2 points behind Eric after the first distance. Cowin and Harris aimed a steady stream of abuse at one another under the guise of good natured banter. Danny made a good start opening up a 10 point lead after the first dozen arrows which increased to 14 points by the end of the second dozen. Harris however was not perturbed and waited for Danny to reach the end of his notoriously short attention span. She did not have long to wait – a miss from Danny and a strong dozen from Harris turned the 14 point deficit into a 5 point lead for Barbara going into the second distance.
At 50y the lead began to change hands every six arrows and Cowin’s assertion that he would ‘hammer’ Harris over the shorter distances was not happening. Going into the 40y finale Ralf was in fifth, Andy Bishop was in fourth with Eric Lutes 19 points ahead of him in third. Barbara was second and Danny had a wafer-thin lead of 1 point.
Ralf was too far behind to improve his position but was happy with the progress he made over the day. Eric put in a solid final distance, but Andy managed to overhaul him to take third place by 1 point. Meanwhile, the gamesmanship between Harris and Cowin rose to outrageous levels; shooting line etiquette was completely ignored as the pair tried to put each other off. Going into the last six arrows Danny was deliberately slow getting to the line so that he could see what he had to chase. Barbara retaliated by breaking Danny’s concentration while he was at full draw and he was so busy laughing it took him a while to get his last two arrows away. When the scores were verified, the result was Barbara 792 – Danny 793 and Mr Cowin retained his title by a single point.
In the Junior Windsor event the boys were effectively handicapped by age with Toby Young shooting a Short Windsor (50/40/30y) and Jacob Brookes and Nathan Kinrade shooting a Junior Windsor (40/30/20y). Nathan put in a very respectable score for his first attempt at the distance to take third. Jacob added 23 points to his pb for the round to take the Junior Trophy, with Toby slotting into second place.
Results Windsor Trophy – Compound: 1.R.Moore 108/958/101, 2.J.Gough 108/900/74. Recurve: 1.D.Cowin 107/793/43, 2.B.Harris 108/792/43, 3.A.Bishop 107/741/40, 4.E.Lutes 108/740/31pb, 5.R.Mitchell 99/561/11pb. Junior Trophy: 1.J.Brookes 108/838/55pb, 2.T.Young 108/798/47, 3.N.Kinrade 108/753/43pb.
Isle of Man Archery Club 