After a delay of nearly three months, competitive archery got underway at Greeba on Sunday though the weather did its best to spoil things. Early morning rain meant a later start and while it remained quite warm there were sporadic showers. On the plus side, the wind direction meant that the field was mostly sheltered. The Recurve archers had the worst of it at their 70m distance, while the Compound archers remained untroubled at their 50m distance. The round of the day was a WA 720 ,72 arrows at a single distance (see above), shot as part of the Club’s Scratch League.
The Gents Compound saw the usual suspects on the shooting line: Pete Mumford, Billy Lightfoot and Dave and Rhys Moore. Pete Mumford was shooting for the first time since injuring his bow hand in a cycling accident and was looking to do no more than finish the shoot. After a slow start, he put in a solid round which secured third place. Dave Moore, whose work commitments had curtailed his practice time started well but quickly faded to finished well off the pace in fourth. The fight for top spot quickly became a straight head to head between Rhys Moore and Billy Lightfoot. Rhys opened the proceedings with 108 for the first dozen, putting him 8 points ahead of Billy. Rhys’s next dozen were poor which allowed Billy to square things. Rhys responded with his highest dozen total of the day. This opened up a 5 point lead just before the rain hit for the first time and the archers took to the shelter of the trees. The break seemed to have effected Rhys’ concentration as he winged an arrow out into the 6 zone. Billy failed to capitalize on the mistake however, and Rhys extended his lead further. Mr Lightfoot who had been whinging about his glasses steaming up and who seemed convinced that the wind (which was non-existent) was effecting his arrows, stopped moaning long enough to shoot properly and put himself in front for the first time. Billy held his nerve as the weather closed in and the rain began to fall steadily. Far from being put off he extended his lead to claim victory by 5 points.
Lone Lady Compound Joy Gough set herself the goal of breaking 600 which she duly did – by 1 point.
Meanwhile, Danny Cowin and Alex Snell faced off in the Gents Recurve. Danny had made something of a breakthrough at the Tuesday night session after a run of poor form and was keen to put what he had learned into practice. Alex was trying to break himself of his habit of over-aiming and shoot more intuitively. Both men made a decent start, but Danny was the more consistent of the two. A 5 point lead at the end of the first dozen increased to a 23 point lead by the end of the second. Whatever Danny had changed appeared to be working and he should have broken the 500 barrier easily but a couple of low scoring ends meant that he fell just short. After a promising start Alex began to struggle, his arrows shifting from one side of the target to the other with each shot. Too many arrows ended up in low scoring areas and a couple of misses dented his score even further. Danny romped home the winner by a massive 60 point margin.
Barbara Harris, who was annoyingly confident of her ability to beat the men, would have done better to have concentrated on putting her bow together rather than needling the opposition. Too busy mouthing off to all and sundry she managed to fix her sight arm in the wrong place, with the result that her first six arrows barely made it to the target. Having wasted half of her practice arrows Barbara put in a dismal first dozen total and looked as though she would regret her cockiness. A couple of years ago this situation would have seen her self-destruct, instead she shrugged it off and got on with things. The result was that she posted the highest Recurve score of the day.
Results WA 720:Gents Compound – 1.B.Lightfoot 72/630/18/7, 2.R.Moore 72/625/14/3, 3.P.Mumford 72/618/12/5, 4.D.Moore 72/569/3/3. Ladies Compound – J.Gough 72/601/12/4. Gents Recurve – D.Cowin 72/497/6/0, 2.A Snell 70/437/1/0. Ladies Recurve – B.Harris 72/528/3/1.
Isle of Man Archery Club 