There was another excellent turn out at Onchan on Sunday with eighteen archers lining up to have a go at a Portsmouth. Compounds and Recurves were given the three-spot to shoot while the Barebows and Tradbows stuck to the larger single face target.
It was a day of surprises: Danny Cowin arrived before the Records Officer prompting her to make a note of the date in her diary, Alex Allen-Snell turned up after disappearing halfway through the Outdoor season and Colin Moore found his mojo with the Barebow.
Rhys Moore apparently had some important ice hockey to watch in Bristol and was unavailable for the Gents Compound. John Angiolini stuck to a single face target in an effort to get his spare bow tuned ready for the Worlds and did not enter a score, which left to Cliff Graves and David Moore in a straight head to head scenario. David had a commanding lead after the first dozen but a miss in the second allowed Cliff to close the gap. A further miss after the break did more damage and Cliff went into the final dozen with a 4 point lead. David, however, was never one to give up and dropping only 3 points with his last twelve arrows he bounced back to take the win.
After a disappointing performance the week before, Joy Gough suddenly found her form and posted a season’s best score in the Ladies Compound. It was not enough to beat Aalin George who continued her winning streak. Rose Sandilands put in another solid effort but just couldn’t find the middle of the target often enough and had to settle for third place.
Chris Crompton, who has been largely unbeatable in recent years, found himself under pressure from Colin Moore in the Gents Barebow. Chris took an early lead, but a blistering second dozen from Colin moved him 5 points ahead of Chris. Chris closed it down to a 3 point difference – Colin edged it out to 4. A slight dip at the very end put Colin in danger but Chris couldn’t quite do enough and Colin edged the win by 2 points. Pete Mumford meanwhile continuing to work his way back to form, had to be content with third.
The largest field of the day was provided by the Gents Recurve with five archers vying for glory: Alex Allen-Snell, David Craine, Ralf Mitchell, Peter Howland and Danny Cowin. Ralf trotted out every excuse he could think of on his way to a good-natured last place. Simple truth is, if he stopped moving his head on the string, he wouldn’t look through the gap and he would stop missing so often. David Craine went quietly about things to secure fourth place. Danny Cowin’s problems stem mainly from lack of practice. The new limbs are still bedding in and Danny wound some more poundage off at the break in an effort to find the bow’s sweet spot. This of course could have been done weeks ago if he could be bothered to turn up on a Club night, unfortunately the gravitational pull of The Whitestone is too much for him. Third place was the best Danny could manage. This left Alex and Peter to go for gold. A couple of misses by Peter did him no favours and while he struggled to find the centre, his scores overall were pretty consistent and it was unlucky for him that he was up against Alex. Alex, rusty after a long break from shooting and just having recovered from illness felt the strain physically and took an age to get through his arrows, repeatedly coming down off shots and resetting. Under the rules of shooting archers are given two minutes to loose three arrows and Alex was significantly outside of this time-frame for about a third of his arrows. Since timings are not strictly adhered to at the Club, except for the Championships, the Records Officer allowed the score to stand, and Alex took the win.
Erin Hainge and Barbara Harris kept each other company as the only female Recurves in action. This allowed Barbara to have a day off from scoring, as Erin’s Dad Richard took care of that for both of them. Erin, shooting the round for the first time, put in an excellent score and just fell short of the 500 barrier. Barbara had another lack lustre week, opening the round with two misses. A couple of decent ends allowed her to just make it over the 500 threshold but she needs to get her head sorted out sooner rather than later.
The final match up came between Bill Callow and Stan Gorry in the Gents Tradbow which Bill won by a considerable margin.
Results Portsmouth 3/Spot: Gents Compound- 1.D.Moore 58/555/35, 2.C.Graves 60/551/14. Ladies Compound- 1.A.George 60/571/31, 2.J.Gough 60/556/18sb, 3.R.Sandilands 60/542/10. Gents Recurve- 1.A.Allen-Snell 60/565/35, 2.P.Howland 58/482/8, 3.D.Cowin 56/469/8, 4.D.Craine 52/418/5, 5.R.Mitchell 53/417/5. Ladies Recurve- B.Harris 58/502/15. U14’s- E.Hainge 60/498/11pb. Portsmouth (Single) Barebow- 1.C.Moore 60/509/12, 2.C.Crompton 60/507/11, 3.P.Mumford 59/456/4. Tradbow- 1.B.Callow 60/449/6, 2.S.Gorry 60/386/6.
Isle of Man Archery Club 