There was a brilliant turn out for this year’s Long Haul Competition. The Long Haul was devised by the late Nev Mason – shot over two distances of 60 and 40 yards but with metric scoring and was designed to test the archers Barebow skills. It is generally accompanied by a lot of barracking and gamesmanship and is one of the highlights of the Outdoor season.
With a large contingent of specialist Barebow archers it was obvious that the rest of the group would have little chance of winning, but they all gave it a shot. Junior archer Erin Hainge also threw her hat into the ring and came a commendable 7th. Rhys Moore, who claimed 6 medals at the Island Games, not only swapped his compound for a club barebow, but also switch sides and shot the round left handed. Whatever his reasoning it seemed to work, and he finished in 11th place but was soundly beaten by boss buddy Aalin George who also traded in her compound for the day.
At the sharp end, Colin Moore held off the challenge of fellow barebow specialist Chris Crompton to take the win and the trophy – a miniature Longbow complete with quiver and arrows. Johnathon Gordon quietly took 3rd place, with non-specialist and former winner, Dave Moore in 4th. Stan Gorry for some reason elected not to use the bow he had shot with all season and end up in 5th place. Pete Mumford, did a Mumford (forgot to shoot one of his arrows) and just managed to stay ahead of Erin.
Ralf Mitchell hid out among the specialists in the hope that he would avoid the rather warped sense of humour of the Records Officer. Needless to say, he failed. David Craine did rather well to stake a claim in the middle of the leader board. Peter Howland was happy with 13th place and a new pb. Andrew Westmorland took it all too seriously and was guilty of aiming – which isn’t in the spirit of the thing at all. Westie was doing quite badly until Barbara Harris offered him a bag of sweets if he got all of his arrows to score in one end. He suddenly became Robin Hood – amazing what the promise of a bag of Haribo can do. Harris herself was resigned to the fact that she would come dead last yet again. Her goal was to get at least one scoring arrow at 60 yards, a thing she had failed to do the previous year. Surprisingly she racked up 45 points at the furthest distance and then went on to do enough at 40 yards to break 100. An undreamed of feat of achievement which gives her hope of rising to the giddy heights of second last next year.
Results: 1.C.Moore 71/536/4/2, 2.C.Crompton 70/516/4/4, 3.J.Gordon 70/470/5/3, 4.D.Moore 70/4613/0, 5. S.Gorry 69/436/0/0, 6.P.Mumford 63/409/1/0, 7.E.Hainge 64/405/6/2pb, 8.D.Craine 57/373/2/0, 9.B.Callow 56/355/5/0, 10.A.George 62/343/1/0, 11.R.Moore 52/294/1/0, 12.R.Mitchell 54/272/0/0, 13.P.Howland 54/254/1/0, 14.A.Westmorland 51/223/0/0, 15.B.Harris 28/108/0/0.
Isle of Man Archery Club 