The weather forecast promised ideal shooting conditions, but Greeba refused to play ball as the shooting range fell victim to a cold blustery wind. The archers either found themselves battered on the shooting line or watched their arrows being blown off centre at the boss as the wind back and veered over the course of the day. The round of the day was 1440, as it was quite probably going to be the last chance to get a full day’s shoot in on island before TT brought everything to a halt. As it was, of the 15 archers who turned up on Sunday only 6 of them made it through the whole day. Some had only intended to shoot for half the day, but a couple of others simply packed up in frustration and left.
Family commitments meant that Rhys Moore could only compete in the morning session which left it as a straight head-to-head between Pete Mumford and Dave Moore in the Gents Compound. Pete was in good form over the longer distances, couple of misses by Dave at 90m just gave Pete more of an advantage. Evenly matched at 70m, Pete still carried a 40 point advantage going into the afternoon session and a brilliant start at 50m made it look as though he was going to romp to victory. As the windy conditions worsened however, it was Dave who adapted better. With one distance to go he had cut the deficit down to just 8 points and it was all to play for. As Dave continued to eat into Pete’s lead all he had to do was tie the score and he would win on count back as he had a higher number of X’s, but it was not to be. A miss out of nowhere put him on the back foot and, even though Dave rallied over the last two dozen, it wasn’t enough, and Pete claimed victory by 2 points.
Aalin George was without competition this week which may have affected her focus, that or being on a boss with Barbara Harris, who was having a nightmare of day in the Ladies Recurve division, saw Aalin put in a rare sub 1300 score. Aalin’s exasperated ‘oh honestly’ when she saw her final score, pretty much summed up the day for everyone. Barbara was certainly no match for Charlotte George who took the Ladies Recurve win by a margin of 361 points and was one of the few archers who was happy with her performance in the adverse conditions.
Richard Hainge started the round up against Danny Cowin in the Gents Recurve. Burning the midnight oil over the weekend had done Danny no favours. After struggling over the longer distances his frustration boiled over and he beat a hasty retreat at lunchtime leaving Richard to take the win unopposed.
Colin Moore absolutely battered Ralf Mitchell in a Barebow Short Metric. Ralf did himself no favours with his novel approach to aiming, which saw most of his arrows go to ground, but Colin is difficult to beat under any circumstances and he made light of the windy conditions.
Also shooting was David Craine who was soundly beaten by Alex Allen-Snell putting in a rare appearance in the afternoon session to shoot a Short Metric. Peter Howland shot a Long Metric 1(70 & 60m) in the morning session, while Junior Erin Hainge got in some practice over a Long Metric 3(50 & 40m).
Results WA1440: Gents Compound- 1.P.Mumford 143/1211/26/7, 2.D.Moore 141/1209/33/9. Ladies Compound- A.George 144/1287/43/9. Ladies Recurve- 1.C.George 143/1127/21/7, 2.B.Harris 115/766/8/2. Gents Recurve- R.Hainge 134/882/7/2. Gents Long Metric Recurv- D.Cowin 67/361/2/1; Compund- R.Moore- 72/660/26/8. Long Metric 1- P.Howland 63/341/1. Long Metric 3- E.Hainge 67/482/6/2. Short Metric Barebow- 1.C.Moore 72/541/9/1, 2.R.Mitchell 56/245/0/0; Recurve- 1.A.Allen-Snell 70/536/12/3, 2.D.Craine 62/332/2/0.
Isle of Man Archery Club 