The main event happened off the island at the weekend as a team of five Compound archer made their way to Church Stretton to take part in a two-day WA720 competition hosted by Long Mynd Archers. Andrew (Westy) Westmorland, Aalin George, Rhys Moore, Dave Moore, and Ethan Moore for a bit of pre–Island Games practice at the range near Shrewsbury.
Saturday’s action was a straight Double 720 – two rounds with the cumulative score deciding the medals for Day 1 and the seeding for the Head-to-Head knockouts of Day 2. Shooting slightly uphill on an exposed field the Isle of Man contingent acquitted themselves well with Westy picking up Gold in the 50+ category and Dave Moore taking the silver just behind him. Rhys Moore snagged a silver in the Gents Compound, with Ethan finishing just off the podium in fourth. Aalin George picked up a bronze medal in the Ladies division.
After fortifying themselves with an Indian meal on Saturday night (which made up for the lacklustre Persian banquet they had choked down on Friday – “lots of dishes that all looked the same in various shades of beige” to quote Ms George) they headed into Sunday full of optimism. Sadly, things did not quite go as planned. The scoring on Saturday had been done via dual electronic PDA and paper scorecards. The PDA’s malfunctioned several times and Aalin reported that her score on the PDA was wrong but the paper scoresheet which she signed and handed in was correct. Unfortunately for her it was the incorrect lower score from the PDA that was used to determine her seeding for the head-to heads. Instead of receiving a bye that she was entitled to Aalin had to shoot, the mistake not being noticed until too late. Aalin ended up in the bronze medal match, which she lost in a one arrow shoot off to come fourth.
Dave and Westy were both knocked out at the quarter final stage. Ethan out shot higher ranked opponents but was relegated to the bronze medal match by his younger brother Rhys and eventually finished fourth. Rhys was on great form and led the gold medal match all the way to the last arrow with which he only needed to score a 9 to win but put it in the 7 and lost by 1 point. It was probably the most disappointing silver medal he has ever lifted but he had the consolation of recording two GMB scores to start his 2025 campaign.
Meanwhile at Greeba, the rest of the Club enjoyed some splendid weather to shoot a variety of rounds on a day packed with incident. Joy Gough had the misfortune upon pulling one of her arrows that it had buried itself in the head of an arrow that had been left in the boss from a previous shoot and fervently hoped her own arrow could be salvaged. Later an equipment failure caused her to shoot her release aid down the field. Fortunately, Joy was not hurt, and the release aid only caused a minor chip to the paintwork of her riser, but the malfunction meant she had to retire.
More disaster struck late on the round when Les Corran, suffering a mysterious off, was aided by Pete Mumford in the search for his missing arrow. It was finally located some way in front of the boss, but Pete was taken up with the search that he forgot to pull his own arrows and arrived on the shooting line to find that he only had his two spare arrows in his quiver which meant he had to record four misses! A sad end to an otherwise good day.
Isle of Man Archery Club 