The Isle of Man Archery Club met on Sunday under threatening skies to shoot a National Round as part of the Club’s handicap league. Before commencing the round, the archers held a minutes silence in memory of Gillian Lightfoot who had sadly passed away the day before. Gillian, the wife of popular club member Billy Lightfoot, was a beautiful person both physically and spiritually and will be greatly missed by everyone who had the privilege of knowing her.

The weather forecast for Sunday was one of occasional showers and moderately high winds. By mid-afternoon the increasingly heavy rainfall caused the Club to abandon the field and the intended full day’s Hereford/Bristol I was recalculated as a half day Long National round.

The heavy winds made shooting difficult and scores were low although many archers ended up with new personal best scores by virtue of never having shot the round before. Dave Moore shot the highest score of the day but had to settle for second place behind Josh Trafford after the handicap was applied. Barbara Harris had a nightmare of a day missing the target with 22 out of 72 of her arrows. Her day was not a bad as junior archers Joseph Reaney and James Hill who turned up for afternoon just as the weather worsened. They only managed to get through two dozen arrows before rain stopped play and so did not complete an actual round.

Sisters Aalin and Kirsten George shot a 50m round as practice before heading into Europe with Team GB.

Results Long National/National Handicap – 1:Josh Trafford 1533 (69 363 9)pb, 2:Karen Lott 1432 (70 410 15)pb, =2:Dave Moore 1432 (72 590 44), 4:Pete Mumford 1409 (72 576 43), 5:Joy Gough 1400 (72 532 29), 6:Colin Moore 1390 (72 538 50), 7:Tony Hartley 1387 (68 434 12), 8:Rhys Moore 1337 (61 327 6)pb, 9:Barbara Harris 1260 (50 275 7)pb.

Colin Moore’s score for 4th May was accidently omitted for last week’s report, his score of 1427 (72 616 20 5) put him in ninth place.