Sunday 7th August 2016 & the Cambridgeshire County Archery team made their way to the Inter County Trophy shoot hosted by Bedfordshire. The team was made up of 11 archers shooting a mix of Recurve and Longbow with 9 archers making their County debut. The match consisted of age appropriate rounds of the York/Hereford/Bristol variety so it was going to be a long day. The sky was looking quite dull and grey on the journey down but this soon gave way to some splendid sunshine and the match was shot in some really warm conditions. Unfortunately, this was accompanied by a strong tail wind with stronger gusts at times which made shooting conditions very tough for all.
The team was made welcome by our hosts and the efforts of the host Team Manager and his support team were very much appreciated – a friendly and pleasant match. The shoot got under way at 9:30am with all the archers finding it difficult dealing with the windy conditions. Some managed to handle this better than others, but by the end of the first 6 dozen the scores seemed pretty well matched although Cambridgeshire were probably slightly ahead.
The match resumed after lunch with all archers continuing to battle with the wind despite the shorter distances.
The match finished around 5pm and it had been a long hot hard days’ shooting. Despite the challenging conditions Isabel Lee (Recurve), Harry Tapp (Recurve) and Stuart Gemmell (Longbow) all managed a Bowman score – well done indeed!
The Team Managers then looked at matching up the teams on a ‘like for like’ basis and, having agreed the teams, started to work out the match result. The Longbows came out on top 779 versus 746 & Recurves also won 4490 versus 3897.
So the Team result was a 5269 to 4643 win to Cambridgeshire and they retained the Silver Salver last won in 2014 (match not held in 2015).
Fantastic effort by the Team and a remarkable effort for those making their debut.
You have all done the County proud.