On Sunday 16th February 2014, 10 of Cambridgeshire's longbow archers travelled to Essex to compete in the annual double Portsmouth inter-counties competition. The venue for the competition was Shenfield High school, Brentwood which is the indoor venue for Burnwood Archers.
The Judge in charge was Alan Harding; brought in to stop the traditional banter from escalating into a war!
The first dozen arrows looked very promising for Cambridgeshire, with Essex unable to find the centre, but once the archers settled down scores evened out. By the end of the first Portsmouth round Essex had the lead.
After a short break the second Portsmouth started and we all knew that we needed to score an extra 2 points per arrow to catch up. At the end of the second session we didn't manage to close the gap.
The final combined scores were: Essex 8268 Cambridgeshire 7794
Congratulations to James Bridges (Cambridgeshire) who, on his team début, shot an excellent score of 490 and 483. This was done using a longbow that he had made the week before! Congratulations also to Shaun Jacobs who scored a personal best of 444.
Thank you to all the archers who took part and to Essex for hosting the match and for providing the after match refreshments. Congratulations to Essex and we look forward to hosting the match early next year.