20 Aug 2024
By Ainsley Ward, Scotland Team Manager
In conjunction with the other Home Nations, we decided to try something different with this year’s competition, replacing the side show at BTC with a standalone, main attraction competition hosted this year by New Century Bowmen in Macclesfield. The rationale for a standalone Home Nations was simple in that we were able to select from a full pool of archers for each nation rather than from the pool that had secured a place at BTC. This positive choice paid dividends with the selection process being well over-subscribed for Scotland.
For this first edition, sadly Archery NI decided not to send a team to compete, but this enabled us to send a larger contingent of Scottish Archers and give as many as possible the chance to compete for their nation. For each of the six bow and gender categories we had three main archers and a reserve, giving us an overall squad of 24, and the guarantee of a shoot for the reserves as the three remaining nations pooled their reserves into a single ‘combined’ team able to compete against the Home Nations in place of Northern Ireland.
The competition ran over two days, with Saturday including a WA720 (70/50) ranking round and team head-to-head semi finals for both mixed teams and gender teams.
Ranking Rounds
The first challenge faced by our archers was the field at New Century Bowmen, which was in amazing condition but had a relatively steep downhill incline that required the use of some field archery skills. Most settled in by the mid-point of the ranking round with second-half scores improved for all but a few. In Men’s recurve our archers took rankings 6 through 9 led by Cameron Radigan with 619, who more than most struggled with the sloping field. Our Women’s recurve team faired less well, with the notable exception of team reserve Gillian Imrie placing an impressive 4th with 588. For the Men’s compound, Finlay Clark’s impressive form continued, coping well with the tricky field and ranking first with 691. Women’s compound saw great form from Robyn Geddes to finish 5th on 661 in a highly experienced field. Men’s barebow was topped for Scotland by Steven Brison ranking 4th making a strong score of 584, with debutant archer William Anderson 7th with a competition PB of 545 and an U21 Scottish record (subject to verification). And last, but not least, our Barebow Women, who in a category containing current World Record holder England’s Sarah Hubbard put on a great showing with Marion Johnston ranking 5th with 528 and the rest of the team hot on her heels.
Full results are available on Ianseo: Home | Ianseo
Mixed Teams Semis
With an exceptionally strong England team present, the mixed team matches were always going to be a challenge for Scotland, but our archers acquitted themselves exceptionally well – all putting in dogged performances, taking sets from their rivals but losing out in the Semi finals to move on to Sunday’s Bronze medal matches.
Team Semis
In contrast, and reflecting the drills practiced by the team during squad days in the run-up to this event, our teams managed a near clean sweep of wins, with five from six progressing to the gold medal matches. The exception to this was the Women’s recurve team, who were thrown by a controversial pause as a Wales team member fell ill during the match, and in the spirit of this friendly competition allowed an end for them to recover. This changed the match dynamic and allowed the Welsh to take the win with tight margins. I remain proud that our archers conducted themselves in the most sporting manner and were graceful in defeat.
Sunday Medal Matches
In contrast to the mostly sunny Saturday, Sunday morning in Macclesfield felt more akin to North of the Border weather at 13°C, overcast and with a stiff, gusting breeze. Our familiarity with the conditions was certainly a good omen as the day began with our only team’s bronze match where a determined Debbie Geddes, Linda Dallas and Oksana Peterson saw off the challenge of the Combined team 6-2 to take the Bronze.
In the mixed team bronze matches, Barebow pairing Marion and Steven took the combined team (UK top-10 pairing of Helen Brown and Paul Spencer) to a shoot-off, narrowly missing out on the Bronze having shot 9-8 to their rival’s 10-10. Our compound pair, Fin and Robyn suffered a similar fate with a strong gust of wind causing a miss on the last arrow and a 150-145 loss. The recurve mixed match was an all-Scotland affair however, as both Gillian Imrie and Erik Rowbotham had outqualified the other reserves and formed the combined team competing against Cameron and Linda from Team Scotland. Erik and Gillian put in a determined performance and saw off our top two archers with an emphatic 6-0 win to take bronze position and contribute to the Scotland points pot.
The Scotland team then had a break as the mixed team gold matches progressed with Wales taking Recurve and Compound, and Barebow Gold for England.
Action then shifted focus to gold medal matches for teams, where Scotland had earned 5 of 6 places. First up were the Barebow teams. Our Barebow women’s team were outclassed by England, which consisted of the UK’s 1st, 2nd and 3rd ranked archers putting in a consistent 53 for every end to win the tie 6-0 and give a well-earned silver to Marion, Imogen Bannister and Fiona Acamovic following their brave and impressive response to such a challenge. In a similar way our Barebow Men pushed an experienced England team every step of the way, taking the first end but ultimately finishing in Silver following a thrilling and tight 6-2 defeat.
Our Compound Men’s team fell behind to England with an early missed shot, but battled hard to claw their way back, ending only 7 points behind on 219-212 including a final end 59! Our valiant Compound Women suffered similarly, with a dropped arrow proving the difference between them and the English team, delivering a Silver for Scotland.
The final match of the tournament proved to be the most exciting of the weekend, as our Recurve Men battled a Wales line-up of Matthew Gray, Callum Piggot and Nathan Wilcox. Scot’s Cameron Radigan, Shay Boyd and Ross Macleod (and his clan’s tartan shorts) initially lost the first end to go 2-0 down, but spurred on by this began putting in some amazing shots as the wind grew stronger to stage a complete fightback. Wales’s Piggot nearly threw the match literally with his first shot of the third end where he failed to secure his finger sling properly and catapulted his bow just short of the three-metre line. Piggot recovered quickly and restrung but failed to match the 55 scored by Team Scotland for 4-2. The Gold was secured with a fitting all-Gold end by our team and a great end to a fantastic event.
With points being awarded for both the Ranking and H2H rounds, Team Scotland’s ranking scores proved to be our achilles, pushing us into Bronze position for the Home Nations Cup, but our team performances were something to be very proud of as we left the field with 1 team gold, 4 team silvers and a team bronze, and a mixed team bronze for our reserves. Amazing results for all concerned.
The Home Nations Cup is due to run again next year at the same location and will come to Scotland in 2026. It was a fantastically organised event, and our thanks go out to Archery England Chair, James Cornford and TO Sharon Medford, for their tireless work in making this happen, plus all of the New Century Bowmen volunteers. I’d also like to thank Richard Radigan for his support and coaching of the squad, all of the archers for their amazing effort and strong representation of our nation, and finally to our small gang of supporters that travelled south of the border to cheer us on – thanks one and all!
