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Blackbird column (January 2026)

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Hello and welcome back, archers. I do hope that you are all rested and ready for the year ahead. I managed myself an extra few days before I begin in earnest 🙂. And straight out of the fog of Xmas and New Year indulgences, I was only yesterday at my first ever Archery Ireland National Indoor Championships, or as they like to say, Open. A perfect opportunity to see how different they do things and to get some much-needed practice in to kickstart the year. I did not do as great as I expected but learnt a lot. I’m not as terrible as I expected, and I also seriously need to get glasses, and soon. At twenty yards, the target is a bit fuzzy-fuzzy, and I have no clue where, if at all, my arrow lands on said target. This caused some obvious problems for myself in the first half of the shoot, but in the second half, I did try using a pair of my brother’s old glasses to see if that would help 🙂, and it did indeed. So, obviously, I must get an eye test post-haste and get my own glasses, so I might actually see the arrows and the target.

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James Byrne
James Byrne
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