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Archery Ireland National Field Championship 2024 Field Report

On a very sunny Saturday the 7th of September, archers descended on the majestic Drewstown house and surrounding grounds for the annual National Field championships. It had been several decades since the Archery Ireland field championship had last been in Drewstown and we were blessed with two days of exceptional weather.

The field championships consist of paper faces (black with gold centre) shot at various distances depending on bow class and age categories.

The course is set up with 24 targets, 12 at marked distances and 12 at unmarked distances. Archers shoot 3 arrows per target so a total of 72 arrows per day and the championship is a two day event. Scoring ranges from 1 for the outer black ring and 6 for the inner gold with the max score for one day being 432 and max for the two day championship being 864 points. There are four target sizes ranging from 20cm to 80cm which are shot at varying distances. The smallest faces are the 20cm faces known as “bunnies” which are laid out in a 3 x 4 grid with each archer getting their own vertical strip and shooting one arrow per target. These are at the shortest distances of 5 to 20m.

The next face size is the 40cm which is setup from 5 to 30m with 4 faces arranged on a butt and archers shooting all three arrows into their designed target face.

The next one is 60cm and laid out at 10 to 45m depending on the pegs. Depending on space and butts available, two faces can be laid out side by side to facilitate two archers to shoot at the same time.

The final face is the largest 80cm face which is laid out at the max distance of  15 to 60m depending on the peg. The week preceding the competition was busy collecting targets (kindly loaned by Archery Ireland) before then measuring and setting out the course. This culminated in a course inspection by an Archery Ireland judge on Friday whereby the course was approved with some minor tweaks.

On the first day, some 35 archers arrived, registered and completed the bow checks before heading off to the practice range beside the historical Drewstown walled garden.

After an initial briefing, the archers headed out on the course with some trepidation. The course setup was a mix of woodland shots, lake shots culminating in the magnificent cross-lake shot before finishing with the last 4 shots on the lawn where they could be cheered on by spectators and fellow archers.

After two days of tough competition, much comradery and laughing, it was time to roll up the results and recognise exceptional performance. The medals were presented by founding Archery Ireland member, former Olympic archer and Drewstown Archers president – Jim Conroy who presented the medals with his normal mix of laughter, banter and slagging.  On the day, there were some great results with several records achieved (still to be confirmed) with full results available on Ianseo (https://ianseo.net/Details.php?toId=19310).

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