UK Student Archery Association

NEUAL New Year [04/Jan/16]

This article catches up with the final NEUAL matches of 2015.

There was no Northern conference match in second batch of NEUAL fixtures and the Eastern conference match ended up being postponed by three weeks. The remaining Western Conference match took place on 14th November and was won very easily by hosts Lancaster, the Red Roses breaking 2200 in doing so. Top scorer in the match was Jay Tserkezie (Lancaster) on 560. Nearly 800 points behind, MMU Cheshire were second ahead of UCLan who fielded a team of novices. Lancaster won the novice fixture too, with UCLan second.

The third set of fixtures took place on 21st November with Huddersfield at home to Leeds and Hull (East), Liverpool hosting Lancaster and Keele (West) whilst Teeside and Newcastle travelled to Durham (North).

Leeds and Liverpool were the highest scorers, winning their matches with 2161 and 2148. Lancaster, who had hit 2202 the week before slumped to 2090 and only narrowly took second place in the match as Keele were hot on their heels on 2079. Teesside won the Northern match on 1930. No archer hit 560, but Matt McCormack (Lancaster), Jay Tserkezie (Lancaster) and Jessie Slater (Leeds) were all perilously close. In the equivalent novice matches there were wins for Huddersfield, Liverpool (just from Keele) and Durham.

Also taking place were NEUAL novice championships, hosted by Sunderland on 28th November and attended by 14 of NEUAL's 16 teams. Bradford ran away with the title scoring 1352, a full 90 clear of the rest of the field. Freddie Marshall (Bradford) won novice gents comfortably on 497, whilst Kim Evans (Liverpool) won novice ladies with 422. Liverpool themselves were third behind second placed Durham, 1262 against 1226. Fourth down to sixth were Lancaster, Sunderland and Newcastle all in the upper 1100s.

The final NEUAL action of 2015 was the postponed fixture between York, Hull and Sheffield. York ran out easy winners against Hull, with Sheffield only fielding two archers, York also won the novice match.

See the current NEUAL 2015/16 standings. The top half of the league have played one extra fixture compared to the bottom half, so it is slightly tricky to read who is in pole position. Three sides have 39 points (a 1st and a 2nd) and of these Lancaster have the highest aggregate. Only Liverpool and York are unbeaten, both having played once.

In NEUAL, performance at the Championships can really shake up a team's league position and so it is with the Novice table which already has one included. Lancaster have a 3 point lead, but could be overtaken by any one of four teams once fixtures in hand are completed. Bradford have not dropped any league points yet and their scores make them the novice team to beat in NEUAL, despite currently sitting in 7th place.

Elsewhere, the first fixtures scheduled in 2016 are SWWU match 2 on 23rd January at Plymouth and Cardiff [corr.] and BUTTS match 3 on 24th January at Warwick and Cambridge. The next set of NEUAL fixtures (York v Bradford v Huddersfield and Salford v Lancaster) are the following weekend.

Postal league news: Round 3 of the E-League comprises December and January combined. Also there is the Archery GB January Challenge.