UK Student Archery Association

Slim margins in SEAL race [19/Feb/18]

Round 3 of SEAL championship took place at a variety of venues over the weekend of the 10th and 11th February.

London came away with their first SEAL victory of the season, shooting 2210 at home. This is also the highest SEAL total of the 17/18 season so far, and the defending champions won the match by almost 30 points. In second place, Southampton scored 2182, to squeeze in less than an arrow value ahead of Imperial who scored 2174. Chasing the lead trio, Sussex were in fourth, hitting 2134, which is their best performance (both aggregate and placing) of the season. The pack of chasing teams was lead by East Anglia (2088, 5th), with Reading, Surrey and Portsmouth all over 2k.

Powering London home was Dominic Collis who top scored overall in the match on 576. Also over 570 was James Jackson (Sussex) whose 571 meant that Sussex were closer to 3rd than 5th. Russell Foo Chuan Wen (Imperial) scored 564, but his side were narrowly beaten courtesy of matching 562s from Southampton's Nick Wilson and Elena Sun. Harry Charalambous (East Anglia) scored 566.

Imperial, London and Southampton now sit locked together at the summit of SEAL, all on 42 points as the league gears up for what could be an extraordinarily close finish. The trio have never been further than 50 points apart in the three SEAL matches that have taken place so far and following leg 3 (where the gap was a mere 36) they have all racked up one 1st place, one 2nd and one 3rd. The season aggregates are virtually identical, with a mere 19 points separating the 6502 of Imperial, the 6486 of Southampton and the 6483 from London - after 720 arrows.

In the novice fixture, Imperial won comfortably again on 1487, with Yin Chan on 514. Second place in the match were Surrey, just over 100 points behind, then Queen Mary and Portsmouth. With three wins from three matches, and their rivals all taking points off each other, Imperial's novices are 7 points clear of Portsmouth with two fixtures to go.

Match 4 for SEAL will be extracted from the BUCS Southern Regional Qualifier whilst match 5 will be held over the weekend of the 3rd and 4th of March. This was brought forward by a week to avoid clashing with BUCS National Finals. Aggregate could well come in to play - every line cutter may well count.

See SEAL 2017/18 tables.

The very first running of SEAL (2003/04) did also result in a 3 way tie at the top, but the format - 5 teams each playing each other once in two way matches did make that more likely. The all-vs-all format tends to have fewer ties at the top since when the teams have the opportunity to play each other many times, the better teams gradually go clear and/or can recover from a slip up.