UK Student Archery Association

Sunday 15th December Review [20/Dec/24]

Three fixtures took place over the last weekend of regional league action of the calendar year, with Salford, Plymouth and De Montfort hosting the NEUAL Novice Champs, SWWU match 3 and TOUCAN div 2 match 1.

Starting in the South West, Bath took top spot in SWWU match 3, with a score of 2130. As it turned out this was enough to win and win comfortably. Hosts Plymouth were second on 2039, with Exeter taking third spot on 1945. Luke Burch (Exeter) was by far the top scorer in the match on 576. Bristol - who had won the opening two SWWU matches - only fielded two archers in this match and tumbled to 7th place out of 8 teams. Bath are now top on 27 points, with Exeter on 25 and Bristol are on 24. Aberystwyth have never finished a SWWU season as the top Welsh club, but they are in that position at the moment, fourth overall on 20.

In the SWWU novice match, Exeter ran away with things on 1261, with no other team over 800. Archie Phillips (Swansea) was top individual on 455. The order of the teams in this match was almost the mirror image of the team placings from match 2 resulting in the league table concertina-ing together. Exeter have 16 points. Bath, Swansea, UWE and Bristol all have 15 and Plymouth (who are 6th in an 8 team division) are not far behind on 13.

Meanwhile, in TOUCAN division 2 match 1 hosts De Montfort saw off the challenge of Northampton. De Montfort scored 1954, with Northampton on 1914. Both sides outscored Nottingham Trent's 1861 from TOUCAN div 1 match 1. The same two teams topped the novice match standings. Top novice was Gabrielle Micallef (De Montfort) on 471.

The most recent TOUCAN/university fixture that Derby had a team at was back in January 2023. Since then, they missed the end of the 2023 season and were completely absent from the 2023/24 season. The club's existence appeared in doubt, so their appearance in this match is a welcome return.

Nearly 130 archers attended the NEUAL Novice Championships, a fixture which generates a set of the results both for the NEUAL Novice table and the NEUAL Unsighted table too. In the main event, the novice championships, there was a thumping win for Manchester who scored 1450 and ran away with the match by over 200. Huddersfield were second on 1231, themselves over 80 clear of third placed Keele who scored 1148. Qingyang Li (Manchester) was top scorer on 526, with Shihui Chen (Manchester) on 491. Li and Chen should also have been listed as novices in NEUAL match 1 - a correction that lifts Manchester into second overall in that match.

In terms of the NEUAL novice table, that leaves Manchester in top spot on 39 out of a possible 40 points. Huddersfield move up from fourth second. They have 36 - three points behind the leaders and three points ahead of both Sheffield and Liverpool.

In the corresponding unsighted match (extracted from the same scores) there was, perhaps unsurprisingly, some overlapping results. Huddersfield won the team round, this time on 1227, including top scorer Abdurrahman Yusuf on 458. Keele were second with 1148 again as their top 3 novices were all barebows. MMU were third on 1045. Manchester retain the overall lead on 36 points and they have a 3 point cushion at the moment. The gap between 2nd and 8th place in the table is only 4 league points. Liverpool (33) and UCLan (32) sit ahead a trio of teams on 31.

See the updated tables on the SWWU 2024/25 page, the TOUCAN 2024/25 page and the NEUAL 2024/25 page.

Results from SSS match 3 have not yet been published. BUTC hosts are set to be confirmed shortly.