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New Website
Well at long last the NCF once again have a website.
It's taken a while to set up, but we're there now. I've been out of the sport for
quite a few years now, but with Keith's prompting I finally sat down and laid out
this website for the NCF. I hope both members and non-members find the website
useful as we build it up with more technical information, news and advice. Watch
out on the blog for reports on the latest shoots and what the NCF members are
getting up to. Next event is the Glevum NCF 900/600 Outdoor on 18th April.
Here's hoping for good weather. I've been to a few shoots where a canoe would
have been more appropriate than a crossbow. Still there were many happy days.
Send in your monthly match reports, stories and photos so I can add them to the blog.
I'm sure I'll be hearing from Graham and Keith! Cheers!
Alan Minnis fatcat-photography.co.uk
Where it all started
Since this is the start of the website I thought I
would go back to when I started in the sport. My shooting career started at
Elswood Bowmen in Shenley, Hertfordshire. I was a junior member shooting recurve
bow but was always attracted to the sport of crossbow. Fortunately the Elswood
Bowmen club was very accomodating and let me and another member take up the crossbow.
Soon we had half a dozen members and we persuaded Hertfordshire County Archery
Association to let us join the County events and shoot against other clubs. The
photo above was a memorable day, It took us most of the day to get all 18 bolts in
the centre! We showed them archery folk! an 18 gold end? They were big targets back then, but we were
shooting archery rounds and those targets were 80 yards away, much further than you
would shoot in a crossbow round. My good friend Paul Mendoza (nice moustache), on the right and Dr
Brian Briggs, centre were shooting with me that day. Strangely I didn't meet Paul at
the club for four years! I went part time when I disappeared to University just before Paul
Joined. The members kept mentioning this new starter from south of the river to me and they kept telling Paul
about me. Anyway (keep up), when I returned to the club Paul and I got on really well
and used to attend all the shoots and train together, focussing before the shoots with a bit of Pink Floyd on the car cassette player.
It was only after a few months we realised my best mate I met at University turned out to be Paul's best mate from his manor!
Small world. Anyway we had so many laughs back then at the shoots, from the day at
Brighton where some archer got so sun burnt he plastered himself in sun cream, his hair was
sticking up everywhere he was bright red and looked like he had stuck his fingers in an electric socket
just before he'd got up to collect his winners medal. Also the day our club coach
thought it would be a good idea at the annual bottle shoot to award the crossbow winner
a bottle of sherry! Paul and I nipped down the off licence and exchanged it for a crate
of beer which went down well after the shoot when we were taking down the bosses, the names of the accused have been removed to protect the guilty. Happy Days!
Alan Minnis fatcat-photography.co.uk
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