NFAS NATIONALS: ALTERNATE TAKE

After a year in which an overheated Olympics sucked almost all the archery oxygen out of the room, a weekend in the cool green at the National Field Archery Society’s (NFAS) yearly national championships sounded absolutely ideal.

This autumn event is shot in woodland on animal paper faces attached to bosses. The fact they managed to hold a shoot at all is impressive; weather and circumstances were not kind and the postponed weekend managed to coincide with a fuel ‘crisis’ in the UK, which put off even some diehards. The original venue fell through after the landowner sacked all the events staff returning from furlough, and the new venue, west of Durham in the north-east of England, has a camping and admin field that is struggling with mud and car access. Much is made of the archery community in adversity, but putting on an event like this requires a set of people