THE Bowmen (and women!) of Minchinhampton are a small and friendly target archery club who are based in Eastington at the Owen Harris Memorial Ground.

The club has been in existence for over 35 years and is still going strong.

Our members participate primarily in local and regional tournaments, and we organise an annual tournament which attracts competitors from many other clubs.

Although several of our members shoot at county level, our aim as a club is also to promote archery in the local area and beyond.

This year the club has enjoyed great success in the Archery GB OnTarget competition.

The OnTarget Club Competition is a National knockout team competition where clubs host or travel to a match. (

Clubs are initially drawn with others from their Counties or Regions to minimise travel.

Each team consists of four archers of whom two must be recurve archers and two must be compound archers.

The team of archers must be of mixed gender and archers should be 14 years old or older.

Matches take two hours and consist of three rounds of two dozen arrows at 50m on an 80cm face, with archers shooting ends of six arrows.

Each round sees the team shoot as Team, a Pair and finally as an Individual against the other team.

Bowmen of Minchinhampton have won all four of their county and regional matches to reach National Finals day on September 17 at Lilleshall National Sports Centre.

Their opponents were: Great Rissington Archers (away 12-9), Deer Park Archers home 12.9), Cleve Archers (home 12-9) and Burnham Company of Archers (away 12-9).

Team members competing this year so far are Rick Andrews, Paul Baildon, Karen Blanch, Simon Charlesworth and Paul Godbold.