Colchester And District Archery Club 1954 - 1994
Page 5 : Golf And The Media
The greatest medal count of the club was in 1956, again with county clout, then held at Dagenham, when they brought home eight county medals, including the women’s championship and the county team. Dot Osbourne was lady champion and her daughter third and her husband was men’s runner-up, Peter Brown third. Colchester team was 934, runner-up Southend 808 and Ardleigh 719. Peter took a canoe and toured our waterways planning to live off the land. He took his bow and made nettle soup.
In May the archers had a narrow escape at Great Bromley. They were travelling in convoy when at 5 p.m. a great limb of a giant oak tree fell across the road bringing down telephone wires. If the convoy had been travelling just that little bit faster the limb would have fallen across the lead car. The club had given a display to launch the Great Bromley archery club spearheaded by Charlie Deere, village sub-postmaster. Scores: Osbourne 600 Shaw 476 Urquhart 470 Smith 456 Tucker 422 Mrs. Osbourne 369 Deere 341 Cole 339.
“Fast” instead of “Fore” was heard at Braintree Golf course when archers took on the golfers and won by one game. The archers gave away a stroke per hole. If the arrow went into bunker it cost a stroke. The tiny three inch disk on the green was the archers ‘hole’ and if an arrow missed but it was within a yard, they gave a stroke.
Archery Golf at Braintree Golf course. Bill Tucker shooting at the three inch target.
from the Bill Tucker Collection
The club was always busy over the years, each marked by annual events in which the club members competed away or helped organise and competed at home. There is no doubt much of the success of the club and its furniture is attributable to members and their skills. If members have skills and access to materials, and also enthusiasm and will, then much is achieved. In 1956 Aubrey Crick of Colchester became Essex champion with a 679 York, when 113 archers competed at South Weald. Ron Pilgrim won the Western. In 1958 Jackie Tucker at 14 became the youngest Essex adult champion at Field.
The Essex archery blazer was worn to Broadcasting House by Bill appearing on the Jacob de Vries national sports programme. Quite pointless as it was radio! Vries admitted he new nothing of archery so Bill worked out a straight programme without questions. In the end it was questions, and off the cuff, and Bill steered the answers to promote the sport. Presenter de Vries described the outcome as excellent. Also on the programme was Peter Wilson, who older people will recall as the Mirror’s greatest sports writer of the day, who displayed complete ignorance of archery. He described an archer in sixth place as ‘coming up’ as if he were a runner accelerating on the outside of a leading group. On November 4th archery in a demonstration was on international television with national champion Joyce Warner and Colchester’s Suzanne Osbourne.
Earlier in May there was a demo, involving Bill with Colchester’s juniors and an example of a bodkin point going through a mild steel plate which went well at rehearsal but skidded off in camera shot. Another shot fortunately made the requisite hole, wooden arrows of course. Black silhouette animal-shaped field targets on a white ground were unacceptable, the white reflecting light, so the targets were cut out and Dot Osbourne raced off to find brown paper upon which to stick them. No trouble too much for the media and publicity! In the 1959 9th Essex championships Les Shaw gave Colchester a third place York with 544 against the top score of 602 to be set against scores today! Betty Tucker won for the club the Western ladies. In the Essex field of that year Dot Osbourne was first and Jackie Tucker third the course being three circuits of 14 targets.
Anglia Television in 1962 produced a programme featuring Colchester archers. They checked angles of shooting for light and asked the club to use black arrows! Member Tony Clarke was in a wheelchair to rest an injured ankle and TV latched on to “archery for the handicapped”. The programme showed archers shooting then cutting to arrows hitting the targets. The camera turned to archers interviewed and showing off belts of medals. The camera-man then did a ‘funny’ with an archer shooting, cutting to a trick arrow in someone’s chest, then returning to the archer looking suitably horrified.
The British Archer magazine, in 1962 referred to an inconsequential piece of archery history which again projected the Colchester club. Commercial coloured TV came in about 1966 but something associated with archery was televised in 1962 when the club president to write a news story, went to the research studios at Marconi, Chelmsford. Knowing he was going to be transmitted in colour he wore his GNAS blazer with badge and was duly televised and transmitted to a black partitioned studio via what he was told was one-and-a-quarter million phosphor dots hit by an electronic beam with some element of superimposing involved. So Colchester got the first transmission on coloured TV of literally ‘GNAS’.
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