Ireland’s archery festival: ‘For a moment, it feels like we are in the Middle Ages’

Turning off back roads and driving down a wooded lane in Laois at the weekend, it seemed for a moment we had entered the Middle Ages. Either that, or an outdoor set for Game of Thrones.

Among the many people walking around with bows and arrows was Csilla Fekete from Hungary, who also wore a long, plaited ponytail and a tunic-and-leggings outfit worthy of a tomboy Maid Marian.

Nearby was Mart Murk, an Estonian with a Viking hat (minus the horns) and a beard like Gandalf’s. Then a young woman walked past in a pink Barbie onesie and broke the spell.

They were all attending the inaugural All-Ireland Archery Festival organised by the Irish Field Archery Monthly magazine: an event designed to showcase what is one of Ireland’s lesser-known but growing sports.

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The difference between conventional archery and the field variety is that the latter takes place outdoors, usually in forests.

A classic format, as Andrew Wayland from New Ross (himself sporting a ninja ponytail) explained, involves a cross-country course, over which competitors move, shooting at a series of wildlife targets with wooden bows. No actual animals are hurt in the process. The targets are 3D models.

But this was a festival of the sport in general, so drew everyone from traditional archers, who also dress in the old style, to plain-clothes users of the modern “compound” bow, with its carbon fibre and levers, which can cost thousands of euro.

Laszlo Jenei, another Hungarian, was one of the traditionalists, hence the loose-fitting red smock he donned for the occasion. He talked with feeling about the “60,000 years” of history behind archery, dating to an era when hunters used their bow strings to light the fires as well as kill.

“Robots” he calls the compound bows, and hates to see them in the hands of children, preferring that young archers learn their technique on the most basic models.

A steel fabricator and welder in real life, Jenei now represents his adopted home of Co Laois, which if the map of Ireland were an archery target, would be close to the bull’s eye.

Maybe this is why the county seems to be the main focus of the sport here, with the biggest club membership among the 2,000 or so archers overall.

Another local, Tom Joyce, attributed it to the enthusiasm of the volunteer coaches. It couldn’t be the quality of Co Laois forestry, he thought, as that tends to be flat and lacking the dramatic contours of woods elsewhere.

Not everyone agreed. “Ah, I like your woods – they’re nice, bright woods,” said Jason Corcoran from Limerick in friendly disagreement. A side effect of field archery, clearly, is that it makes you a forestry aficionado.

[ A gallery of photographs by Alan Betson from the All-Ireland Field Archery Championships ]

The venue for the festival, Fior Bhia Farm, was no ordinary forest. It’s “a fully biodiverse, agri-forest” farm, the only one of its kind in Ireland, according to Mairead Guinan, sister of Brendan, who runs it.

While growing free-range food (and fixed-position firewood) for its shop and website, it also “sequesters up to 5 tonnes of carbon per hectare” every year.

The free-range archers who gathered there at the weekend

were offered some unusual targets to shoot at, including a Turkish-style one that looked a bit like a guitar. They had to hit this from 90 metres. Few succeeded.

But a young man who could have been the embodiment of Will Scarlet – light of physique with a beard to match – asked to borrow The Irish Times’s pen at one point, after he hit the guitar – and much to his surprise – had a score to mark on his card.

He turned out to be Oisín Neeson, a clerical officer with Laois County Council, who took up the sport 18 years ago, when aged 10, to some parental disapproval (“mothers tend not to like it”).

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He still seemed too light for the “35-pound” pressure that his bowstring required. But it’s all about technique – “and superior genetics” as Oisín added, recovering quickly from his initial modesty.

He was clearly a natural, he had decided. Warming to the story of his childhood love of archery and bringing it right up to date, he concluded: “And then one day, I hit a lucky shot and got interviewed by a newspaper.”