GA in the Swinging Sixties

once our home had a bar  ... can't see that going badly wrong!

The 1960's for Glasgow Archers opens with the club settling into Cartha Rugby Club at Pollock Park having made the move from the east end - see Glasgow Archers in the 1950's for more details. Pretty quickly they realized that well utilized, shared use fields are a bit of a two edged sword. The field may be well kept, but just like today, you can't lose arrows in the field. So the decision was made to purchase a mine detector. That's what it says in the committee minutes. A mine detector! Not sure AGB's dress code, where toes require to be covered for protection against arrows in the grass, can protect against mines. But as mines could be considered a field hazard and precautions were being taken by the club .. GA would have been covered by their insurance policy. Not sure who would mine an archery club .. another archery club perhaps! That's taking interclub banter a little too far.

The move to much better facilities was not without issue however. Cartha, in a much nicer area, much more secure and with far better facilities .. was not as convenient to get to and the club shrank in membership. There wasn't anything like a direct bus service from the city centre with local buses, as far as we can see, wandering all over the place. A considerable 28% of the club did not renew in 1962 dropping membership from 32 to 23 financially hitting the club hard. It definitely wasn't the level of fees that caused the drop. £3 and 5 shillings for an adult and £1 and 10 shillings for a junior were the going rates and those weren't bad. Using our usual measuring tool of average salary, these fees were the equivalent in 2024 terms of £114 for an adult and £53 for a junior which today would be pretty competitive. While the club seemed to be on extremely unsteady ground financially, it never really seemed to bother the committee of the time. Finances were rarely a matter for committee discussions implying that all was well or at least under control. Today, even with secure funding, board meetings at GA review the financial situation as a matter of course.

On the plus side, GA was now secure and happy in its outdoor home at Pollock. Indoors however, it was a very different tale. GA seemed to have a touch of the gypsy about them as they traveled from venue to venue. In 1961 saw us shooting in Maryhill youth club hall, 1962, a Bingo hall on Westmoreland Street. A year later, Springburn sports centre with this homelessness continuing throughout the 60's. It would be some years before GA would settle anywhere during the winter. This was not always through choice as there was invariably issues over how to set up in halls whose suitability was based on willingness to accommodate an archery club and had little to do with facilities, safety or longevity of let.

Around 1962 we see the first connection of GA to the modern era of archery with the mention in the minutes of junior David Tough who would later go on to serve on the committee as treasurer. This is an archer who is still active to this day with the Ancient Society of Kilwinning Archers or ASKA for short. He got a mention in club minutes when he won the May 1963 Junior FITA round with a score of 673. At this time, the club had a significant junior section of 13 members which made up just over 30% of the membership and the club seemed poised for significant senior expansion from within. This expansion never occurred, a victim of the transportation issue. However, one of highlights for the club during this time was GA junior and Scottish junior Champion Harry Mead meeting the Queen at a Holyrood garden party. Back then this would have been quite a big deal and something the club would have been justifiably proud of.

Something of a less proud (read extremely dodgy) moment in club history is the euphemistically named "Hogganfield Loch adventure". This occurred we think in 1962. The pictures below show the club having decamped to Hogganfield Loch with kit. They hired themselves a few rowing boats, set up some balloons on island beaches .. and proceeded to shoot ship to shore! Just how they got away with this is a bit of a mystery but club lore for the time has club members shooting at dart boards in pubs against darts players. Thoughts of health and safety appear to be non-existent and the line captains of the day were nothing like the sticklers for the AGB rules we cover in our ongoing etiquette series. Its true that things were pretty wild and woolly in Glasgow at the time .. bit like a tartan Dodge City. So probably no one noticed respectful and polite archers in the middle of the razor gang turf wars. While probably seen as a "good idea" at the time, this adventure was viewed with some very mixed feelings at the AGM come the end of the year. A tone of "lets not do that again" being pretty evident in the minutes.
Disturbingly, GA today has several archers who would have enthusiastically been up for this and wouldn't have needed asking twice .. yes, you know who you are!

all of a sudden safety etiquette don't look so dumb do it?

1963 saw GA join the Grand National Archery Society (GNAS) which was the original name for Archery GB. While not a founding member, GA's membership number is FB154 .. the 154th club to join. That makes us one of those who were present very early doors. Today, there are so many more clubs in the UK! (Somewhere north of 1300 we think). This did not seem to gain GA very much at the time with GNAS being much more active in the south but it would come to be significant in later years.

The mid to late 1960's sees the club coasting along doing archery stuff. Nothing significant happens during those years. Business as usual for an archery club = shooting, replacing shot out kit, chasing new members or running competitions. As the 1960's comes to a close, while the club had maintained its membership throughout the decade, it had been unable to grow, to be honest, at all. Efforts were being made to acquire more and better club kit and mentoring was a big thing but growth seemed to be elusive. Financially, times were tough in the UK but growth problems may also have been due to other clubs popping up around this time. Such as the one at Bellahouston just a couple of miles away, one in Paisley, another in East Kilbride and even the creation of the IBM archery club in Greenock. As a result, Glasgow joined the Scottish Archery Association (SAA) as did many of the central belt clubs. Apparently to take advantage of closer ties and considerably cheaper insurance which was hoped would jump start interest and get some competition going. This would turn out to be a wise move what with GNAS being far more focused on the south of England. Admittedly the early years of the SAA were a little fraught with some friction between the people running the association and the clubs. More than one EGM was required to thrash out some disagreement with things occasionally getting pretty heated. So little has changed in 50 years!

All things considered, after the move to nicer premises, the club had coasted through the 1960's in a sort of holding pattern. Steadily plodding onwards towards their silver anniversary. Little did they know however, that a financial crisis was looming that would result in a huge change for the club. One that was still being felt a half century later. But that's a story for another day. ;oD

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Glasgow Archers founded 1840?
Glasgow Archers in the 1950's