Changes to Archery GB Round Naming

There have recently been efforts to standardise and reduce complexity in the array of rounds available to shoot under Archery GB (AGB).

I have just finished making these changes in archeryutils so thought I would write some explanation here that is parseable by a regular person.

Previously round names were an amalgamation of historical curiosities that had arisen over many years of change in the sport. However, sometimes changes had been applied inconsistently or led to duplications, especially when made in reaction to changes by World Archery. All of this has led to a level of ’technical debt’ making it hard for newcomers (and even seasoned archers) to get their head around all the different round naming systems.

A number of volunteers have tried take an exhaustive look and disentangle the various legacy systems to leave a condensed, consistent set of round names. Further, they are designed in such a way that future rounds should be easy to add following similar naming patterns. This post is a short summary of what changed and why.

To skip to the new, formal, technical definitions of rounds please go to the Appendix .

A summary of the issues

The old names often told you that a round existed, but often did not make it clear what it was without looking it up in a table.

Take the Bristol family. We had Bristol I through V, but nothing but experience told you that Bristol III was a 50-yard round. The same was true for the Metric, Long Metric, and Short Metric families.

Equally confusing were the long imperial rounds. The shorter variants were recently renamed to contain the distance, but for some reason the longer variants were not! This left the “Long” and the “New”, with the “Long” not being the longest, and the “New” being defined well over 25 years ago and no longer new.

Finally, there exist multiple duplicates (in terms of how many arrows at what distance and in what order) depending on who was shooting at what competition. For example the Hereford and Bristol I, or the WA 50m, WA 50m Barebow, and Metric 122-50 rounds. It would be better if this could be de-duplicated, and there was just one clear single round to be shot.

What changed

In addition to deduplication and standardisation we tried to follow a guiding principle that as much as possible the round name should tell you what you are shooting. Where a round is defined by its distance, the distance goes in the name. Similarly, where the target face size matters, that is also included. For the Traditional Archery GB rounds this was done whilst aiming to preserve the historical round and round-family names.

Archery GB Rounds: distance standardisation

Out with the Roman numerals, New, and Long.

In the previous rebrand of imperial families (Short, Junior, Short Junior) the New and Long were not renamed (confusing for reasons discussed above). Similarly rounds defined with Roman Numerals were left instead of being updated with a distance.

The changes ensure that all imperial round families have rounds defined with a family name followed by the longest distance. This makes it easier to know exactly what round is being shot. A similar approach is taken with the AGB metric rounds.

Under this rationale the Bristol 80 would be a straight duplicate of the Hereford (as the Bristol I was), so it has been removed rather than renamed. It is clearer to have a single 80 yard and call it a Hereford, regardless of who shoots it.

The metric families recieved a similar treatment - Long Metric I through V became Long Metric 70 through 30, Short Metric I through V became Short Metric 50 through 15, with the duplicate Short Metric and Short Metric I being combined into the Short Metric 50.

The Metric III-V rounds became AGB 1440 50, 40, and 30, named similarly to the WA 1440 rounds. The Metric I and II are subsumed into the WA 1440 70 and 60.

For a full list of changes/remappings see Appendix B .

The WA 720 rounds: face size, not bowstyle

Something that has driven a lot of these issues is that World Archery define rounds, but never name them! The rulebook says for each category how many arrows someone shoots at targets of a certain size and distance, but not what to call it.

Originally there was just one 70m round with a maximum score of 720, often referred to as a “720” or “70m” round. Over time this gained the Cadet or 60m round, then the Compound 50m round, then also the Barebow 50m round, and most recently some Under 15 variants. This led to a variety of names being defined and used - things like “WA 50m Compound” and “WA 50m Barebow”. However the round is not really defined by your bowstyle - it is defined by the target face you shoot at. This became particularly confusing with the introduction of a 50m round for Under 15 recurves that was identical to that used for Barebow archers.

To add to the confusion, Archery GB had defined their own set of rounds (the Metric-122 and Metric-80) to extend to distances not officially covered by World Archery for junior age groups. Over time WA added shorter (for Barebow and Under 15 etc.) leading to more duplicates in the system.

To improve clarity these rounds are now named by distance and face size: WA 50m (80cm), WA 50m (122cm), etc. Where it is defined in the WA rules it will have a prefix “WA”, and where it is defined by Archery GB to accomodate younger archers it will be prefixed with AGB. The only instance where an AGB round is currently defined is the “AGB 30 (80cm)” for junior compounds.

To avoid confusion there will only ever be a single name for a defined round. This should make it clear what is and isn’t available for World Records at a WRS shoot (assuming you are shooting the appropriate round for your age/gender/bowstyle).

This means that the name of the round is never defined by who shoots it. e.g. young juniors may be shooting a “WA 30m (122cm)” though this only carries world records for Under 15 Barebow.

Field and 3D rounds: descriptive with consistent format

As part of this review we have taken the opportunity to assign definitive, descriptive names to field and 3D rounds which are similarly defined but not named by WA.

Field rounds came in marked, unmarked, and mixed variants across red, blue, and yellow pegs. They will be defined as showing the number of targets, type of distance labelling, and peg colour. For example “WA Field 24 Marked (Red)”, WA Field 12 Unmarked (Blue) etc.

Like the target rounds, where AGB extends the WA rules, it follows the same naming format, just prefixed with “AGB”, for example the “AGB Field 24 Mixed (White)”.

3D rounds follow a similar pattern now named with “WA 3D 24 (Red)”.

Clout rounds

Similarly for clout, there is now a definitive word ordering, and de-duplication between WA and AGB metric clouts.

A formal format specification and full list of names is given at the end of this article in the appendices , but example formats are: AGB Imperial Clout 140 (2-way), AGB Clout 90m, WA Clout 165m etc.

Aside: Effect on the classification tables

This all has a nice effect on the classification tables in that all tables are comprised of exactly the same list of rounds now that there is only one definitive name. All that changes between them are the scores listed for each classification.

Summary

None of these updates change what is actually shot. No rounds have been removed or added, they have only been renamed.

Names are now more “self-describing”, follow consistent patterns, and have single names without duplicates. All of this should make it much easier to get your head around for newer and experienced archers alike, with less to memorise and debate.

Within archeryutils a level of backwards compatibility her been preserved where possible with old names raising a deprecation warning. However, I advise moving to the new names as soon as possible. The names (and associated round metadata) can be found here: archeryutils/round_data_files .

Appendix

Appendix A: Definitive rules for naming rounds:

• WA 1440:
  • <governing body> 1440 <longest distance>
  • e.g WA 1440 70, AGB 1440 50
• WA 720
  • <governing body> <distance>m (<face size>cm)
  • e.g. WA 70m (122cm), WA 50m (80cm), AGB 30m (80cm)
• Imperial
  • <family name> <longest distance if shared family name>
  • e.g. York, Hereford, Windsor 40
• Field
  • <governing body> Field <n targets> <type> (<peg>)
  • e.g. WA Field 24 Marked (Red), WA Field 12 Unmarked (Blue), AGB Field 24 Mixed (White)
• 3D
  • <governing body> 3D <n targets> (<peg>)
  • e.g. WA 3D 24 (Blue), AGB 3D 24 (White)
• Clout
  • Imperial
    • <governing body> Imperial Clout <distance>y (<n>-way)
    • e.g. AGB Imperial Clout 140y (2-way), AGB Imperial Clout 80y (1-way)
  • WA/Metric
    • <governing body> Clout <distance>m
    • e.g. AGB Clout 90m, WA Clout 165m

Appendices

Appendix B: Complete Round Name Remappings or definitve names

The tables below list (to the best of my knowledge) every round whose name changed, or has been definitively defined when it previously was not. Rounds that were removed because they were duplicates of another round are noted accordingly.

AGB Outdoor Imperial

AGB Outdoor Metric

WA/Metric Outdoor

WA / AGB Field

WA / AGB 3D

AGB Clout

WA / Metric Clout