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Trent Valley Archers - All News

Click here for the full calendar

Next general shooting dates:

Thistley Hough High School; Today from 18:00.
Thistley Hough High School; 11/09/2010 from 10:00.
Thistley Hough High School; 12/09/2010 from 10:00.

Next competitions (click for details):

1] Outdoor Outdoor postal round at Thistley Hough High School; 18/09/2010.
2] Outdoor Re-arranged Leek Interclub Competition at Thistley Hough High School; 32/13/2010.

Click here for the full calendar
Recent Club News:

Rose Award Shoot
The Trent Valley Archers are hosting an open Rose Award Shoot on the 5th of September, for interested parties the entry form can be found here and tournament information (such as venue location etc) can be found here.

- Liam Parrish (22/07/2010, 15:44)



Postal shoot rescheduled
The Long Western postal shoot scheduled for the 6th June has been moved to the 13th June. Apologies for the short notice!

- Liam Parrish (05/06/2010, 22:48)



Staffordshire Archers Richard Court Shoot
The entry form for the Richard Court shoot is now available here.

- Liam Parrish (15/05/2010, 19:54)



Congratulations to the latest beginners
Congratulations to all of the beginners who passed the 6 week beginners course today. A photograph of all the beginners can be seen here. Let's hope it isn't long before you are shooting like this (click for larger gallery image):

- Liam Parrish (25/04/2010, 20:57)



TVA Outdoor season 2010 Tournaments Listed
A total of 10 outdoor competitions, including 3 public competitions, are now listed in the club calendar. This includes the Richard Court Staffordshire archers shoot and the Gone with the Wind (Independance Day) Charity shoot. For a full list of the competitions listed, view the full article here.

- Liam Parrish (17/04/2010, 23:15)



Leek Interclub competition re-arranged
Due to the placement of the exam seating in the indoor range, we will shoot the interclub competition outdoors, we will probably now shoot a Warwick round and the competition date/time is yet to be set.

- Liam Parrish (16/04/2010, 21:31)



Interclub shoot on the 16th April 2010
Trent Valley Archers will be hosting an interclub competition with Leek Archery Club on the 16th April 2010. This compeition will be shot during our usual opening hours for the Friday evening shoot and the compeition will be a Worcester round. Full details can be found via our calendar, the competitions feed or here.

- Liam Parrish (14/04/2010, 15:31)



Tuesday evening shooting not feasible
The Youth Club have the hall booked (for indoor football) from 7pm onwards and the football players we're using the pitch on arrival. As such shooting cannot be held on a Tuesday a further update regarding any extra shooting sessions will be provided as soon as possible.

- Liam Parrish (13/04/2010, 20:00)



Tuesday shooting
There will be a Tuesday shoot held on the 13th of April 2010 (soon to be listed on the calendar) which is to test the feasibility of having a mid-week shoot from 6pm and the length of this shoot will be light dependant. This may or may not become a permanent fixture, as such any Tuesday shoots will be listed as extra sessions rather than regular shoots in the calendar.

- Liam Parrish (10/04/2010, 17:27)



AGM short report
The AGM has been held today. Elected committee positions have remained the same as have the co-opted positions of equipment and coaching officers. Congratulations to all those whom received an award of any form in the meeting, the picture gallery will go up later today hopefully.

- Liam Parrish (10/04/2010, 17:26)



Shooting suspended on the 14th March
Shooting has been suspended for the 14th March due to the large volume of members attending the Staffs Indoor Championships in Lilleshall. Shooting will resume as per usual next Friday (19th March) at the regular slot!

- Liam Parrish (13/03/2010, 15:35)



Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to all from everyone at the Trent Valley Archers!

- Liam Parrish (25/12/2009, 00:00)



TVA Christmas Charity Funshoot
Today we held the annual Christmas funshoot at the club including the usual hilarities such as sabotage, winning team raffles and attempting to shoot as many arrows as possible whilst claiming to only have shot three!

A gallery to the pictures is available here, if you have any more pictures then please e-mail them to admin@trentvalleyarchers.co.uk

A big thanks to all who shot, provided prizes, helped set up and run the day (including a heater being brought along); and a very Merry Christmas to all! In total the raffle and shoot-off amassed around £117 for the Donna Louise Trust, we hope this extra cash can help all at the Trust have a great Christmas this year and continue to carry out their excellent work into the future. We hope to carry on supporting you soon!

There is a considerable amount more to read about, and a few pictures too, so click here to view the full article.

- Liam Parrish (19/12/2009, 18:51)



Shooting Arrangements for the New Year
Our chairman will be opening the club from 10am on the 2nd of January for shooting ready for the competition on the 3rd. Please note the range will be laid out specifically for this (faces/distances) and regular shooting resumes on the 8th of January.

- Liam Parrish (19/12/2009, 17:38)



Christmas Meal arrangements
After an influx of enquiries over the location and time of the Christmas Meal this year. The meal will be held this coming saturday (12th December 2009). Please be aware that the meal will be held at the Draycott Arms Pub on the A521 (click for Google Maps page). It is advisable to arrive by 1900 and food will be served around 1930.

- Liam Parrish (10/12/2009, 20:01)



Donna Louise Trust christmas card donations
This year, Trent Valley Archers are taking donations in aid of the Donna Louise Trust rather than handing around Christmas cards. All donations are welcome, please see Helen Parrish or Julia Brookes to make a donation to support such a worthy cause! A list of donors will be published on the web. Please let us know if you do not want your name to be put on the list but would still like to donate.

- Liam Parrish (10/12/2009, 19:51)



Christmas Funshoot
It's that time of year again! We will be holding our annual fun shoot on the 19th of December (Saturday). Please arrive for 10:00 to start shooting at 10:30. As usual: fancy dress, small prizes (alcohol can only be won by over 18's) and festive targets are extremely welcome.

- Liam Parrish (10/12/2009, 19:47)



Postal League Shoot Scheduled
The next postal league shoot will be on the 14th of June (Sunday) and will consist of a Western/Junior Western configuration. The competition is listed in out competitions feed (left hand side of the page) and calendar!

- Liam Parrish (05/06/2009, 01:23)



4th July 'Gone with the Wind' charity shoot
The Trent Valley Archers are hosting a 'Gone with the wind' themed independance day charity shoot on the 4th of July 2009. Details concerning the shoot such as the rounds to be shot will appear in the calendar soon and the competition is open to archers from other clubs. The form and entry details for this shoot is are available here (as 1 pdf file).
This shoot is a charity shoot for the Donna Louise Trust and includes a BBQ; the theme came about due to Thistley Hough High School being on a hill and our outdoor grounds are always windy!

Please contact hbp_trentvalleyarchers@uwclub.net for futher details.

- Liam Parrish (03/06/2009, 00:03)



Notice to members concerning the coming weekend
Members should be aware that there will be no indoor or outdoor shooting available on the 28th March 2009 (Saturday) due to the Tournament to be held on the 28th, however the club is opening on the 29th from roughly 10am to allow the a second general shooting period to be held.

- Liam Parrish (23/03/2009, 18:59)



Junior Squad Indoor Tournament
This weekend (on the 28th March 2009 to be precise) see's Trent Valley Archers hosting the Junior Squad National Status Tournament, this shoot is a FITA 18 and if you recquire help locating Thistley Hough then click here to view our page concerning locating us or here for the full competition details!

- Liam Parrish (23/03/2009, 17:47)



Trent Valley Archers to host the Richard Court Shoot
Trent Valley Archers will be hosting the Richard Court Shoot on 28th June 2008 (this date is provisional, and thus subject to change).
This competition is open to all Staffordshire archery clubs, and registration entry forms will be sent to all Staffordshire archery clubs. For more information, please contact secretary@trentvalleyarchers.co.uk.
Details of this competition will be listed in our competitions section and updated as more details are confirmed.

- Helen Parrish (23/03/2008, 16:28)



Junior success
Becky Martin has recently qualified as a member of the Staffordshire Junior Elite Squad. What a brilliant accomplishment at the tender age of 12 well done Becky, she has also just won the Staffordshire Indoor Junior Ladies Title. She was also presented with a medal and year bar at the recent County A.G.M. for representing the County on the Junior Squad.
Also presented with a medal and year bar for representing the County on the Junior Squad was Oliver Sargeant.
Well done to both of you.

- Helen Parrish (18/03/2008, 11:12)



We have moved shooting grounds!
As stated above we have moved shooting grounds. The move took place on the 23d February 2008 and the committee would like to thank all members and non-members who helped with the movement of all our equipment.
We now have an Indoor range that can accommodate up to 25 meters and 10 bosses at a time. Our Outdoor range can accommodate all outdoor rounds and distances.

- Helen Parrish (18/03/2008, 11:12)

Recent Site News:

iCalendar comes to the TVA calendar
A new feature has been introduced to the calendar, you will spot a lot more little orange oblongs that appear on the calendar page, these 'iCal' blocks link to .ics iCalendar files that are used for scheduling in applications such as Microsoft Outlook or on smart-phones such as Nokia N series phones. The implementation of these files should be covered by your devices manual, but the purpose of these files is to help with reminders for all the events that the club is associated with such as competitions.

We cannot accept liability for any short notice changes that occur to arrangements that render the files to be inaccurate and are intended as a guide only. These files do NOT update automatically and it is worth checking back for any updates for events such as competitions.

- Liam Parrish (24/12/2009, 23:04)



Competition feed and competition details page upgrade
Competitions pages and associated database records have been expanded, the features now include:

  • The competition news feed has been updated to accept competitions that are hosted by other clubs, this is shown by the location of the the competition being shown (TVA shoots currently show as 'Thistley Hough High School')
  • Extra fields introduced to cover information such as entry costs, location of digital entry forms etc.
  • Code automatically detects if the link is to an external site and behaves appropriately.
  • Expanded funstionality to link to the page detailing the hosted competition for externally hosted competitions.
  • Allowed multiple addresses to be stored on the server rather than a single standard address to be demonstrated as the location.

    • - Liam Parrish (24/12/2009, 02:06)



    Calendar code overhaul, bugfixes and new features
    This wave of updates has almost entirely concerned the calendar engine used on the website. The calendar feed (the bit on the left column of the site's frame) has received an extensive overhaul to all of it's components, the changes include:

  • All feeds now automatically hide if they have nothing to display within their individual time frames (some look forward further than others).
  • The general shooting feed now automatically ignores dates that have been cancelled (such as during the closure of the club over Christmas and New Year) and will keep looking forward indefinately unitl it can find a none cancelled set of dates. This is because dates are generated automatically based on info referring to the day of the week, for example the site assumes that every time Friday occurs (at present) then there is a shoot scheduled unless it is told otherwise.
  • Added a restricted shoot feed which details special shoots that are being held for practice at a specific target and distance (usually in preperation for a competition).
  • Fixed a bug in the calendar that made the server believe every year was a leap year, the server now correctly locates and handles leap years.
  • Added the ability to highlight dates in the calendar, these show with a dark blue cell background and white emboldened text. More than one date can be highlighted at once though this multiple highlight functionality is not yet used.
  • Added the ability for the calendar to demonstrate which day today is, this shows up by the text in the table for one day being in italics (this stacks with the highlight feature).
  • Added news to calendar linking, news articles that contain a reference to an upcoming calendar event now automatically generate a link to the appropriate calendar month and highlight the date of the event concerned.


    • The expansion of the calendar is the current project and the next two objectives are:
  • Add a .ics engine to generate files to allow smartphones and scheduling applications such as Outlook to add events from the TVA site by opening a file generated by the TVA site server containing all the appropriate data.
  • Add the ability for the general shoot feed to display special shoots that are not restricted in preparation for another event (such as a one-off session for all on a single Monday).

    • - Liam Parrish (22/12/2009, 23:14)



    RSS Feed goes Live!
    With about 23 hours to spare from the original objective, the TVA site has received all the code and database entries to allow RSS feeds to be generated. The site currently hosts a single RSS feed here which contains all the news feed articles starting from 10th December 2009.

    This news feed contains both all the news updates, gallery updates and the recently added site update news articles stored in the database infrastructure. This feed is also capable of supporting calendar updates though this feature is not yet active as the calendar has to be taken offline tempuarily to add the required feilds and data. When this functionality is added (which will be done via scheduled update on the server and sometime like 4am in a morning to maintain site avaiability during the most likely viewing times), the calendar additions for December 2009 will be retrospectively added to the RSS feed in order to check that the feed and code is operating correctly.

    As this RSS generation technology (named ASP2RSS:mdb) is bespoke and has not had the same development time as more advanced generators, certain features are not yet included. The following RSS channel elements have been added to the database structure and are currently in use by the RSS feed:

  • Channel Title, effectively the RSS feed's name (required in all RSS feeds).
  • Channel Link, a link to the site originally publishing the RSS feed (required in all RSS feeds).
  • Channel Description, a description of the purpose of the channel (required in all RSS feeds).
  • Language, feed language set to English (Great Britain).
  • Last Build Date, the date & time the RSS feed was last updated.
  • Copyright, referring to the code writer who owns the intellectual property surrounding the way the code generates it's RSS feed.
  • Web Master, the name of the webmaster for the site that is generating the RSS feed.
  • Managing Editor, the name of who is responsible for editing the RSS feed if the automated system includes an error.
  • Generator, the name of the program or code that generates the RSS feed; this is currently ASP2RSS:mdb.
  • Documentation, a link to the page detailing the RSS feeds use and any supporting documentation (this page will be added at a later date).
  • Time To Live, this informs the RSS client how reguarly it should check for new content. This is presenttly set for to occur every 15 minutes.


    • Alongside the channel data, there is also data for each RSS item, the following item elements are supported and in use:
  • Item Title, provides the title of each news article presented.
  • Item Link, provides a link to the URL where the news item can be viewed in full.
  • Item Description, providing a short introduction to the contents of the item.
  • Item GUID, which is used to over rule pruning features in some clients that do not display updates older than a certain age by making the item effectively a 'sticky' as used in many forums.
  • Item Publication Date, detailing the date and time that the item was released on the website.
  • Item Category, allowing the quick searching of all the news items provided to filter news down to a specific category such as competition dates.


    • As a short term integration feature, every time a web page on the site is loaded, the RSS feed is rebuilt. This is not an efficient solution and this will be changed to every time a new event or an update is applied to the site, cutting server load and RSS downtime (even the loads generated by the RSS engine are low anyway).

    - Liam Parrish (21/12/2009, 01:08)



    Site Database Structure Upgraded for RSS Support
    The database infrastructure that manages all the dynamic content linking and generation on the website has been upgraded in order to support the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) News Feed technology. The use of this technology allows subscribers to receive alerts on new news posts, site update alerts (such as this one) and updates when a news article is updated for any reason.

    RSS is a powerful yet simple method of News delevery that is now supported in Internet Explorer 8 and FireFox 3.5 (Earlier versions support this as well but I have no experience on their stability), there are also RSS clients such as desktop widgets that offer similar functionality. For those users using FireFox, the 'Latest Headlines' shortcut (in the shortcut toolbar by default) fetches the main RSS News Feed from the BBC. Obviously this site will not have as many updates as the BBC News site, but hopefully it will proe useful to people watching news posts and waiting for more information or to help spur more people into using the site more often!

    The current goal for getting support up and running is by the end of the 21st December 2009.

    - Liam Parrish (20/12/2009, 00:10)

    Send mail to admin@trentvalleyarchers.co.uk with questions or comments about this web site.
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