From the moment the nations marched through the crowd-lined streets of St Peter Port, the Isle of Man archery team knew that the Island Games was going to be special.

Even Danny Cowin’s face, which usually looks like an unmade bed, was wreathed in smiles and he commented that it was the best opening ceremony he had been to – it was his third.

James Hill, the youngest team member, was making his debut, while Joy Gough, oldest (and noisiest) was making her last competitive appearance at an Island Games – a bittersweet experience.

The archery was held at the Rovers AFC at Port Soif. It was hot and humid with occasional rain showers and challenging wind conditions. The locals said, as locals always do: ‘You should have been here last week, the weather was perfect. Never known the wind to behave like this.’

The conditions changed along the shooting line – calm near the trees but becoming a buffeting vortex towards the centre. It was unfortunate that all of the IoM team were shooting on the same line so they couldn’t cheer each other on.

This meant team manager Alison Cowin and her assistant Pete Mumford were kept busy running up and down in support, as the recurve and compound squads were at different ends of the field.

The recurve squad of Danny Cowin, Barbara Harris, James Hill and Alex Allen-Snell did their collective best but failed to get into the medals.

It amused the squad that, having given a lift to the two Western Isles archers, they then lost to them in the mixed pairs while Mumford scoped for them because they had no-one in support. As they shook hands after the match, Harris told them they could walk back to the hotel!

Hill nearly caused an upset in the 720 H2H by going 4-0 up against the extremely talented, and extremely nice, Bernard Wade III from Bermuda before losing by a single point in the last set. Wade went on to take the silver medal.

Island Games is not all about medals but they are nice to have, so it was just as well the compound squad of David, Rhys and Ethan Moore, Aalin George and Joy Gough were on song.

By the end of the first day’s 1440 round, they had picked up two individual medals: silver for Aalin George (in only her third competition after an eight-year hiatus), bronze for Rhys Moore and silver for the team.

Rhys took another silver in the individual H2H before joining George in the mixed pairs where they lifted bronze. In the mixed team H2H David Moore joined them to boost the medal tally with a hard-won silver - six medals over four days.

Gough’s battle cry of ‘Go Peel’ rang out over Port Soif time and again. The embodiment of team spirit, Gough met up with the friends she had made over the years at Island Games and made a few more.

She was presented with the Spirit of the Games Award by Cowin and David Moore on the trip home.

Guernsey is gone – onwards to Orkney.