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Galway Longsword Open 2018 Review

Galway Longsword Open Steel Tournament that took place on the 17th of Nov 2018 in Galway hosted by Exiles Galway was the last leg of this year’s Irish Historical Fencing League. 

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With great pleasure we’d like to congratulate the winners:

  • Sam Gassmann of Goats Head Historical Fencing – Gold
  • Andrzej Rozycki of Cork Blademasters – Silver
  • Luke Lee of Cork Blademasters – Bronze

Technical Prize: Piotr Szymanski of Leitrim Longswords

Best Newcomer Prize: Fionntan Murphy of ISHC (Irish School of Historical Combat)

IHFL League winner of 2018: Andrzej Rozycki of Cork Blademasters

Videos from eliminations phase are now available on our official YouTube Channel:

Big Thanks to our League sponsors who funded awesome prizes for the winners:

– The Knight Shop International Ltd and their HEMA focused website: www.thehemashop.com

– Black Horse Blades – website: www.blackhorseblades.com

– SPES Historical Fencing Gear – website: http://histfenc.com/    

– Sparring Gloves – website: http://sparringglove.com/en_US/

– Balefire Blades

– PBT Historical Fencing – website: http://pbthistoricalfencing.com/

– Aureus Swords – website: https://aureusswords.com/

– Halfswording – website: https://www.halfswording.com/

Wessex League – website: http://wessexleague.org/

Black Horse Blades – website: http://blackhorseblades.com

Galway Open 2018 Prize List:

1st place: Gold Medal, Pair of Sparing Gloves, 50 EUR PBT voucher, 50 GBP Hema Shop voucher, 15% Aureus voucher, SPES gift pack, 30 EUR Halfswording.com voucher, Free entry ticket to one of the Wessex League longsword tournaments in 2019

2nd place: Silver Medal, 50 GBP HEMA Shop voucher, 12.5% Aureus voucher, SPES gift pack, 20 EUR Halfswording.com voucher

3rd place: Bronze Medal, 10% Aureus voucher, SPES gift pack, 15 EUR Halfswording.com voucher

Newcomer Prize – SPES Gear

Technical Prize – Free entry to one of IHFL 2019  tournament

League Champion prize – 300$ gift voucher for a custom feder from Black Horse Blades!

Results of the tournament have been submitted to HEMA Ratings Website and the Irish Historical Fencing League 2018 Results can be seen on the HEMA Ireland Website.

It was a good  tournament with yet another experimental ruleset that worked out for some but not for all – continuous sparring with light hits being counted until the ‘killing’ blow happened which stopped the exchange.  Another related issue seemed to be with only 2 referees which wasn’t really enough to cover all striking angles so the main judge had to take all the pressure and decide on the final scoring alone which wasn’t the ideal experience for fencers.

All in all Blademasters did very well, getting bronze and silver as well as the overall league prize, we’ve passed all feedback to the organizers so we are looking forward to see the improvements for the next year’s League!