This year's Bubble Chamber Football Tournament is on Saturday 23 June, at UCL's training grounds somewhere in North London.
The tournament was inaugurated decades ago by university groups in the UK who worked with Bubble Chambers, the main tool used in particle physics experimentation in the '60s and '70s, which provided the most stunning images of particle interactions.
The participants are, allegedly:
UCL x2
Bristol
Imperial
Manchester
Birmingham
Cambridge
Exiles?
Misfits?
You could say it is a bit like the Ivy League, except it is proper football and Bubble Chambers are a lot cooler than Ivy.
Neither of the two American universities that I have been associated with in the past, MIT and Stanford, are in the Ivy League, and definitely had a long history of working with Bubble Chambers.
I am sure that if they would like to send some teams over to the UK next year, they would be welcome to join the Bubble Chamber group of universities!
The Imperial team has been practising for the last few months, every week on Wednesdays. I can't say much more here, because our formation and free kick strategies are top secret, but I'll just say that with his dazzling white boots, smart kit, and incredible pace, you might have thought that Wayne Andrews was playing for us on the wing. Just don't tell the other teams that he (our winger, I mean) is a donkey!
Saturday was a great day out, with all the teams arriving more-or-less on time and the weather holding out till just before the final kick of the afternoon.
We started out losing 1-0 to Bristol in the first match of the group stage, but since this was the first time the Imperial team had actually played together ("practice sessions" notwithstanding), we weren't too disappointed. The Bristol players had clearly met the rest of their team before Saturday.
The highlight of the day was the Central London Derby, our second match, which ended
Imperial College London 6 - 0 UCL
Personally, I think it was my tight man-marking of their right winger (and goalie) "J.B." which ensured our clean sheet.
We then went on to beat Manchester 2 - 0, and at the end of group stage the table ended up like this:
Pts GD
Imperial 6 +7
Bristol 6 +2
Manchester 6 +1
UCL 0 -10
After this some more matches were played, Birmingham won, and Cambridge (not UCL) got the wooden spoon, known (for purely historical reasons as far as I could tell) The Troll.Next year's tournament will be at Manchester, to which there are cheap direct flights from Boston....
3 comments:
The tournament started off with every other team in coordinated outfits whereas some of us had other interpretations of what a dark t-shirt means. Didn't they Yoshi?!
We had difficulty organising ourselves in the first game but this was to be expected considering we had never played together as a team. We found our formation for our second game and I think this is reflected by the score! Onuora opened up the scoring with two very fine goals. I then followed Onuora's example with a hat trick. Does anyone remember who got the other goal? I don't think it was me! Our third game was the toughest. We had to win to make it to the semi-final but this team had just beaten Bristol 4-2 so it looked like it would be a tough challenge. We got off to a good start with Manchester conceding a penalty which Anastasios put away. The game was then very tense with both teams trying hard not to give anything away but Manchester had to score to go through. The game was sealed near the end when Gary played a high ball in which landed at Onuora's feet who then put it in the back of the net! So we managed to win the group but this knackered us out and meant we didn't do quite so well in the semi-final and lost 2-0 to Manchester's second team.
Considering how seriously some of the other teams seemed to take the competition I think we did quite well coming joint 3rd overall, I enjoyed it anyway!
Yeah me too, I really enjoyed it.
We were so knackered by the end of the group stages that we had no juice left for the semi's. Thinking back, I think we chose the wrong tactics trying to man-mark our opponents Manchester-2, who it seemed were completly oblivious to the spirit of the game...they took it too seriously I thought sliding in with bruising tackles and all!
We would have been better off adopting a strategy of defence and counter-attack. Then again this is all with hindsight.
I thought we did pretty good and I certainly had lots of fun. Our 6-0 trouncing of UCL will certainly live long in memory!
Great job, lads!
Who was on the UCL team? We can't not bring it up with them a few times over the course of the next year!
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