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....
