IC swordsmen skewer Oxford
After a stunning win in Bradford against a team that was totally outclassed despite a severe lack of a third of the team. Mo "Animal" Mansoori was rumoured to still be in Bradford after not turning up to the match, after having travelled most of the way there. He also got to this week’s a bit late. The Bradford match was won by the concentrated efforts of Nick "Manta Ray" Manton, Ed "Crazy Legs" Rysdale, Dave "Babyface" Hughes, "Wild Thing" Reuben, Phil "Perry" Miller and Thorsten "Sebastian" Meyer. This was no comparison in the level of difficulty to the match that was next - Oxford.
Last year’s champions Oxford arrived at Imperial all bright-eyed and cheery to face the unbeaten men’s fencing team. The first weapon fought was foil with Crazy Legs, Henry "Tweedledum" Morton and Dave "Tweedledee" Davidge. The overall score was 7 - 2 with Crazy Legs and Tweedledum losing a fight each. This was partially through Crazy Legs and Tweedle dum trying to do impressive-looking hits - Crazy Legs failed to do a jump reverse flick hit to back, but who’s perfect (certainly not Crazy Legs). A very good start though!
Next up the sabre team with the full turnout of Sebastian, Ray and Animal. Oxford put forward a very strong team consisting of Rentboy, the Rose and N-man. The match was closely fought with many individual fights going to 5-4. When the score was 4-4 in fights (only one left), Animal took on Rentboy in a final fight spectacular. Animal took an early lead of 4-0, but through non-electric judging and Animal’s self-delusion of already having won, Rentboy equalised. At 4-4, Animal had to pull off something special and did so with a stunning parry-riposte to win the sabre. The sabre team had won again. The epee team had to win two fights to complete the victory, could they do it?
The epee team consisted of Crazy Legs and Tweedledum (yes they fought again), and Nigel the "Old Geezer". After three fights the epeeists had won the overall match (nice one Eddie). After this the Oxford team seemed to be trying harder to prevent a total white-wash, but our fencers didn’t seem to be trying too hard now the overall match was won. Tweedledum got injured and so had to be replaced by the epee reserve Perry who fenced well and destroyed the Oxford left-handed epeeist that had done quite well with the other two fencers. Unfortunately the overall epee was lost 5-4 in the last fight (hard luck Eddie).
As the overall score was 16-11 to IC, Crazy Legs (who just happens to the only Mary’s fencer on the team) was "We’re the best team from IC ‘cos we’re still in BUSA," and after some consideration added, "The only other team that’s decent is the Boat Club, they’ve probably got as many internationals as we have." IC’s men’s fencing team is now in the finals of the BUSA Team Cup, which is held in Birmingham in a couple of weeks time. We have all confidence in winning, as the match goes all the way to the final (which is contested on the Sunday), considering we met our hardest team yet we won by a considerable margin.
Special mentions go to Old Geezer who’s the oldest on the team (and at the match) and still won his fights, and to Animal who’s the youngest fencer on the team by a fair margin for winning the deciding fight in the sabre. A note of commiseration to Oxford who went home defeated and shame-faced for even thinking for a second that they could beat us. The sad fact is that they weren’t that great at drinking either (the "black and white" game was an absolute mystery to them, never mind)
