Swashbuckling swordsman slash to victory
A lot of people have accused the fencing club of being rather arrogant this year. Which is fair enough, because we are. We have also lived up to our own high expectations by winning the BUSA championships in Birmingham last Saturday. With victories over Nottingham, Bradford and reigning champions Oxford en route to the finals, we could already taste victory. After the free draw we faced Durham in the semi-finals, possibly our biggest threat.
With our weakest weapon (épée) up first, our opponents went 1-0, and then 2-1 up. From then on, it all went horribly wrong for the northerners , as we took the last 6 épée fights to lead 7-2 going into the foil. Such is the strength of our foilists, that the BUSA individual champion is the weakest member of the team. Hence we rattled off another 9 victories without breaking into a sweat to take us past the 14 wins we needed for victory. So a demoralised Durham decided that they would run for home, and conceded the sabre bouts. A final score of 25-2 to Imperial.
In the final we faced the home favourites, Birmingham, who had narrowly squeezed past the token Scottish team from Heriot-Watt in the other semi.
Sabre was up first this time, and some good fencing from Birmingham restricted us to only a 5-4 lead going into the foil. A minor hiccup in the first foil fight let Birmingham draw level, but after that we were never in danger as our foil team pulled off the last 8 fights to give Imperial a 13-5 lead going into the épée, one short of victory. The first fight went to Birmingham, but in the next Henry brought us home with a 5-4 victory to give Imperial its first title since 1991. We could now afford to relax, and won two more fights to leave the final score 16-11 to Imperial.
In the absence of club chairman Reuben Kalam, men’s captain Nick Manton went forward to receive the trophy, together with Henry Morton to receive a tankard for fencer of the tournament. The team for the finals was: -
Foil - Henry "Mad Dog" Morton, Eddie "Crazy Legs" Rysdale, David "Damage" Davidge (who remained unbeaten all season)
Epée - Nigel "Old Geezer" Davies, Henry "Mad Dog" Morton, Eddie "Crazy Legs" Rysdale, Phil "Perry" Miller
Sabre - Thorsten "Sebastian" Meyer, Mo "Mr. Animal" Mansoori, Nick "Ray" Manton
Also, thanks must go to Sarah Corneille for organising the weekend, and especially to Duncan Tindall for giving up his weekend to drive us to Birmingham, and supporting us without a clue as to what was going on!
Don’t worry BUSA, we’ll fix the trophy before next year, its only in three bits, and the cup can be hammered back into shape - we’ll have our passing skills improved by then as well.
If we still have any money left, we want to go on a tour this year.
