Dodgeball: Wolverines edge up league table

On Sunday 16th January, Imperial Wolverines took seven eager dodgeballers to a village in Essex to challenge for glory. Some members of the team needed some convincing to make the journey but Tom Peake, at his second official tournament with the Wolverines, soon made it very clear why it would be a fruitful trip. “Essex? Isn’t that where all the sluts live?” Brilliant.

After catching the train, haggling with some very desperate cab drivers, and waiting around for a while because of delays, we finally got underway at 1pm. IC Wolverines were placed in a tough group with Bedford Bulls A, the eventual winners, and a team we had crossed swords with in Southampton earlier in the season, Minotaur Dodgeball.

The way tournament matches work is that you have five two-minute games and the team to have won the most out of those five, wins the match.

The first match of the day was against the Minotaurs and it proved a feisty affair! Their captain, ‘Moore’, is well known for being a bit of a complainer, but on Sunday he took “throwing one’s toy out of one’s pram” to another level, turning the entire crowd against him. Unfortunately, he is also their best player and a threat. We decided the tactic would be to get him out first as his minions fall apart without him. Things were working well as the first two games ended as draws, which shocked the Minotaurs as they were the higher seeded team! However, they pulled through using their greater experience and beat us in the next three games. We felt it was a harsh result and it was not without many contested decisions and Moore’s usual whining. It is enough to say we are very keen to play them again!

Our next match was against the eventual winners, Bedford Bulls A. This was never going to be a good match and they whitewashed us. They put their two England players and two England coaches to good use! However, they are good lads so we still enjoyed ourselves.

These two losses made our last group game vital. To win would have put us third in the group, and put us into the playoff for the quarter finals. We came up against Underdodge A, from Oxford, and comfortably won 4-1.

Our playoff was against the Bedford Bulls Mixed and from this point on we were playing a knockout competition which was best of five games. We again put in an efficient performance and thrashed them 3-0.

This win guaranteed us a top eight finish and put us through to the quarters against the NCD Highwaymen. NCD are currently top of the Southern Conference and on the day had not lost even a single game in four matches! We weren’t expecting to win by any means, but we sure gave them a good run for their money in an exciting match. They took the first game by a narrow two players to one, which already had them looking concerned, and then we went on to win the second game! Now they were focused! We continued to play some of our best dodgeball of the day with Adam Cutmore making a vital contribution with monster catches and Tom Peake making superb use of his counter attacking ability. Alas, it was not to be our day and NCD edged the next two games for the 3-1 win. We all felt very hard done by but conceded that we had played a lot better than expected and lost to worthy opponents (the eventual runners-up whose team included an England player and the England head coach).

In the end, we went home with our heads held high and we now move up to fourth place in the Southern Conference league! Our next tournament is at Winchester University and it is the qualifier for the University Cup.