Wolverine 1s Smashed by 2s

On Sunday 13th January, the Wolverines set off for Essex with 3 teams ready to hit their first tournament of 2013 in force. In a first in the club’s history, there were no delays in setting off, nor incidents on the way there (minus Scott Esnouf’s typical minibus stalling, mind).

The day started off with a shock result, as the Imperial 2nds wiped the floor with one of the best teams in the country and the club’s newest rivals, The Meteors. The 2nds had achieved what the 1sts had failed to do in their previous 4 encounters against The Meteors; was this a sign of things to come? Aided by the insane throws of Jan Kosco, coaxed out of dodgeball retirement with a “particularly lawyer-ish Facebook message” and Zain Abbas’s tremendous catching – reaching the club record of 4 catches in one game – the 2nds triumphed 4-1 and ended up progressing to the quarter finals at the top of their group.

Due to one of the clubs pulling out at the last minute, the 1sts had to play the UCL Pumas twice in the group stages. Rest assured the inferior university team was duly beaten not only by the 1sts twice, but also by the 2nds in the quarter final. The 1st team then faced The Meteors in the quarter-final. Fuelled with the confidence that if their 2nd team could beat The Meteors, then surely they could too, the 1sts eventually managed to progress to the semi-finals, thanks to some solid catching from Edmund Teo.

The Imperial 3rd team were unluckily in a group of top tier teams, unfortunately losing all three of their matches against strong opposition. However, they showed impressive perseverance through the group stages, even if Scott Esnouf decided it would be a good idea to tell them a few days before that they were basically screwed. Their final match of the day, the positional play-off was against a new team called “The Special Bus”, appropriately dressed in pyjamas. This match served two purposes: the first was to show how peer pressure can easily affect the referee’s decision. In one of the games, despite the final opposing player being clearly hit on the foot, repeated calls from the ever-growing crowd (including that of the Imperial 1st and 2nd team) that “it bounced” caused the referee to simply allow play to continue. The second was to show how bad the 3rd team are at ‘suicide’ throws. Notably pitiful attempts included Kunal Sharma literally walking through the deadzone area in the middle of the court, and Iacopo Russo getting good elevation in a jump, and then failing to displace the ball further than a few inches from himself. Their efforts were initially so bad that in the penultimate game all 6 players suicided and all 6 players missed, causing them to concede that game (admittedly this was the same game that the crowd decided they would referee instead, but let’s skip over that). Thankfully Cyprien de Saint Guilhem sorted out a half-decent technique, and finally pulled off a successful suicide in the next game to end their day.

Both the 1sts and the 2nds lost their semi-final matches, and so the final match of the day for the Wolverines Club was the 3rd/4th play-off between the 1sts and the 2nds. This was easily the most anticipated matchup of the day, as this was the first time the two teams had ever met in a tournament before. Previous friendly matches in training had seen the 2nds put up a strong fight against the 1sts; even then, no one could have predicted how strong the fight they would be putting up this time. Even Thomas Delteil, who had gotten so bored with the day’s proceedings that he decided to crack out some classic French literature, was enthralled at what happened next.

It all started with a simple catch from Nuno Cunha, effortlessly silencing Steve Ndumbe’s efforts to take him out. This was swiftly followed by Will Robinson’s cries of “shit shit shit” as Jan Kosco unleashed a blistering throw in his direction. Despite this, the 1sts went 2-0 up, only needing one more game to secure the Bronze medal. However, the 2nd team then took the next two games to make it 2-2, helped with some strong words of encouragement from ex-2nd team Vice-Captain Zain Abbas, and top-class leadership from 2nd team Captain Justin Ioanna. What happened in the final game can only be described as magical. More specifically, James Strang’s mid-air mid-court catch of Thomas Peake, easily the pivotal moment in the whole match, could only be described as awe-inspiring. It was then and only then that the 1sts knew they had been beaten. Despite last-gasp efforts from Steve Ndumbe and Scott Esnouf to bring the game back, the 2nds eventually picked off all six fellow club members, with some strong throwing from Kennard Seah, to secure their first ever Bronze medal in an Open tournament.

Man of the tournament for the 3rds was a draw between Iacopo Russo and Digant Tyagi for their superb catching. Man of the tournament for the 2nds, and easily for all 3 teams was Jan Kosco, whose fearsome throwing capabilities had been sorely missed. There was no similar vote for the 1st team, but it probably wouldn’t have gone to Alan Soltani for spending 20 minutes almost crying in the shower after the fatal loss, or to Scott Esnouf for coming up with every excuse under the sun as to the unbelievable result.

And as much as I would love to rewrite this report and claim that the 1sts beat the 2nds after all, I daresay Thomas Bell’s thorough documentation of the day via the Imperial Wolverines Twitter account would easily hamper my efforts. After all, #thebesttruthisanembellishedone.