21/06: ONE Cup
Last Saturday (14 June 2008) was the inaugural Octopush North East (ONE) Cup tournament in Newcastle, with teams from York, Durham and Newcastle. Due to circumstances, both the York and Newcastle teams pooled together to field single teams in the cup, unlike in the league where York played an A and B team (in no particular order of merit), and Jesmond and Byker were competing separately. With only 3 teams, and a full 2-hour pool session, matches were played 15 minutes each way. Getting our excuses in early, we (York) only managed to get a squad of 6 players to the tournament, so we found it hard going with no substitutes.
Up first was York against Newcastle. This started quite well for York, but the tiredness soon came into play, along with the fact that we've only played once since before Easter due to loss of our pool (again, lining our excuses up...). Despite York's best efforts, Newcastle romped ahead to a decisive first victory.
The second match, to give York a bit of time to recover, was Durham versus Newcastle. A closer match, but still Newcastle came through as victors.
The final game was York versus Durham. The first half went Durham's way, but by the second half, despite the fatigue, York started coming together as a team again, and were slowly dragging themselves back into the game. However, Durham got their second wind in the last minutes of the game, and managed to hold York off to win 10-7.
Undisputed champions were therefore Newcastle, with Durham taking second place and York third. Congratulations to Newcastle, well done to everyone who played, and a big "thank you" to everyone involved in organising it (Jamie and Gareth, I suspect) for making it a fantastic event - hopefully to be repeated next year!
Good news at last. This Saturday, 14 June, sees octopush returning to York. It's been a bad year all told for the university club, loosing pool time at the start of the academic year due to maintenance, and there's only been one session now since before Easter. But, at last, we've got pool time from 16.30 to 17.30 at Yearsley Swimming Pool.
Even better news: we're now starting up a junior club as well to cater for under 16s. Although we've had a couple of under 16s come along to play with us, I suspect it's quite daunting being 12 and faced with the uni team bearing down on you (Ali excepted, of course!). The junior session is on at the same time, 16.30 to 17.30, also at Yearsley - it's a 50 yard pool, so the uni club has the deep end and the juniors the shallow end. More details at the York Octopush website.
Finally, it's the ONE Cup this Saturday up in Newcastle. I've no more details than that, but I'm sure York will avenge some of their earlier defeats to bring the inaugural cup to Yorkshire!
