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Report
from Lee
"Great
Yarmouth's Vauxhall Holiday Park - the fun never stops",
claimed the signs which welcomed us on arrival at the 2011
British Universities 8-ball Championships. Some might say the slogan
is somewhat misleading, and that in fact sleeping in unbelievably
freezing caravans, walking through acres of sludge in expensive
shoes, holding your head in shame and despair after the inevitable
choked 8-balls and being attacked by local chavs don't technically
constitute 'fun'. These people are of course 100% correct; nonetheless,
the venue holds a special place in the LSE's heart and we will continue
the misery, goosebumps and swollen jaws for years to come.
Individual
Championship
The first day
of play saw the LSE players battle it out in the individual championship.
Lee 'has-been' Mager played some jaw-droppingly atrocious pool to
lose in the first round, despite the assistance he received from
Ayman 'oh shit what is he doing now' Khokhar, who let out a monumental
cough right as Lee's opponent was cueing on a difficult shot. Ayman
knew it was wrong, but argued that because it would be a travesty
for Lee to lose in the first round, what he did was actually the
lesser of two evils. Solid ethical reasoning right there. Will 'I've
got a great idea for the night out' Dee and Dan 'if in doubt, backspin'
Steene both comfortably won their first round matches, while James
'Irritable Bowel Syndrome' Ashley was seeded no.8 for the championship
due to his legendary performance last
year so was automatically through to the last 128. The 2nd team
players didn't fare too well, but James 'my
ginger girl' Foley did well to win his first match before getting
knocked out in the 2nd round. In the end Dan achieved his goal of
reaching the last 128, after which point the only man left flying
the LSE flag was James 'sorry about all the farting, I seriously
can't help it' Ashley, who applied his usual strategy of going for
the clearance every time with utter contempt for what most mortals
view as problem balls. He absolutely shat on his opponents (not
literally of course, although given his frank and frequent descriptions
of the volume, texture and odour of his stools over the weekend,
this was actually a distinct possibility) and reached the last 32
without losing a single frame. Sadly in the last 32 match
he finally missed some balls and his opponent capitalised to knock
him out, disappointed but with his head held high and his intestines
positively bursting with pride.
Team
Championship
The 2nd team
were de-facto promoted to the main championship despite not quite
reaching the quarter-finals of the Shield last year. Unfortunately
this resulted in them facing some of the best players on the uni
pool scene in what was probably the toughest group in the whole
championship. In the end Andrew 'professional snowboarder, poker
player, rapper and... well, you name it, I'm a professional at it'
Hacker and Evan 'come on then you f***ing midget' Reeves (more on
this later) were the only ones to score some frames - although Becky
'blonder than a Swedish albino canary' Kean played phenomally to
almost dish Mike Walsh, but unfortunately snookered herself
on her last ball.
The first team
were glad to face the two weakest teams in their group first: Glamorgan
1sts and Cambridge 2nds. The big guns in the group were Manchester
1sts, recent champions from the UPC 9-ball and Oxford 1sts, who
have one of the most solid histories of any university in the 8-ball
event. The objective was to beat the two weaker teams and hopefully
come third in the group to qualify for the team trophy. Obviously
we would have preferred to do better than 3rd, but we were being
realistic. What actually happened was that we drew 5-5 to Glamorgan
and lost 6-2 to Cambridge 2nds. What a goddamn f***ing joke. We
were destined to come last in our group and be relegated back to
the shield... And then a miracle happened. We beat Manchester 1sts
6-3! The turning point was when Ayman got massively lucky, over
and over again, against Sanup (the Hindu Hitman who had reached
the semi-finals of the 9-ball individual championship in December).
This inspired Dan to win his frame despite going about it in literally
the worst way possible and despite also somehow jawing the black
when it was already jawed. The result gave us a strange new feeling
in our bellies, something resembling hope. Our final group
match was against Oxford 1sts. We needed to win this game to get
through, and at the very least we needed to draw in order to qualify
for the trophy. We started off strong with a 5-0 lead, yet still
managed to lose all the remaining frames to end up with a draw.
This can probably only be explained by complacency due to taking
such a strong lead, there's no other reason that makes sense tbh.
But the good news was that we had qualified for the trophy! We really
felt we could win this one and so we got an early night in order
to wake up fresh for the following morning's quarter-final match
against Exeter 1sts. Sadly, although we absolutely dominated the
first 4 frames, we choked and were down 3-1. Lee and James speedily
raped their opponents in their 2nd frames to put us right back in
it, but Exeter won the remaining frames and then the teams immediately
initiated the annual ritual of misery and getting the hell out of
the craphole known as Great Yarmouth. Which reminds me...
THE
GREAT YARMOUTH NIGHT OUT
Will had decided
that the LSE teams would have a jolly evening out on the town in
Great Yarmouth via pool-themed fancy dress. The
1st team were the red balls, while the 2nds were yellow, with Andrew
being the white and Lee being the 8-ball. What fun!
Lee and Dan
discussed the high probability that going out like this in Great
Yarmouth would result in us getting beaten up. The last time the
LSE pool club went on a night out here, the lasting memory was seeing
a man lying outside a club in a pool of his own blood after being
stabbed. The rainstorm that began just as the boys were applying
the face paint was also a pretty bad omen. So were the constant
stares by all the locals when we finally did arrive in a pub in
the town centre. However, once we left to a new bar everything was
awesome as we downed tequila and jagerbombs. Andrew ended up snogging
a delightful young lady who was, we assumed, on a fancy dress night
out herself, if the theme was 'chav slag single mothers'. Andrew
has since become a semi-professional single mother pimp and his
ads can now be seen on facebook:
Anyway, the
drinking and banter continued and we headed off down to one of the
local clubs. It appeared that Dan was rather too energetic while
dancing to whatever bullshit the DJ was playing and bumped into
a couple of chavs. They weren't too happy with him and one guy in
particular really did seem rather angry about it. Dan
suggested they take it outside. They did. It all got rather
heated but fortunately Dan apologised and we went off without incident.
About 20 minutes later, we were walking back to the club after Evan
had been refused entry somewhere else for appearing too drunk, and
Will's negotiation attempt, which involved calling the bouncer "a
f***ing idiot", didn't work for some reason. As we walked back,
we noticed the guys that Dan had the exchange with earlier walking
past - Dan offered a friendly nod in their direction, presumably
to keep things sweet, and one of them offered Dan a friendly punch
in the face which knocked him to the floor. The rest of us ended
up running after the chavs to seek revenge. Will noticed a bunch
other guys running with us and asked, perhaps over-optimistically
in hindsight, if they were running after the same guys as us, to
which they responded "nope, they're our mates innit".
When we got there and exchanged words it became increasingly evident
that physical confrontation with cross-eyed chavs who outnumbered
us by quite a margin and who had already shown a prediliction for
unprovoked face-punching was probably
not a good idea. Thankfully, we finally agreed to disagree and
walked our separate ways.
At which point
Evan said something to the tune of "you f***ing midget piece
of sh*t" to one of the more mouthy chavs. The aforementioned
midget ran up to him, punched him square on the jaw and knocked
him out. Additional chavs ran forward, their mouths watering at
the prospect of kicking Evan in the head, but fortunately when Will
explained that he was already out cold they stopped and walked away.
But this could also have been because the police were nearby and
the chavs spotted them. The policemen came up to us, took all the
details and sprinted off to apprehend the chavs for great justice.
Just kidding, they actually simply said "yeah we saw you get
attacked... heh heh heh... yeah...." and then proceeded to
tell us that Great Yarmouth isn't so bad and London is actually
worse in terms of street crime. While we appreciated their jolly
demeanour and insights into urban life across the UK, it wasn't
much consolation for poor Evan, whose jaw was heavily swollen the
following morning - here's a photo of him the next day:
Further drama
ensued when we returned back to our caravans and noticed that David
'quiet as a mouse, and hung like a horse' Bigmember was missing.
We were concerned but fortunately it turned out that he was simply
in another caravan, engaging in unspeakably incestuous genital interaction
with fellow LSE 2nd team member Nadine 'Chunderella' Muffman. Here's
a photo of the happy couple on the way back home:
Conclusion
All in all,
another hugely successful event for the LSE Pool Club. James reaching
the last 32 of the individuals, the 1st team reaching the quarter
finals of the team trophy, chav attacks and the club's first ever
love interest. Not sure if we can ever top this, but we'll give
it a go next year. |
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Quotes
from the weekend
1. "I just
don't like fat people" - Ayman after being asked why he was
cheering on Jack Pople, someone he had never seen before, to win
the individual final against Will Jerram.
2. "Yep,
we did anal" - Nads Muffman after being asked by Will if they
did anal. She was joking, but I said I'd put this quote up on the
website anyway.
3. "Why
would you NOT want to go to a strip club?" - Ayman
"Because I've just been punched in the face."
- Dan
4. "If
I was white I'd probably be racist" - Ayman
5. "I'm
quiet as a mouse!" - David 'Dish'ember
6. "I hacked
into AOL when I was 10" - Andrew after Nadine suggested it
would be funny if he actually was a hacker.
7. "I would
definitely rather chill with people with thin eyebrows than thick
eyebrows" - Ayman
First
Team Player Statistics
Name |
Frames
Won |
Win
% |
| James |
8/10 |
80% |
| Lee |
7/9 |
77.8% |
| Will |
3/9 |
33% |
| Dan |
2/9 |
22.2% |
| Ayman |
1/9 |
11.1% |
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