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The coach queues for the varsity on Wednesday were so bad the police were called

If you ever wanted to know what a sardine feels like, you should have stood in that queue


The organisation of the coaches was to put it nicely, diabolical. An EURFC fresher told us that they were left to organise the coaches, being assigned one each. Their main job was to make sure that people got on and off the coaches safely- this certainly didn't happen.

There were meant to be 15 each coaches running at 5:30, 6:15 and 7:00, but this certainly didn't happen. I turned up to campus at 6:00 to get on one of the 6:15 coaches thinking that would be enough time, this was wishful thinking. The queue had already snaked its way up past the INTO building by the time I joined the masses.

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The queue looking up the hill- no end in sight

Being in the queue was an all round hellish experience. Everyone had had at least a drink or two, and felt emboldened because of it. There was shouting and a fair amount of shoving at the back of the queue; but it was not until you got to the front that the shoving really happened.

It took me almost an hour to even see the front of the queue, and by the time I had made it to the front it was raining fairly heavily. The pushing and shoving was so ridiculous that people were even being pulled off their feet, with students even leaving the queue and choosing to get taxis instead of wait for the coaches.

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The queue looking down the hill- again no end in sight

By the time I was even close to the front of the queue, the police had been called. Both the police and campus security tried to calm down the hoards of revellers who were trying to get on the coaches. They were there to act as crowd controllers, yet them shouting "Stop pushing!" did little to help the situation. The situation was so bad that there were even rumours that kick off was being pushed back because of it.

Luckily, the presence of the police eventually managed to subdue the pushing and shoving just enough that the situation was eventually under control and students could get on the coaches in an almost orderly fashion.

Moral of the story is that next year I'll be getting a taxi. But hey, at least we won!