Southampton Claim 4th Varsity Victory

Yesterday’s Varsity saw Southampton beat Portsmouth for the fourth year in a row on home turf and a day filled with plenty of booze and bantics. Soton were able to beat Pompey with an overall score of 105-66, retaining our 100% record.

We spent the day at Varsity (no, not the overpriced student bar in Portswood) covering the sports, snow and shenanigans in our Live Blog and walked away with trench foot, wondering if we were actually returning from Jesters. The majority of Wide Lane’s grounds resembled the Somme and unfortunately produced several casualties of the temperamental weather. The morning saw monsoonal rainfall which caused both the women’s rugby and football to have each half shortened and waterlogged courts meant some tennis matches were not to be seen this year. Weather conditions worsened throughout the day with snow and hail hitting hard on Wide Lane, forcing the Vixen’s scheduled performance to be cancelled. Although Pompey’s cheerleaders were keen to display their competitiveness through drinking games at 12:30 in the clubhouse.

Competitiveness at its best

The entertainment in the clubhouse continued throughout the day with Portsmouth’s netball team and cheerleaders wacking out the funnel before they’d even played their first game, proving that sport isn’t the whole point of Varsity. Standard AU bantics sustained with the usual round of boozing and chants from both the women’s and men’s rugby teams, with some of us finding it difficult to distinguish between the two. Whilst we were busy blogging about the various matches, Pompey’s ladies’ rugby team gave the clubhouse a charming and wholesome insight into their game of “never have I ever”, the more mature audience did not appreciate this. Check our blog for some fine examples of humiliation.

Individual Uni sports teams do have bigger and better competitions to worry about this time of year; however, the unique thing about Varsity is that almost every AU team in the University is united in the same aim (thrashing Portsmouth). This leads to a heartwarming sense of camaraderie between different sports teams who usually oppose each other (“you must be gay to play with sticks, oo-dah, oo-dah…”).

A line-out or synchronised swimming?

The abysmal weather highlighted the state of Wide Lane’s pitches; puddles soon led to lakes and in one (un)fortunate case a shot from one of Portsmouth’s women’s football team didn’t make it past the goal line, instead the ball was left floating at the feet of Soton’s keeper. Hopefully the pitches will be on top form for next year’s Varsity and we’ll see a 5 year winning streak…

More details to follow soon when full results are released.