Southampton Quidditch Club Win British Championship

This weekend two teams from the University of Southampton Quidditch club travelled to Nottingham for the British Quidditch Championship and won the trophy.

In November last year Southampton University hosted the Southern Cup where they finished in 2nd place in the final after losing out to rivals the Radcliffe Chimeras from Oxford University.  Since then the team have been working hard in the build up to the British Championship to try and dethrone Oxford who have only ever lost one game in Britain.

The Southampton Quidditch Team

The tournament this weekend had a total of 24 teams competing, in which the two Southampton teams flew through the group stage, and made it down to the last 16.  The two teams even had to play each other in this round!

After this Southampton’s final team made it through the quarter-finals and semi-finals conceding only one goal and managing to score 90 for themselves.  This secured their place in the final where they once again came up against the undefeated Oxford team.

The final match began with a bad start for Southampton as the score quickly escalated to 90-30 to Oxford, with a few Southampton players losing their heads a little and being issued yellow cards.  However, the team rallied together to bring the score up to 90-60, and shortly after this their coach Dugald Young caught the snitch, worth 30 points.  This brought the final score to a tie of 90-90 which meant the game went into an intense five minutes extra time or until the snitch is caught again.

In the extra time Southampton had two early goals disallowed but success came their way when Dugald caught the snitch again leaving the final score at 120-90 to Southampton and making them the proud owners of the winners trophy.

The Vice-captain with the trophy on the journey home

The Soton Tab caught up with Vice-captain Ollie Craig following the win who told us about the teams unusual ways of celebrating:

On the way home we stopped at a services, bought a bottle of champagne and all 41 of us from the two Southampton Quidditch Club teams took a sip of it out of the trophy, and we then bought a KFC bargain bucket, and ate that out of the trophy too.

The team hope to continue their success streak following this win:

Next up for us is the European Championships in April (ironically in Oxford), where 32 teams from across the continent are coming to play, and where we hope to take the Chimera’s second crown!!

If you are interested in learning more about the University of Southampton Quidditch Club have a look at this article.

Go team Southampton!