#notoxford

[theuniversitychallengereview]

Episode 12 - St Andrews vs St John’s, Cam

If someone were to write an epic novel about historical saints doing battle it would only seem to make sense that they fought in a manner belying their transcendent nobility. You can’t really see Francis of Assisi and Joan of Arc getting involved in an intoxicated Wednesday morning scuffle post-Wetherspoons. Not to belittle boozy punch ups, just to note instead that maybe these two would have settled their differences over a coffee and a game of chess (though I remain unsure who would win)

In the spirit of this hypothetical and temporally dubious board game, another pair of Saints have assembled to face off in a similarly acceptable manner. St Andrews are from Scotland and have no apostrophe in their name. St John’s are from Cambridge, and do.

St John’s is also the name of a college at Oxford, because there are so many colleges named after saints that at one point they had to start doubling up. Annoyingly the two aren’t paired with each other. Whats even more annoying is that I hadn’t read the team names properly for this episode so had thought it was the Oxford St John’s who’d be on tonight.

They’d have been far easier to write about, because they’ve reached the final on no less than three occasions in the Paxman era, each of which they have lost, including a spectacular capitulation against the brilliance of Teddy Hapax where they posted the second lowest score in the shows history. I had a lovely bit planned in my head about their glorious failures, where I would postulate about their mental strength as a college. Had they been unlucky or were they just bottling it on the biggest stage of them all? Did they, like Andy Murray, need to bring in a scary looking man in sunglasses to bark them over the final hurdle? But instead we’d got poxy St John’s, Cambridge, who have only ever made it to the semi finals (like Tim Henman), so I couldn’t use any of it.

Their skipper, James Devine-Stoneman, has a cool name and is studying superconducting spintronics, which I can confirm is a real thing, although it is very slightly too niche to have a dedicated Wikipedia (instead contenting itself with a mention on the regular spintronics page), so I’ll let them off. As is well known, traditional studies that combine spintronics and superconductivity have mainly focused on the injection of spin-polarized quasiparticles into superconducting materials, but I’m not sure if Mr Sublime-Pebbleguy is interested in that too.

I might be an idiot, but it only just occurred to me that when Paxman reads out the rules at the start, it is for the benefit of the audience watching at home, not for the teams to which he addresses them. I was always like ‘um, pretty sure they know the rules, mate, they haven’t just wandered into a TV studio’, but he’s not actually speaking to the contestants. If this loses me the shred of credibility I have left then no be it, I got into a lovely stream of consciousness there and I’m not going to cut it.

Having recently learned how many points he would get for a starter, it is Jim Heavenly-Rockdude who buzzes ominously early to take the first question of the night, and they scoop all three bonuses (at five points a pop) to complete the perfect opening.

John-Clark Levin, with his double barrel in the irregular position, took a second for St John’s, who missed just one of the three on Islamic Arts to go forty five points clear. I went to an Islamic Arts museum last month but was unable to answer any of them, though they also had a bunch of cool swords so how was I supposed to learn anything?

St Andrews captain George Davies, a cuddly round bear in contrast to the sharp edges of his opposite number Beatific-Boulderbloke, grabs a biology starter to get the Scots off the mark. His Faraway teammate Grant claimed the next, and it was to he whom (he who? him whom? him who??) the other three turned, in sync, when Pax announced the bonus set was on women buried in a particular Parisian cemetery. I know not what this is indicative of, but it can’t be good.

Davies takes the picture starter and St Andrews move ahead with two of the bonuses, but as we witnessed on Sunday night, a Scottish side going in front doesn’t mean all that much in the grand scheme of things. I don’t know if Gordon Strachan was managing the St As quartet, but they seemed to decide at this stage that they didn’t want to win after all and the Cantabrigians won the race on eight of the following nine starters to end the match as a contest at 205 to 65.

It was Hazell who got the first of these Tens for John’s, though had this been the Apprentice he’d probably have been docked five points for giving ‘Sir Alan', rather than ‘Lord’, Sugar, as is preferred by the grouchy beardo himself. He took his second of the evening with a stupendous buzz on alphabetized numbers, befuddling both himself and the Pax in the process

St Andrews realised when they finally made it to a hundred and forty behind that they would likely lose if they carried on sitting there doing nothing, and mounted a spirited comeback that would ultimately lead to nothing, similar to events in Ljubliana a few days ago (if you don’t get the football analogies just ignore them, they’re not that profound) This was very much a game of three halves:

St Andrews 50 - 45 St John’s

St Andrews 15 - 160 St John’s

St Andrews 55 - 50 St John’s

So they dropped off a little bit in the middle there, I don’t know if you can really tell from those figures, and it is St John’s (of Cambridge not Oxford) who advance impressively to the second round

Final Score (for those who can’t add): St Andrews 120 - 255 St John’s

You feel like there are a number of teams St Andrews would have comfortably beaten, so they can count themselves very unlucky to not have even managed to make the play-off stage. St John’s however, dominated a match which was the highest scoring of the series by fifty points, and look fearsome going forward.

Please send me your favourite ‘divine’ and ‘stone’ synonyms for St John’s next appearance

[europeandmore-blog]

Visited University of Cambridge and I was amazed - not just at the sheer age of the place - but at the commitment of the students. I don't understand how you could walk from class to class, dodging thousands of tourists, day in, day out.