Friday 03-11-2017 - 12:00

BUCS is the National Governing Body and more importantly our source of sport here at Edge Hill University and I want to be able to broadcast all of the amazing things our sports teams do. I believe that the most fun way to do this will be to post a weekly match report after each BUCS Wednesday, as a way of summarising what’s happened each week. So let’s get onto the first BUCS match report shall we…

On the morning of the 1^st of November 2017, our sports teams began preparations for their fixtures. Now this mainly consisted of singing motivational chants on the coach… each to their own! We had a lot of sports teams due to play on Wednesday, including; Football, Hockey, Netball, Rugby League, Tennis, Basketball, Rugby Union, Badminton and Table Tennis. As you can imagine our sports teams were very busy bee’s this week, but it was worth it as it added to the excitement and left Sporting Edge with a huge amount of support from students throughout the whole day, which was fantastic to see.

Let’s get onto how our teams performed…

Starting with Hockey. This week we had the men’s 1^st’s and the women’s 1^st’s team playing. The men’s team were away at Lancaster and amazingly came home with a win!! However this win didn’t come easily. Edge Hill put on a lot of pressure at the start of the game, but there was a brief moment where Lancaster fought back and put us on the back foot. Thankfully Nick Fletcher came to the rescue scoring the first goal of the game, putting us in the lead. Another quick attack saw Jac Horwood score the second. Yay, 2-0 to us! But then Lancaster managed to grab one back, described by Edge Hill as a “very well crafted deflection” (possible sarcasm?) and this left the score as 2-1 at half time. Into the second half and Nick Fletcher scored the third goal for Edge Hill from a corner. Although this 3-1 lead didn’t last long as Lancaster unfortunately brought one back soon after. Not to worry as Richard Reymond sealed the victory with a goal at the near post!! Edge Hill won the game 5-2 in the end and a special shout out goes to Tom Dodd (the goalkeeper), as he saved a penalty flick with an “outstanding save” to secure the win. I don’t think that game could’ve been any more nail biting. It sounds like it would’ve been a great watch for us, had the fixture been at home!

Now the women’s Hockey team had an equally exciting match. They were playing at home against Liverpool John Moores. In the end, the game was an easy win for the girls, but the win didn’t come without its drama! Edge Hill struggled as they had a lot of frustrating aggression coming from the opposition team, due to the difference in standard between the teams. Amazingly, our girls managed to keep their composure and kept cool under the pressure. Edge Hill came away with a 10-1 victory and incredible performances from all players. A little shout out to the players who scored… Jenny came away with 5, Anna with 3 and Becca with 2! This means that so far they are unbeaten in the league (with a game in hand) and have a +20 goal difference!! Jenny was awarded with man of the match (obviously) and unfortunately for Laura the goalkeeper, she was awarded with "d*ck of the day" as she went to “kill the ball” out and completely missed it (poor Laura).

Men’s Rugby Union 1^st’s are another success story this week. Listen to this for a comeback... Within the first 10 minutes of their game against the University of Manchester, Edge Hill had a man sent off meaning that they were down to 14 men for the remaining 70 minutes. They knew it was going to be tough and this proved to be true as after 15 minutes, the opposition were up 12-0. But in true Edge Hill style, they came back fighting and with 2 tries from Aiden Clow, 1 try from James Wright and James Ratcliffe scoring 2 conversions, they brought the score up to 19-12 to us!! Incredible comeback boys.

We also have brief summaries of our other BUCS fixtures from Wednesday:

• Women’s Football 1^st’s beat Keele University 2-1, with Megan Walker and Ella Hartley as the goal scorers.
• Men’s Tennis 1^st’s won 12-0 against Bangor.
• Men’s Football 2^nd’s unfortunately lost 9-1 to UCLAN (the heaviest defeat for them in a while)
• Men’s Badminton 2^nd’s also unfortunately lost 8-0 to Lancaster.
• Women’s Badminton 2^nd’s lost 6-2 to Keele.
• Women’s Badminton 1^st’s won 7-1 to Bangor.
• Men’s Badminton 3^rd’s lost to Bangor 6-2.
• Men’s Badminton 1^st’s lost 8-0 to Lancaster.
• Women’s Netball 1^st’s lost 29-23 to Lancaster.
• And Men’s Rugby League 1^st’s lost to Liverpool John Moores 48-12.

Even though we’ve had a few more losses than usual this week, I know our teams will come back better than ever just in time for the second round of Cup Week (next week, ahh it’s so soon). We’ve got this. I can’t wait to see how we get on and I bet you can’t either!!

#TeamEdgeHill