2016/17, Episode 15 - Queen's vs Jesus

If you haven’t already you can watch the episode here before reading the review:

The perplexing decision to show Autumnwatch over UC this Monday has baffled Twitter beyond 140 characters. I don’t even know why they’ve continued broadcasting it since Bill Oddie left, but thats a topic for another blog. The week before the BBC decided Badgers beat Bach and Breugel saw two Cambridge colleges competing in the first of two high-scoring loser play-offs.

This was the first week with returning teams, which makes my job more difficult because I can’t just write a truncated history of the teams as an introduction, as I’ve already done that, so I’ll have to come up with something new. Anyway, here goes.

Queens’ had been narrowly defeated 160-150 by defending champs Peterhouse while Jesus lost the highest scoring first round match 200-175 to Oxford rivals Corpus Christi. Guttenplan’s Emmanuel College won the tournament via this stage in 2010, so its not just a sympathy match, and both teams know this.

Lorenzo Venturini neglects to mention on this occasion that his engineering degree specialises in the x-raying of cheese, which came as a huge disappointment. I was actually hoping he’d decided to go even deeper and study only absurdly specific varieties of Mongolian Byaslag. And yes, thats a link to cheese.com. Its a gouda site.

Mr Venturini also just says he’s from Italy, while all the British folks tell us exactly which tiny town they’re from. You can tell me if you’re from Milan, Lorenzo, they have two football teams and a fashion week there - your buddy Syvret is from Evesham and I’ve never even heard of that place.

Jesus have found a mascot since their last match, a cockerel - to wake them up so they don’t have a slow start. It doesn’t help in that respect - they quickly fall 65-0 behind.

Its at this point that I must apologise for an egregious error I made in the previous Jesus edition. No mention was made of the fact they have a team member called Price, or the fact that if combined the college name, the announcement when she buzzes for a starter question sounds almost identical to a blasphemous phrase. The same blasphemous phrase which I uttered upon realising I’d made the oversight. So here it is, Jesus Price…

Fairbrother, who did get a sentence or two last time, for his Gothic aesthetic, stepped up his game this week, rolling his sleeves so far up that his left sleeve became his right sleeve and vice-versa. This was all with the aim of showing us all that his arms are just as ghostly pale as his face. Mission accomplished.

There are a number of reasons behind the choosing of captains for UC squads - the best player, the player coolest under pressure, the least socially awkward player - but its clear that even though he may fit all of those categories too, Theo Morris-Clarke was made Captain of Jesus for a different reason.

Telepathy.

Professor X would be proud of such a ‘forefingers on the temple’ pose, but it begs the question that if he’s capable of reading minds, should he really be allowed to participate? Or does The Pax have an impenetrable mental fortress like Magneto does with his helmet? It would explain the pained expression on M-C’s face - due to the immense efforts he’s putting in to try and obtain answers illicitly.

Fortunately for Jesus, he and his team mates do know a few things, even if Jez does have a brain Fort Knox, and they combine with a few starters each to overhaul the sizeable lead that Queens’ had opened up. They don’t need superpowers to recognize Paul Simon and Led Zeppelin within nanoseconds, and following their storming start Queens’ dropped off significantly, making the win pretty comfortable in the end.

Queens’ outscored their first round total, and with 305 over the two games they can count themselves incredibly unlucky to be leaving at this stage. For Jesus, they have now taken part in two of the three highest scoring matches of the series so far, and look a solid squad going into the final sixteen.

Final Score: Jesus, Cam 195 - Queens’, Cam 155

So that was Episode 15, sorry the review was so awfully late. Monday should be business as usual, as Durham take on SOAS in the final match before Round Two. Thanks for reading