2016/17, Episode 36 - Edinburgh vs Balliol

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

This edition of the UC Review comes to you more than a week late, which means I haven’t written one of these for more than two. Let’s hope I haven’t forgotten how to ramble on nonsensically for eight hundred words and make clumsy analogues between quizzing and football.

The second of the semi finals saw Edinburgh, making their first appearance in the semi finals since 2002, take on Balliol, Oxford, who last reached this stage three years later in 2005. The winners already knew they would go on to face Wolfson, Cambridge, whom both teams had already played.

Edinburgh defeated Eric Monkman’s side on their unbeaten run to the semis, whereas Balliol had been pipped to the post in their fisrt quarter final and had to navigate past Birmingham and Oxford rivals Corpus Christi in the eliminations.

After the previous week’s internet-breaking exploits, served up courtesy of Messrs Seagull and Monkman, this meeting didn’t quite have the same levels of elevated hype, though of course there would have been many people looking forward to it just as much if not more than #Monkgull.

The Edinburgh team have gone somewhat under the radar this series, despite, as I mentioned above, having already beaten the team tipped by some as certain winners of the crown. Balliol, meanwhile have looked extremely formidable in all of their previous matches, bar the loss to Wolfson, in which Monkman shouted them off the park with eight starters. Everything pointed to an absolute corker.

If Balliol were to win, then we’d have the fourth consecutive Oxbridge final, and if Edinburgh were to lose (I know thats the same thing) then we’d have an all-dude final, with the sole remaining female contestant Emily Goddard competing for the Scots.

The match was broadcast on a big screen in the Student Union bar in Edinburgh, with a crowd of over one hundred people crammed in (I can confirm this number as at least reasonably accurate because I asked the member of staff with the clicky number counter thing), sitting, standing and everything in between, beers in hand and hope in their hearts.

Before the episode has even started, a swaying supporter is bundled out, propped up by two friends, the result of one two many pre-match VKs I presume. Possibly an example which takes the jollity too far, this was generally indicative of the feel-good atmosphere present in the room, further exemplified by the delivery of plums I observed another girl take receipt of about halfway through.

I doubt there were any plums present at the Balliol viewing, though of course I can’t be entirely sure.

Its the Oxonians who take the first question though, regardless of whether or not there were plums in their viewing gallery, with the opening starter going to Pope. They then make it very clear that they are there for business and not pleasure by rattling off ‘Fez’ as an answer without so much as a mild grin at how cool fezzes are.

They take two more without reply and go 60 points clear in the first few minutes, before a Freddy Potts slipup lets Edinburgh MVP Euan Smith in to get his side on the board. This puts us at 55-20, and the match we’d been hoping for looked like it could finally be starting to materialise.

Goldman, however, didn’t fancy a close affair, and answered the next question less than one second after it would have been possible to without having seen it beforehand. Given the opportunity to show off a bit by Paxman, he barks the other two answers that would have been acceptable, then perhaps overindulges his intellectual peacocking a little by giving even more information than that.

This was the beginning of the end for Edinburgh, as five starters in a row drew Balliol into an unassailable 130 point lead. They battle on bravely, winning the second half by sixty, but the damage had been done before the music round, and they fell seventy points short of being the first Scottish team to reach the final in the Paxman era. A stirring performance nonetheless

As for Balliol, they make the Grand Final for the third time in the show’s history, having been beaten by Leicester in the inaugural series of 1963 and then by Trinity College, Cambridge in 1974. They would be out for revenge for those losses, and for their own loss to Wolfson in January.

Final Score: Edinburgh 145 - 205 Balliol, Ox

Apologies again at the extreme lateness of this. Hopefully oyu won’t have to wait as long for the review of the final, though of course that will also be late. Anyway, thanks for sticking around for me.