Was lucky enough to catch up with a couple of old friends (emphasis on OLD for one ;-) at the weekend & we saw a band at the Carling Academy in Glasgow. It was the Led Zeppelin tribute band Whole Lotta Led who delivered a 3 hour rendition of the classic set list from Knebworth '79. The musicianship was exemplary, although we felt that they were let down somewhat by some variable vocals: I wondered if the vocalist was suffering from a sore throat, but our Norwegian pal cut to the chase. "No, he's just a crap singer" was his hasty retort.
Then, on Sunday I teamed up with the rest of the Stirling Barbarian Octopush team to push a lead puck around the bottom of a swimming pool! We participated in the British Universities Octopush Competition which was being hosted at our home pool. I don't think that any of us had massive expectations going into the tournament although we had put in a lot of extra training sessions in the preceding weeks. So, we started our first game against Plymouth with a degree of trepidation. I was positioned as centre back, with Adam Brooker to my left and Garnet Hooper to the right. Not only did we maintain a clean sheet in that game, but our team scored 7 goals! Particularly sweet for me as I scored the last goal following an exhaustingly long sprint from our own half. I don't often score goals, so I certainly relished it!
Then, on Sunday I teamed up with the rest of the Stirling Barbarian Octopush team to push a lead puck around the bottom of a swimming pool! We participated in the British Universities Octopush Competition which was being hosted at our home pool. I don't think that any of us had massive expectations going into the tournament although we had put in a lot of extra training sessions in the preceding weeks. So, we started our first game against Plymouth with a degree of trepidation. I was positioned as centre back, with Adam Brooker to my left and Garnet Hooper to the right. Not only did we maintain a clean sheet in that game, but our team scored 7 goals! Particularly sweet for me as I scored the last goal following an exhaustingly long sprint from our own half. I don't often score goals, so I certainly relished it!
The Stirling Barbarians
We continued our winning run against Aberdeen, Bangor and Edinburgh (although the last was one tough battle: I miraculously scored another goal too). So for our final game we came up against Portsmouth who had also won their first 4 games. I'm afraid that at this point our paucity of substitutes caught up with us and despite a resilient effort - including an early goal by Garnet to keep us in contention - the fatigue set in and we fell behind. Still, we finished second overall in the tournament & were delighted with our performance. All credit to our captain Graeme for spurring us on. Congratulations also to the Stirling Uni team who came 3rd overall in the British Universities' Competition: a great performance! I've made an octopush video sequence (with background music by my favourite band!) which can be viewed here.
The Stirling Uni team
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