Liverpool University Canoe Club

A BIG thank you to Sophie for organising another awesome night.  I think I am now entirely disturbed by the eagerness shown by certain people on stage….you know who you are!  A couple of extra special mentions.  Firstly to Sam for coming for a night out before going back to the library - pure commitment, hope you exam went well!  Mr I hadnt realised about white t-shirts Raho…hmm.  And personally to our resident ginger cake making supremo - thank you so much!  I may be old, but now I’m old with chocolatey goodness.  Hope everyone has a good time in St David’s and bring on the Alps!!

On the weekend of the 13th/14th June local club FOA are organising the annual Merseyside open canoe polo tournament at the docks. Club and university teams from all over the country come to Liverpool to take part so I think it would be great if we could put in a Liverpool uni team. We’d need at leat 6 or 7 which can be a mix of boys and girls. The tournament is suitable for all levels so all are welcome. Free camping is offered at Liverpool college for the weekend which might seem a bit daft if you’ve already got a house in Liverpool but would make it more of a social gathering if people wanted to camp! Anyone who is interested let me know.  emilymartin89@hotmail.com 

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7.30pm Guild (Harold Wilson rm) - speaker is Nicky Pearce, white water expeditioner, who will tell us about her adventures in Madagascar - photos of white water and lemurs - toptastic!

If you are free beforehand, we’ll be eating at Kimos (Mt Pleasant) at 6pm ish, and in the saro wiwa bar of the guild from about 7.

See you there, and bring your friends.

Tickets on the door £4.

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Arriving at the campsite Friday night we headed straight over to Jim bobs parents house for the 2nd annual BBQ, fuelling ourselves ready for the battle of Britain!

Golden Guns

Saturday morning there was no time to waste, games started at 7.30, and looking on the Brightside, our first game wasn’t till 7.45! Of course, in true Liverpool style we were late onto the pitch and started our first game with just 3 players. Seconds later the referee was raising the red card to us. Why? We had 6 players on the pitch and had to play a man down for the rest of the game! Maybe with some ‘training’ we could learn to count? It was a real nail biter… we only won by a small margin of 6-0! Round 2, we won 7-0, round three 5-0 and at 7.30 in the evening we were facing head to head with Southampton, and we won 6-0!

Without a goal conceded all day we had reason to party!! The 400 people camping turned from smelly students into the ‘jungle’ and dressed as tigers, lions, frogs and panda bears etc Liverpool raved it up in Doncaster!

Jungle

Sunday morning arrived and our first match was against Loughborough at 11am. Tired and unorganised we filtered onto the pitch where we realised we were going to have to get our asses into gear. They put up a fight with their strong defence, I think Yarwood (our goalie) might have even had to try and save a goal! We didn’t play well, it was all a bit messy and we came away 2-1 up. Undefeated so far, we were into the semi finals against Birmingham. They’re team cheered louder, but what it really came down to is… we had BIGGER GUNS!! The organisers asked for a gender test (i kid you not) as we just pounded in goal after goal. We won against B’ham 5-1 and they came out good, finishing 3rd overall.

'training'

By this point we were warmed up and ready to go, our guns were pumped and our awesome bank support… Jimbob, Ginge and Squirel were positively excited as we prepared for the final against ULU! Having lost my voice cheering ‘We love you U L U we doooo…’ in the Final at Cardiff for this team we knew they had a clue. It was all the idea, and all the gear vs the GUN SHOW!

The old boys final finished at a draw and the game stretched out through extra time, but we weren’t having any of this in our final, we were dressed in war paint and wanted nothing less than 8-0 (the 9^th would be a slam dunk!) The whistle blew and the fight began. ULU played a tight game with safe passes and strong team work. At half time we were 2-0 up, but we all knew it wasn’t over till the whistle blew. Our attackers took out their defence; our defenders caused havoc and Yarowood’s guns tore free smashing in the last 2 goals for Liverpool University! We won, British Gold medallists of 2009!!

WE WON

It was an ace weekend, sunshine, hot guys and hardcore polo… Bring on 2010! the year of white lycra, size SMALL!

Chaos

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News flash:  our fabulous girlies have binned, rammed and killed their way to being BUCS polo champions 2009!!  Huge congratulations to everyone involved.  I’m sure a match report will appear by our fabby polo secs….

Many facebook albums of Scotland trip from Cath, Flic, Lindsey, Lindsey, Jon, Jon, and see report by Hannah.

Got more photos? Please add them, or post links to your albums xh

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A fantastic time was had by all, (well I had an awesome trip anyway…)  Soo a big thank you to all the drivers: Jon, Helen, Tim, Will and Cath, especially those who gave up cars for removal trucks and those who took the tempting option of getting drunk instead of driving home!  Thanks to Team Safety for fishing everyone out and finally a big thanks to Stu for organising it all. 

Well the weekend featured much boat crunching (Flic, Helen, Stu), so many Super Squirrel-led repairs.  Lots of swimming, resulting in many swim beers which concluded in much vomiting out of vans…  But all in all a superb weekend of paddling, from the pleasantly fresher proof(ish) to the more bone/boat crunching.  I think a few special mentions should go to Kaylia for her utterly elegant face-plant, Jon for his roll over right angle - you made Barnsey’s day, and of course Captain Rolly purely for betting potential.   

And of course who can forget Philippa?  I think Jon still has some explaining to do as to where she came from, but she was a rather interesting drinking recepticle until she sadly got rather injured tackling right angle…Stu that could well be classed as murder.

So bring on Scotland 2010!

Thank you all speakers for last night!

We had Stu kicking off with ‘2008-the year of the swim’, which was really only two months of swim which were sufficiently fishy to fill 20mins!

Flic with ‘Boating in Pink’ then showed quite how many awesome places in the world she has been in the world - i didn’t realise how well travelled you were girl!

Cath was very informative about the trip to Slovenia last year - it was really good to see how achieveable it was to get to some differnt places in a boat, and Slovenia looks beautiful, one to add to the list!

Phil, told the tale of his trip to Norway with Will, Dave and others, which left everyone in stitches - many a funny happening!

Andy then gave us a picture of what to expect from Scotland and Alps trips - a little preview to whet the appetite!

Then Blame Dave productions did itself proud with a high speed tour of the various beatings recorded on the water over the years!

Then everyone got Blue and headed to AU night!

Thank you everyone who came.  Don’t know about you but I really enjoyed hearing everyones tales - its good to hear all the stories with pictures! rather than just the bits of them you get in the pub! Also we raised another £30 for the kit fund - whoop!

Huge congratulations to Andy and Stu for organising such a successful day, they even managed to order fantastically sunny weather.  A really good day, shame on you if you missed it!

So the day started with (or ended with) learning how to swim…properly (maybe I wont need armbands any more!).  Certainly for fresher numpties it made a refreshing change to be at the other end of the throwline…and we perhaps now know what to do with one, apparently wrapping it around your neck isnt advised…  Lots of fun and giggles from a rather girly session, interesting attempts at body surfing, invention of new super-heroes (spaceman anyone?) and surprising amounts of enthusiasm for jumping into very chilly water.  Next Andy, let us get in a boat aiming to make us all ultra safe leaders…   Lots of setting up safety, inspecting and thankfully not so much swimming (some people got a bit confused to begin with as to whether we were supposed to use our boats to get down the drop of not, but soon got that sussed).  All in all a really useful and fun day. 

A huge thank you to all the drivers, and I think a special mention must go to Sam for pure dedication, not only driving from Nottingham, but for dealing with two less than sober gingers…hope the car gets well soon.

A HUGE thank you to our brilliant social secs Tammy and Finn for organising another amazing evening.  A group of gorgeous girlies and some rather dapper boys (well they were wearing suits and most of them had even washed!) congregated at the Phil, before heading to the rather snazzy Zelig’s for an evening of fine food, jazz and umm, well wine…perhaps for some more than others…  Next were umbrellas, high vis, bibs and arm bands (ooh and congrats to Ginge our most improved paddler!).  So, all that was left was the traditional pilgrimage to the Raz and I’m sure the night ended for most in a fat frog induced blur.  Thanks guys, bring on AU night!

photos by: Helen J