We'll start with the Best Matches per Round:
- First Round + Play-Offs: Without a doubt, Manchester's seemingly impossible comeback win over Lincoln College Oxford. King's matches over St George's and Homerton also stand out.
- Second Round: Probably Warwick vs King's, followed by Bangor vs Durham.
- Quarter-Finals: Probably Pembroke's near-comeback over King's. U.C.L.'s two matches also were also good ones.
- The Final Three: Probably the Grand Final.
The first round was rather slow moving, with only a few matches of note, and some rather low scoring affairs too. However, this series also showed that a low winning score in the first round doesn't just mean a lucky draw for the winning team, as Adam Pearce and co from Bangor showed us, by reaching the semis despite a low scoring first round win.
Once the first round was clear, the rest of the series was pretty decent. Once we began seeing teams a second time, the show does become more interesting for the regular viewer, as they can began comparing performances. It's noticeable that my reviews appeared to get longer as the series progressed.
The highest score of the series was 260, which was achieved by U.C.L. in their first round match against Exeter. The biggest win of the series was Pembroke's victory over Bath in the second round, by 255-75.
The biggest name missing from the series line-up was, of course, Edinburgh, the first series the uni had missed since 1998-99! As someone pointed out over on the DoND forum, there were also no 'new' universities (ie former polytechnics) on this series. The closest we got were Trinity Laban.
So, those are a few notable curios. Here is a short list of some of the more memotable moments of the series:
- James G. from King's getting a classics starter correct, despite being the only one on his team not studying that particular subject!
- A set of bonuses on Dr Johnson's Dictionary of Modern Life (a good book, BTW), one of a series of amusing moments from Magdalen's first round match.
- Manchester overtaking Lincoln College Oxford literally a quarter-of-a-second before the gong!
- Liverpool, after getting confused, suggest Julius Caesar was born in 1834!
- Paxo mishearing an answer of 'Rimbauld' as 'Rambo'! 'I thought you meant Sylvester Stallone!'
- Pietro Aronica from Imperial makes an unfortunate guess that Inspector Clouseau was created by Charlotte Bronte, much to Paxo's amusement!
- Paxo twice claiming the other team would know all the answers to the other team's bonuses!
- Poor Henry Guille from Imperial twice misbuzzing at crucial moments, and not taking it well. Poor lad.
- Manchester twice employing the common tactic of answering all three bonuses the same, and it being right third time around!
- From the Final, a set of bonuses on two word phrases that could be UC buzz announcments!
Overall, it's been a good series to cover on here. Thank you to all who posted regularly on my reviews, including the contestants themselves, whose insight has been good to read.
My regular UC reviews will resume when the new series begins, which should be shortly after Wimbledon. Until then, this blog will be somewhat bereft of content. Any suggestions on what I could cover on here in the meantime will be appreciated. Maybe Counterpoint, which resumes on Radio 4 on Monday. We'll see.
Disagree with you about the grand final. I guess that none of the last three were particularly exciting matches, but I found the final pretty disappointing - UCL, despite having been strong all series, pretty much folded from the start. We came closer to beating Manchester than they did.
ReplyDeleteI've found King's tended to play exciting matches (as you seem to as well!); I also enjoyed watching Manchester and UCL (knowing how far they were going to get probably helped!). UCL is still team of the series for me.
For the most part I can't remember what happened early on in the series, but I think the two "impressive comebacks" - Manchester vs Lincoln and UCL vs Bangor - are among the best matches (interesting that both finalists should have won such a match!).
From a purely personal perspective, I think the one I'll always remember will be Bangor vs Durham - unsurprisingly! Certainly my finest hour on the program was getting that last starter. Though my best personal performance starter-wise was against Imperial (though I also got nominated twice so it looks like I was doing better than I was in that one). Imperial was also our highest score and Mark (Stevens') best match; while Bangor's biggest win was against King's, which was Simon & Nina's best - the other three matches I think we'd all rather forget...
Personally my highlight match was against Warwick. My top starter haul in a single match, and while it wasn't quite last-minute is was certainly very close. Position of strength, to near-defeat, to a last-gasp victory. Very dramatic.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite two matches are probably Manchester v. Lincoln, and Bangor v. Durham. In both cases I knew who would win, of course, but from a viewers' perspective those matches were in doubt until almost literally the last second. Also knowing that Bangor had knocked out Durham who looked strong made me feel better about losing to them...
I also enjoyed Simon Dennis's storming performance on the buzzer in the first round, but he never did sustain that through the series.
In case anyone's interested, Simon (Tomlinson's) long-ago appearence on The Weakest Link was on today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01sg089/Weakest_Link_08_05_2013/
ReplyDeleteJack, it looks like a new series of Only Connect starts next Monday. Are you thinking about blogging about it?
ReplyDeleteYeah, why not?
DeleteWould be interesting to keep up the blog. Rumour has it that the next UC series may be starting around July -- will see you then! It's been an interesting year, and I've enjoyed reading and contributing to your blogs, and Dave's over at LAM.
ReplyDeleteHad the opportunity today to meet some UC competitors past, present and future... will be interesting to see how they get on, and how next series compares to this one. I did feel after a while that the scores were consistently lower in this series than for a long time, and it will be interesting to see if they change next year, and if so how and why.