Good evening, from Ayrshire. First of all, sorry I haven't reviewed last Monday's Only Connect yet, but I haven't had the chance to look it up yet. I will try to review it alongside tonight's final, but I'm not guaranteeing anything.
Onto tonight's UC, and it was a good one.
Durham University is the third oldest in England after Oxford and Cambridge; it has many separate colleges, but they serve to provide accommodation rather than to teach, so Durham is only allowed one UC team a year. For the past two years, they have fielded a strong team who have walked their first match, and then unluckily lost their second. This year's foursome were:
Alex Richards, from Derbyshire, studying Chemistry
Daniel Hulme, from Staffordshire, studying Theoretical Physics
Captain: Matt MacKenzie, from Gloucestershire, studying History
Oliver Burnham, from Hampshire, studying Chemistry
Queens' College Cambridge is named after two separate Queens of England who founded and refounded it, hence the placing of the apostrophe. Alumni include Erasmus, Stephen Fry and Simon Bird from the Inbetweeners. The college last fielded a team three series ago, who reached the quarter-finals. This year's quartet were:
Paul Merchant, from Surrey, studying Modern Languages
Rachel Gregory, from Sheffield, studying Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic
Captain: Rhys Jackson-Jones, from London, stuyding Astrophysics
David Phillips, from St Albans, studying Maths
Off we went, or did we, as the first starter was dropped. Queens' got the first correct starter of the match, but Durham had the better start, leading 60-20 after the first picture round, on regions of Italy.
And they seemed to have the edge in the second phase as well, helped by converting more bonuses than the opposition. Mr Phillips impressed for Queens' by very quickly solving a complicated sounding maths question. Progress was briefly halted by two dropped starters in a row, until Durham put a stop to that. The music round saw Paxo stun everyone by reading a quote from Tschaikovski referring to Brahms which included a swear which I won't repeat here! After the round, Queens' trailed by 100-70.
Then, Paul Merchant of Queens' began a surge on the buzzer which, including the music round, saw him get five starters in a row. Soon, they had overtaken Durham, and were pulling away into the lead. By the second picture round, on writers from the 'Lost Generation', they had pulled away to a lead of 155-100.
But a very good interruption by Oliver Burnham bought Durham back into the game, and the lead was soon down to 25 points. The impressive Mr Merchant got another starter for Queens', and earned them a set of bonuses on MPs and the counties their constituencies are in, all of which I got. Then, Queens' interrupted incorrectly, and Durham shot in before Paxo could resume the question to take the points!
Another starter to Durham, and it was 170-all! David Phillips took a crucial starter for Queens', and two bonuses followed. Another starter was asked, but, just as Durham buzzed in on it, the gong went! Queens' won a good close match, 190-170.
A good showing by both teams, both of whom deserve to return one way or another. I would imagine Durham's score will be enough for the repechage. Matt MacKenzie led their way, with four starters, and the side answered 16 bonuses correctly out of 27. Paul Merchant ended an impressive showing with seven starters, which helped his side to 19 bonuses out of 30, with one penalty for interrupting incorrectly.
Next week's match: Loughborough vs Clare College Cambridge. Fourth Cambridge team to appear this series! And James Gratrex from last year's King's College team hinted on LAM that there are many more to come. We shall see.
After last week's thriller, this one was equally entertaining for different reasons, as it was close right to the end as well as fairly high-scoring. Durham deserve to be back for the high-scoring losers' play-offs, and surely we will see them there. Ditto last week's losers, Christ Church.
ReplyDeleteMy hint comes from a whisper from a rumour overheard by someone who probably knows, so may turn out not to be true after all. While I've no problem with several Oxbridge colleges making it onto the show I don't think we want there to be too many!
I don't know what you mean by unusually many, but there'll be a couple more Cambridge teams to come, I think!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, good match, that. Naturally lots of questions which suited me very well - one on my own country, in fact - but after last week I guess I can't really complain. :P Statistically, Queens' got 209 and Durham 192, so in terms of the relative qualities of teams we're definitely seeing an improvement on last year. Let's see if Clare and Loughborough can keep that up.
Well the usual number is no more than 5, so I understood, so any more than that could be called "unusually many".
DeleteI do really enjoy matches such as this one, where the lead changes several times and the result is never certain until the final minutes. Given that both teams’ scores were impressively high, either of them could be capable of demolishing a slightly weaker opposition.
ReplyDeleteI can’t help noticing that this is the fourth consecutive game this year in which a team has featured one contestant grabbing all, or most of, their starter questions. Paul Merchant, with his seven starters, has joined a chain of “ones to watch”. I wonder if this trend will continue in later episodes. Perhaps we’ll find a worthy successor to Trimble or Guttenplan.