Wednesday 19th May 2010 saw the first ever Tchoukball match between two further education colleges in the UK,
The match was played between Queen Mary’s College Basingstoke and Havant College and took place in Queen Mary’s College sports hall.
Queen Mary College started playing Tchoukball on Thursday lunchtimes on 21st April 2010 and this game was also going to be their first every game of Tchoukball.
There was some nervous faces around the Basingstoke team before the game especially Louise Neil, Kieron Fuller, Sophie Ramsey as all three had only been playing Tchoukball 3 weeks.
Both teams had been players who had played each other before in matches between Bohunt School and The Vine School a few years ago.
The game started well for Basingstoke with them taking an early 5 point lead,
this was mainly due to some early nerves getting to the Havant team causing them to make a number of mistakes. Some pinpoint placement from Jay Francis and Aidan Turner clawed a one-point lead back for Havant. At this point, the twin pairing of Kris and Connor Ford racked up a four point lead with some synchronised switching which Havant could not pull back.
First third – QMC 13 Havant 9
The second period started with a much more high-tempo attack, with Dom Raeyen combining well with the centre pivot, James Zhang, for some well-disguised switching and aerial shots.
The period also saw a shake-up in tactics, as Havant’s 3-1-3 formation swapped players around to try and combat the Ford twins, who were scoring from good quality service from the two centre pivot, Sophie Ramsey and Louise Neil.
The period ended, still very highly contested, when a superb pushed skim-shot from Kieran Fuller took QMC into a two point lead right on the final whistle
Second third – QMC 12 Havant 10
The third period was much more one-sided, as Havant College began to run out of steam. Some accurate shooting from Kieran Fuller and Dan Washbourne started to pull QMC into the lead, Ben Grover, defender for QMC, held some fantastic catches from a tiring shooting pair of Adam Smith and Aidan Turner. At the other end of play, the Ford twins were putting point after point on the board and combined well with Louise Neil coming from centre pivot to produce a fine triple switch, this inspired Havant into producing some well-constructed triple switches of their own, with some fine finishing shots from James Mingham
Some good second line work by Stuart Veck stopped the score rising even higher in QMC’s favour! The game finished with a clear victory for QMC, but both teams were in high spirits and the rematch is eagerly anticipated!
Final third – QMC 17 Havant 7
Final Score QMC 42 Havant 26
After the match Kitty Yarwood Further Education Sports Coordinator Basingstoke said 'With some members of the QMC team having only been playing for a few weeks I was nervous as to how the match would go.
Fortunately Havant College seemed to be at the same standard as us which was good. The guys put in lots of effort and I was impressed as to how well they played as a team for the 1st time. Andy Wolfe's coaching has paid off and I hope we can do more with Tchoukball in the future!'
