History became legend, legend became myth

June 2012 will be forever remembered for a festival of football. Not for Euro2012 but the inaugural Bioengineering Staff Vs Student football match.

June 2012 will be forever remembered for a festival of football. Not Spain Vs Italy in the Euro2012 final but the inaugural Bioengineering Staff Vs Student football match. Teaching, research and admin played for the staff against a team of students drawn from all years of the biomedical engineering degree programme.

A cunning plan!

 A low and cunning plan was hatched by the staff to challenge the students at the moment of their greatest weakness, just after the completion of their projects and exams. A year of academic challenge and sedentary lifestyle would have been exploited ruthlessly by the staff were it not for the invention of the weather which caused the postponement of the original fixture (ah, the glorious British summer). This gained the students an extra few days to recuperate from the past year and foiled the staff planThe two teams arrived for the rearranged fixture at Hyde Park during a brief lull in the rain. At least this time of the year the rain is warm. Both teams were proudly kitted out in Bioengineering colours, staff in dazzling bright orange and the students in super cool royal blue.

Tactics tactics tactics

Another staff tactic of carefully selecting the most uneven surface in the entire park in the hope of dragging the students down to the same level as the staff didn’t work either. The students quickly took the lead playing the beautiful games ala Spain (2006-12). The staff employed the tactic good guy, bad guy.Anthony Bull gave an interactive demonstration of MRI imaging showing that the response to a RF impulse applied to a hydrogen atom in a magnetic field is a damped oscillation. In other words he pushed students in the back at every available opportunity. This was balanced by Martin Holloway’s patient and calm explanation of the associated complex algebra for image reconstruction which helped many students to return to stability. Shouts from the students of "foul ref" and "ball to hand ref" fell on deaf ears. In fact no ears - there was no referee. This was yet another staff plan (lower than a snake’s belt) and was used to hide a multitude of sins. Eventually, this led to an unlikely equaliser.

They think it’s all over!

Despite frequent utterances by the staff of "we know where your results are stored", "the next student to score gets a 3rd ", "now about that reference you wanted" the students went on the score a second and a third. Eventually, they declared on four by which time the staff recalibrated the scores to log base 10. At 1-4 down the staff knew their goose was cooked when the onlookers led by Britta Ross, Laura McKay, Helen Findon, Henry Eade and Chiara Scabellone initiated a Mexican wave, the inevitable sign that the match was over as a competitive fixture. Eventually, in glorious sunshine the final whistle was blown for a game played in great spirit, humour, friendliness and a decent amount of competitiveness. Handshakes all round was followed by refueling back in the level 3 staff common room. Due to consequences of the aging process the staff quickly forget about the score and began the process of rewriting history. The students gracefully chose not to gloat. The day concluded by watching some lesser footballers playing a Euro2012 quarter-final in Poland.

It is now…

Thanks go to all the Bioengineers who contributed to the event especially Saadiq Moledina for organising the student team through the weather dominated arrangements. Meanwhile, the staff return to the drawing board in the search for new effective low and cunning plans. Any ideas? See you next year, same time (approximately), same place. Bring some sun-block! Inspired by the super performance of Chui Fan Lee the newest member of academic staff, Allan Nyunt the staff mid-field dynamo (and finance officer) is currently computing the cost of an extending the standard job description for lecturers to include: should have previously played for Barcelona, Juventus etc…