Southampton WIN Varsity…But Portsmouth REFUSE To Admit Defeat

After much dispute and a few weeks of mulling over the loss of the Varsity Cup, Southampton have actually WON Varsity, meaning the final score SHOULD be 144-136 to SOUTHAMPTON! However, Portsmouth have refused to admit defeat, despite the strong evidence against them.

On the day, Portsmouth announced themselves as victors, following lengthy discussions between SUSU’s VP Sport Dean Jones and Portsmouth’s, Cat Redding. During that time the pair were in negotiations regarding the controversial inclusion of mountain biking and so were unaware of two other result disputes; athletics and the inclusion of surfing.

On the day we received many Tweets from disgruntled athletes saying that the athletics result had been incorrectly recorded, meaning that we’d drawn Varsity, along with some standard digs at Pompey, including the weird eating habits of their mascot…

Following on from Portsmouth’s full assurance to Dean that all of the results were recorded, included and accurate, they declared themselves the overall winners of the day, for the first time.

The results they used to declare themselves winners incorrectly stated they had won the athletics, and failed to include surfing. The full results can be found here. The Soton Tab and Wessex Scene have for the past few weeks been working together to fight for Team Soton and so that the true result can be recognised!

The following video (courtesy of SUSUtv) has since surfaced, proving that Southampton did in fact win the athletics:

Furthermore the confirmation that surfing was indeed a Varsity event can be easily confirmed via the Facebook event, and a match report published on the Wessex Scene. There is even a photo graph of the victors:

Winners: Amy Bokota and Matt Rivers with their Varsity Board Trophy (Image courteous of the Wessex Scene)

VP Sports Dean Jones has issued the following lengthy statement regarding Portsmouth’s refusal to agree to the results:

Firstly I will say that I fully understand how much this means to both: our competing teams, and the wider student body, and can assure you that this is a very important issue to me and have been taking this very seriously. This is one reason I’m afraid that things have been moving along quite slowly, as I wanted (and still want) to go about disputing the result in the most appropriate way, that will result in us retaining the cup, and not souring the relationship that we have with UPSU in the process. It is definitely not being forgotten though! …

I sent the initial challenge to Cat Redding (VP sports at Portsmouth), on Wednesday 20^th March. […] When I originally drafted the email to send to Portsmouth I planned to allow them a day to respond in order to acknowledge the mistake before allowing the media to publish, but on reflection felt this came across as quite threatening and confrontational, which was not the tone I wanted to set. …

I am still currently waiting for a response as to whether their athletics club acknowledge the race in question (and consequently the for the entire athletics fixture result), to be a Southampton win, and there is still no agreement on the inclusion of surf.

Dean has agreed that this disorganisation seems to come down to the rules (or lack of) that govern the Varsity Cup.

In previous years, this hasn’t really mattered as Southampton have steam-rolled over Portsmouth, however, the need for a constitution and results committee has been made apparent by the closeness of this years result.

The Tab have had it confirmed that from next year there will be rules and regulations to govern the competition and a committee made up of members from both Universities, to avoid this unnecessary confusion.

This has followed the largely criticised decision to hold Varsity outside of term time and with the amount of time it has taken for this information to become widely known amongst the students, questions will again be raised about the organisation Dean Jones’ and ability to disseminate information to students, however, this does seem to be as a result of Portsmouths’ inability to respond.

Regardless of all of the confusion, Team Soton certainly did us proud! Despite all the odds and obstacles in their way; they came, they fought and they conquered. We can only hope that Portsmouth can graciously admit that the evidence presented to them makes it clear that Southampton are yet again the victors of the Varsity Cup!