The first ever Varsity between Cardiff Met and Bath took place under the gleaming Sun at Bath University’s Sports Training Village on Wednesday 13th April. The day began brightly with Women's Football and Women's Rugby recording wins 3-0 and 36-5 respectively. Each of these wins earning 5 varsity points to take the score to 10-0 to Cardiff Met.
Next up Mens and Women's Hockey took to the pitch simultaneously to see if they could continue the winning streak for the Archers. Both fought hard in the hot conditions with excellent support from the travelling supporters but despite their efforts the Women’s side lost 8-2 to a team who came 2nd in the league above them and the Men earned a point for losing by less than half the oppositions score 6-3.
The Men’s Rugby attracted a huge crowd and our Cheerleaders put on an excellent display to entertain the supporters. The boys came close to getting us back in the lead but the match ended 20-19 in favour of Bath, this didn’t dampen the Archer supporters enthusiasm however! The penultimate fixture saw Men’s Football kick off at 5:30pm with the game being scoreless until Bath took the lead in the last 10 minutes, however the boys weren’t done and netted a goal before the final whistle to earn us 3 points on the Varsity scoreboard for the 1-1 draw.
Heading into the final fixture of the game the Netballers had the Varsity title resting on their result with an electric atmosphere in the Netball Centre. The overall score ahead of tip off was 18-15 to Bath so a win for the girls would have sent the Archers back to Cardiff with the trophy. Cardiff Met led throughout with strong support from the Met students in the stands but unfortunately saw the lead just slip away from them in the final quarter with the final score ending 51-49 and Bath claiming the Varsity 2016 title.
The event was a huge success and excellently run by Bath in it’s inaugural year. We look forward to hosting Varsity next year and continuing to grow the event with more sports and bigger rivalries.
Click here to view all photos from the event.