Opfest

This last weekend was Opfest weekend. A weekend where optometry students from the different universities that offer the course come together to compete in a variety of sports for the optic cup. This year it was held in Cardiff.

We had teams from City, Aston, Bradford, Anglia Ruskin, Manchester, Glasgow Caledonia and Plymouth. Only Ulster weren't able to make it over. Teams started arriving from 5 o'clock on Friday and got ready for the emergency services themed night out at Oceana.

After an all too brief amount of sleep everyone assembled for the first sport of rounders. The support was loud (too loud for those with a hangover) with a special mention to the City cheerleading squad led by the Carrot. (Apparently their sports teams used to get around by horse drawn carriage with a carrot to get the horse to go faster).

A mention should also go out to Keith from Glasgow who played all the matches wearing a shower cap and drinking from a can of strongbow and despite getting hit in the head by the ball from his own player he carried on without spilling a drop.

Next up was touch rugby with some misunderstanding of the rules but play continued merrily on regardless. After a brief break for lunch the rugby concluded with a Cardiff vs Bradford final, won by Bradford.

So we moved onto the final two sports, football for the boys and netball for the girls and some boys up for a laugh, including me. Having me play goal keeper against a 5' 4" shooter was possibly a little mean though but everyone saw the funny side.

A brief interlude led to an impromptu Cardiff vs Cardiff half which descended rapidly into complete anarchy but was rather amusing. The final of the netball was again Cardiff vs Bradford with Cardiff running out 10-0 winners.

At this point I retreated home for a quick nap, I'm a bit older than most of the students and can't survive on that little sleep for long. Feeling refreshed I headed off to Red Hot World Buffet for a lovely dinner, all you can eat is good, before the awards were given out, with the optic cup heading back up to Bradford (booo!). A massive thank you goes to Shai, Luke and Nina for organising it all.

A great weekend was had by all, this is evidenced by the fact that most of us here in Cardiff and people I know on twitter are still recovering from all the aches and pains from the weekend.