In true Halloween style, this week had a few tricks and plenty of treats in store for our Essex Blades teams. 

314 Essex students competed across 47 matches (15 home/32 away), 23 wins, 3 draws, and 21 losses.

• Our members stepped up to the plate to support each other and fulfil 100% of fixtures
• One trick involved utilising our versatile Women’s Tennis team to change sports last minute, after another late cancellation, and support our Women’s Table Tennis in completing another tricky away fixture.
• Our Squash team drew the short straw literally by mistakenly taking extra shorts instead of shirts to their away match. Fortunately they had spare kit to play and fulfil the fixture.
• Women’s Lacrosse were in for a treat after Kent played their usual trick of not turning up to the fixture after last weeks Kent be bothered attitude remains.
• Women’s 1^st Football are on a 2 match consecutive win in the Premier after beating Bath Women’s 1^st Away 2-0.
• The Futsal teams played ball by moving their traditional weekend fixture to a Wednesday in the hope of a winning Wednesday.
• American Football took on the Kent Falcons at home on Sunday, in weather conditions that only Water Polo team would be used to playing in. The game was extremely close and Blades could have won had they not littered mistakes in the 3^rd quarter. The final score was 20-31.
• After some impressive detective work, we discovered an ineligible opposition Hockey player (playing for two teams on the same day for the same sport).  This has resulted in the lost game result being nullified and a re-match at home for Essex, giving the Blades a second chance to win.
• Our Essex Softies Softball team played their first matches winning 2 of their 4 matches.  The team was made up of complete novices, many of whom was their first experience of BUCS.

Essex have been performing well away from home early in the season, despite putting out a number of new development teams and many teams playing in higher level competition, which bodes well for the second half of the season, where the majority of matches are scheduled at Home.

Entering week six, Essex Blases have competed in 158 matches (61 home/97 away), leaving with 73 wins, 8 draws and 77 losses. Essex are now sitting in the top 30 in the UK, in 29^th place with 1038 points. Our local rivals UEA are  a little further back in 37^th place with 848 points.

Fancy representing Essex and competing against other universities? Join Essex Blades here. Don't want to play but still want to be involved? Come to games and support your fellow students.