Tuesday

2.00am: We arrived home. Just as well Tournament was ending, we'd never have stood the pace.

8.00am: Time to get up; the day of reckoning was at hand. One coherent Tournament report was required, one tournament report was what they were going to get.

9.26am. We entered the Canta room, sat down in front of a typewriter, and gazed vacantly into space. The Canta chief reporter was showing the strain a little. Someone told him to go and get drunk, to which he replied. "By what?" This went on all day, and just as well.

1.45pm. We discovered that reproduction rights for tournament photographs were one guinea each. We asked Hugh Rennie what he thought about that, and he told us. Blushing furiously, we ordered three while CANTA staff prophesied the financial collapse of Salient.

7.09pm We boarded the train for Lyttelton and set out in search of swimmers and tennis players to find out their final results. We found some swimmers, who gave us the surprising news that VUW had taken second place. OU piled up 70 points to win, compared to VUW 36 and AU 33, but OU swimmers are traditionally strong and the VUW team could well be pleased with themselves.

The best individual performance was probably that of Brian Crowder, who in the 220yds freestyle broke both the long and short course NZU records. Second place-getters were John Palmer in the 110 butterfly, and the women's medley team. Prue Brock swam third in both the 220 freestyle and 110 breast-stroke, Liz Stanford was under the record in the 110 butterfly, even though she came third, and the men's medley team were also third place-getters.

The tennis players were placed third, but were close to CU. AU won the competition mostly thanks to their strong women's team. John Souter was the only unbeaten male player over the teams matches, and won the individual title. Marilyn Kent was runner-up in the women's individual event. All members of the VUW team played consistent tennis and there were several matches that with a little more luck could have been won by VUW.

This made the Tournament total OU 36, CU 34, VUW 24, AU 18, CAC and MUM 0. The only results that we needed were the cricket scores, but we couldn't find a solitary cricketer anywhere.

7.55. We climbed up the ferry gang plank behind the manager of the drinking team, who was swaying more than the boat and producing strange clinking noises. The members of the drinking team that we had seen were strangely subdued, so we had tactfully refrained from asking them how they had got on. However, perhaps they were just recovering from their herculean effort for, yes! the drinking horn was back in the hands of it's rightful owners, i.e.. VUW. George Ellis downed the brown in haste without waste to win a Drinking Blue for VUW, and the whole team covered themselves in beer and glory.

8.34pm. Whilst wandering around waiting for the boat to go, we espied a set of cricket pads and assorted gear. Nearby was a gentleman who kindly gave us the final cricket results. OU won very comfortably overall, with CU second and MUM third. VUW and CAC tied for fourth and AU had the honour of occupying the bottom position.

Final Tournament points tally was: OU 44, first; CU 38, second; VUW 24, third; AU 18, fourth; MUM 2, firth; CAC 0, sixth.

9.35pm. A mere one and a half hours late, the Maori left the wharf and we said good-bye to Christchurch. Easter Tournament had been well run in some departments, and not run at all in others; the VUW Tournament Committee members who went down to observe probably had much food for thought; but everybody enjoyed themselves and could congratulate themselves on having participated instead of vegetating. VUW did better on the sporting side than it has for some time; but even if we hadn't notched up a single Tournament point at least they participated.