Cork RTC, aka CIT, managed a nice piece of one-upmanship against Waterford Institute of Technology in the knockout rounds of Challenging Times, the Irish Times/ RTE quiz competition for third-level colleges. WIT, sadly, failed to make the grade on this occasion at least, leaving Cork to join Tralee, Athlone and Sligo as the RTC representatives in this year's contest and leaving WIT to wonder whether to invest some of that promised £40 million in steroids for future teams.
A total of 33 colleges contested the knockout round, with 16 colleges making it through to the first televised round of the competition, which is entering its eighth year. For the first time two private colleges were involved, Griffith College and Portobello - they didn't get through either.
All of the universities, unusually, made it through to the first round. Last year, of course, UCD and Maynooth conspicuously failed to reach the televised rounds, which, in UCD's case, was a sad indictment of the capacity of a college of 16,000 souls to produce three with significant retentive memories. Maynooth, by contrast, won Challenging Times in the first two years of the competition's existence and then promptly did a Joe Johnston (snooker champion of yore, who won the World Professional Snooker Championship - once) and never performed as well again.
The first round has thrown up some interesting pairings. TCD will have an opportunity to revenge themselves for their defeat by DCU in the semi-final of last year's Challenging Times; the two Dublin universities have been drawn against each other again in the first round and the captain of last year's DCU team, Micheal O'Sullivan, is coaching this year's team. The TCD team, meanwhile, will include both Tony Wall and Ivan Morrin, who were also members of last year's unlucky TCD team.
The second interesting tie is UCD's face-off against last year's beaten finalists, UL. Controversially, UL lost on the last, disputed question in 1997 and may view UCD as the first stepping stone on the pathway to another, more rewarding final. How the UCD team feels about being used as a stepping stone is another matter.
Elsewhere, two-time winners UCG (now UG) face St Patrick's College of Education; Tralee RTC will battle Cork RTC; NUI Maynooth face Mary Immaculate College of Education, Limerick; UCC, again winners on two previous occasions, will be up against Athlone RTC; King's Inns, bridesmaids on more occasions than those women who do it professionally in the Far East, will face Queen's University, Belfast; and, finally, the DIT's opposition comes in the form of Sligo RTC.
This year's season of Challenging Times will begin recording later this month and the first edition will be televised on RTE early in the new year. The question-master, once again, will be The Man With The Plan - the plan being not to have a repeat of last year's bitterly disputed final - Kevin Myers.
