omglan Dodgeball: The Comeback

Long time readers (just me) will know about omglan's legendary dodgeball team. One of my earliest posts was about our second Dodgeball tournament and it has been nearly two years since our last attempt.

Omglan.Dodgeball is one of the longest running UK dodgeball teams**, with one member, Damo, already inducted into the hall of fame. Damo helped omglan win their first, and only dodgeball round ever. Towards the end of 2011 he tragically died, to much upset from his many friends.

Omglan, a once highly funded team (£65 before we spent it on tournament entry and 3 bottles of Fanta) has came a long way... from the guys who literally didn't know how to play, to once being ranked 13th in the UK. From unknown team wearing black t-shirts, to dodgeball heroes.

... but, as noted above on the website of one of UKs highest ranked teams - Leicester Ligers, we are still yet to win a game.

For this reason, omglan have decided to enter another tournament, located in Coventry, on October 14th. With some new recruits (who also have no idea how to play) we are half determined to win a round, but fully expect not to. After all, we have limited resources, and most of them will go towards finding a kit instead of training.

Expect more of this...

And this...

** May not be true

omglan Dodgeball III: The Movie

Here is the much promised, newest omglan Dodgeball video. I looked in the match report from the day, and there was the following quote:

"Local Dodgeball heroes ‘omglan’ maintained their record of never having won a match and finished the event in 16th position."

... its nice to get some recognition!

omglan Dodgeball: The Return

After my original team dropped out of the last tournament the evening before we were meant to play, our dodgeball activities were on hiatus. Determined to play again, I formed a new team of people from the Grad Community (houses near my new place) who were up well up for playing. They even wanted to play in a kit, AND were willing to let me find one.

It was really fun, but again, we didn't win a round. Highlights include:

• Watching Andy fit into shorts 4" too small.
• Paul go into what he thought was a changing room only to realise it was a shower that automatically turns on.
• Sunny falling over in the first round.
• Rob getting hit in the head a record amount.
• Joe getting carded for kicking the ball at the other team.

Video coming soon.

Malia, Greece: My Memoirs

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omglan Leicester Dodgeball: The Results

I have finally finished the video *cheers all around*. Whoop.

The tournament may not have gone quite as well as previous ones (as we didn't manage to win a single round). We managed to get a team warning for arguing, and banned from using the word 'out' while playing... but we still had fun!

The team consisted of me, Liam, Neil, Leigh, Paul and Rhys. omglan are now ranked 23rd in the UK for 2009/2010, and 42nd all time. I think that's pretty good!

Without further delay, here is the video (filmed by Melissa)!

omglan: The Real Meaning

People always want to know what omglan means. So here is the real meaning:

A few years ago one of my friends was a well respected member of poetry forum. Being the emo he was, he used to post short poems, which were rammed off by the other forum members. After a few years he became an admin on the forum, and had a fanbase which had grown rapidly.

One day he recieved an email from a member called Ian saying how much he loved he poems, and how he felt they really touched him and he had to meet him. My friend was a bit shy, and being under 16 he didn't think it was safe to meet him, so in the most polite way possible he refused.

After a few email exchanges with my friend still refusing, Ian got more and more annoyed. He told my friend he would never leave him alone until he met him. After further threatening behavour my friend banned him from the forum.

Everything was quiet for a few weeks... until he got a phone call, saying "I will find you" in a whispered voiced. However much we told him it wasn't us, he was certain we were tricking him. We told him he should go to the police, but he thought nothing of it... until he recieved a letter though his door two weeks later. The letter just had written on it "Found you", signed by 'Ian'. This shit him up quite a lot, and he went to the police, who said they would look into it.

We were all meant to be going over to his house the one evenings after school, after we had gone back to get changed. We met at the park and walked over to his house. His door was swung open, and nobody seemed to be home. Thinking he had been burgled, we rushed in to see if everything was okay. I was the first into his bedroom, to see my friend lieing on the ground dead, after an obviously vicious knife attack. There was a lot of blood, but I noticed that in his last breathes he had managed to write 'Ian' on his computer monitor.

I shouted for my friends who rushed in. One of them, obviously shocked, shouted 'OH MY GOD...' then his eyes went to the moniter, and he said, confused "... LAN..?". We all had a big laugh and went home.

... from then on we always called ourselves omglan, said as 'oh my god lan'.

omglan Leicester Dodgeball: 3 second summary

Although we had a fun day, our performance in dodgeball this weekend was maybe less than desirable. I think this following 3 second clip summarises the day.

Full video, write up and new rankings coming soon.

omglan: The Real Meaning

Wow. I have just realised that I haven't once mentioned 'omglan' in this blog directly. 'omglan' is the standard name given to anything relating to my group, such as the name of our dodgeball team, football team... actually, any team we have. We all have football shirts with 'omglan' and '21' on the back, bought for each of our 21st birthdays. From now on, I will stop referring to it as 'omglan' and just say omglan.

A lot of people ask why we are called omglan, and where the name came from. We vowed never to tell people, and to make up a reason on the spot each time. Though now, although I will probably be hated... I will say the real reason.

About 6 years ago we all used to play a computer game on the PC. It was quite a small game, and at the time not many other people played it. The game was based on a made up sport, which used aspects of football and basketball, with only one goal, with a hoop above, placed in the centre of an arena.

We got quite good on the computer game, but thought that playing the real thing would be better. Eventually we put up a goal in a field, with a hoop placed just behind it, and divided ourselves into teams to play. It was very fun, and even better than the computer game of it. After playing it we slightly adapted the rules, and it eventually became a great game in its own right.

We looked into it, and saw that we were actually the first to try this properly, and that there were no copyright restrictions to claiming the game as our own. We set up a website, and a local league... which initially only had a handful of teams. We were all pleased when we got a small mention on a website dedicated to following the birth of new sports. Little did we know this would only lead to trouble.

The small media attention had gotten us noticed by the Italian creators of the game, who still claimed it to be their own as in their eyes the changes we made wasn't sufficient for it to be named as its own game. Although we just played for fun, and made no money, they rushed through a copyright and threatened to sue us.

We received an email from their lawyer, Omiodio Lan, so we thought we would play along. As one of my friends knew Italian, they saw it slightly sounded like 'oh mio dio' (or 'oh my god'), so we replied as 'Omg Lan'. The emails went backwards and forwards until we decided to drop the whole thing.

... from then on we always called ourselves omglan, said as 'oh my god lan'.