Prize Playing

In English martial arts, a "Prize Playing" usually means an event equivalent to a grading, performed by means of bouts during which the candidate for promotion has to demonstrate that they can fight at the level required of someone of the higher grade. Sir William Hope seems not to have used grades in his school, for which I am grateful as I don't like them and can thus cite precedent for not using them, but he did advocate the playing of a prize.

Hope's rules for the prize can be seen here. We don't follow these exactly, but we follow the general idea. That is, that the prize playing is a yearly contest between all the students during which the winner will take away some sort of trophy or token. This varies, depending on what I've managed to purchase that may be appropriate. As we're not based at Linacre College any more I don't tend to buy bottles of Linacre sherry, which is probably a great relief to winners as it was of rather poor quality.

Fencing for the rest of 2011

The LSD timetable has been updated, so please refer to www.sirwilliamhope.org for more information.

Please note that the prize playing will conclude training for this year; more information on next year's training will be forthcoming later, so keep an eye on your e-mail.

September and October 2011

The timetable has been updated again.

Please note that the same arrangement will be used from month to month, so even if I forget it should be possible to work out what's on.

Training, July and August 2011

The details for training have been updated, and are as follows:

July:

7th, 14th - small-sword.

21st - back-sword.

28th - pugilism.

August:

4th, 11th - small-sword.

18th - back-sword.

25th - pugilism.

The timetable has been updated; please see here.

Don't forget the possibility of an all-day seminar on the 17th of September with guest instructor Mr. Macintyre. This could cover cane, sabre or small-sword, or some combination of these.

Training for March and April

Training times for March and April have been updated, and can be found here. Efforts are still underway to book an extra weekly session.

Please note that one Thursday session will be missed due to Easter closure.

Last sessions for 2010

Please note that the last session, on the 16th, will be the prize playing. Rules for this will be announced in due course. The university club then closes on Wednesday morning the week after this. We'll be back in again on the 6th; details of that will be announced later.