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Actuaries on ice
A Barnett Waddingham team recently took part in the Staple Inn Actuarial Society broomball competition. I always thought ice hockey was a fairly dangerous game, but it is a walk in the park compared to broomball. Broomball is a game played on ice but with players wearing trainers instead of skates, using a "broom" rather than a hockey stick, and a ball about half the size of a football instead of a puck. The idea, of course, is to score goals, but it was all too apparent when we stepped onto the ice for the first time that not falling over was going to be a much higher priority.
The competition was played on the Broadgate outdoor ice-rink in the City of London. A broomball team consists of 4 players, one of which must stay in goal. BW took a squad of 8 players from the London and Amersham offices providing plenty of cover in the event of any broken legs or other injuries.
We started reasonably well in our first game - our energetic South African Darren managed to squeeze in a goal but failed (along with the rest of the team) to achieve the other aim of staying on his feet. The goal nevertheless proved enough to win us the game, and we started to think we were quite good. In the subsequent games the squad was rotated Chelsea-like and everybody played their part. Unfortunately goals proved hard to come by and we only managed to grind out four goalless draws in our other games. We had turned into Arsenal. As it happens, all the other teams struggled to score as well, and incredibly our one goal was enough to give us second place in the competition, beaten only by a team which was full of ice-hockey-playing Canadians.
The funniest fall of the evening came from our other South African Lauren Gray, but unfortunately the photographer missed it. The photos do however show other high-octane moments (we were in red).
Barnett Waddingham, February 2001.