Ollie Stevenson
Last year, to describe the UoN Men’s 1s Lacrosse team as “good” would’ve been a gross understatement. They blew away everyone else in the league, except for their cross-city rivals, Nottingham Trent University.
That one stumbling block turned into a season-long bogey: Trent beat them in the 2024-25 regular season, kept them down in the Sixes tournament and then finished the job in the National Championship final.
This year’s BUCS Sixes tournament offered an early shot at revenge. UoN reached the championship final again and pushed the men in pink to the brink, pulling off a last-gasp equaliser to force overtime. Yet the result was painfully familiar: NTU won possession off the restart and scored the golden goal, winning 10-9, and once again, the trophy ended up in their hands.
Those defeats feed into a larger pattern. In March’s Big BUCS Wednesday, NTU secured a historic three-peat with a 12-9 win over UoN. A mammoth 7-goal comeback in the fourth quarter wasn’t enough, and Trent emerged victorious. Trent’s dominance continued, winning 10 games from 10 in the BUCS Premier Division, conceding only one goal for every 10 they scored. Take nothing away from UoN, however, as winning 8 in the same league is no easy feat.
Fast-forward to the opening weeks of the 2025/26 season, and there’s a flicker of change. After losing the Sixes final again to NTU, the derby was ignited in the regular league, and UoN finally came out victorious, winning a closely fought game 13-12.
Only two league games have been played so far, but UoN are unbeaten; so, do they have the motivation and skills required to finally overcome their bogey team, and maybe even go unbeaten all season?
That motivation certainly isn’t in short supply. Social media secretary and second-year sports scholar Alex Tyldesley-Worster, who played in both last year’s final and this season’s win, said the team were “extremely motivated” from the very start of pre-season.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, however, since the league has only just got going, and despite the defeat to Trent, they will only come back harder in the repeat fixture on 28th January.
UoN’s win could easily be a blip if they cannot sustain consistency against the rest of the division. However, psychologically, it’s a massive boost. UoN have proved they can beat Trent, and this boost could prove pivotal in the upcoming season.
Looking Ahead: Lessons and Cautions
It’s tempting to frame UoN’s league win as the start of a power shift. However, do not underestimate NTU. Their squad is still of title-winning strength. The question remains whether Nottingham can turn the psychological boost into tangible consistency. Winning the league this year requires beating everyone, including Trent, more than once.
This is a fact not lost on the team, however, as Alex explained, the team “knows that playing Trent will always be tough given the history between the two programs, and losing to them in last year’s final fired me up personally – and for the guys in their fourth and final year, that hunger to finally win silverware has been huge. You can really feel it in training; the intensity has been the highest I’ve experienced at Nottingham, with lads pushing each other every session.”
So, are UoN over their bogey team? The blunt answer: not yet. One league win doesn’t erase two Sixes defeats and a national final heartbreak. But, sport is about momentum and belief. For Nottingham to break Trent’s stranglehold, they needed a watershed moment, and watch this space, because we may be on the cusp of it.
Ollie Stevenson
Featured image courtesy of BUCS Sport via Flickr. No changes were made to this image.
In article image 1 courtesy of @uonsport via Instagram. No changes were made to this image.
In article image 2 courtesy of @uonmenslacrosse via Instagram. No changes were made to this image.
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