
NAB Sports Stars: Blood sweat and tears (of laughter) Jon: Nick, Nick you've played rugby pop my finger back in!
Nick: No mate, not touching it. It looks broken to me..
Jon: Ok, I'll do it myself
Nick:
A little over a week ago Object Matrix and some very good friends setup a new tradition to be carried out in Las Vegas during the NAB Show: NAB Sports!
75 people registered for 50 places and in the end just under 40 people made the effort to take kit to Vegas, excuse themselves from last minute meetings, find the bus that could not be found and spend a little under two hours playing 5-a-side football, tag rugby and the now infamous dodgeball. After a reasonably shambolic start finding and getting on the bus (told you we know more about storage than running events) the event went very very well. The show wary group consisting of friends, competitors, partners and customers (see below for full list) were split into 4 teams and split across the 2 excellent sports pitches at the Longevity Sports Centre:
Portugal (so many Portuguese in the broadcast industry!)
BBC Wales (4 guys from Wales and then all the suppliers who wanted to feed goal hanging dodge with the ball)
Object Matrix (our 4 guys then some of our good buddies)
Brains (the rest ironic clearly
)
5-a-side Foooseball
The first of the sports to be played. After a frantic first 5 minutes I do not think I was alone in thinking What the ing are we doing and whose stupid ing idea was this in the first place . After that feeling subsided everybody seemed to find their rhythm. The results:
2-2 between OM and Portugal which is pretty much a win for Object Matrix. Golden balls Nuno getting on the score sheet as expected but also a goal from my very own bionic knee powered boot levelled things up towards the end. Neil from NMR a real cat in goal saving OM from defeat on a number of occasions and the massive brain that is Isak from Vidispine was a real thorn in the side of the opposition.
4-4 between BBC Wales and Brains! Clearly a jokers game with that score. Ben Nemes from Avid scoring an impressive hat-trick to help BBC Wales stay in the game. This game saw the clash of heads, the spilling of blood and a chorus of You want to get that looked at comments.
Dodgeball
Bucket list item ticked off for me. What a great game. The Portuguese did not like it because they cannot catch
(Comment on the blog if you disagree .. ahem) Only Pedro form MOG showed any class bringing his handball skills to the party? Team Object Matrix beat Portugal 4 games to 1. The only reason we lost the last game was due to a lack of commitment from our Jon who was more concerned that his little finger was facing in pretty much the wrong direction and would not come back on the pitch. Sympathy to the MAX!
Tag Rugby
Only BBC Wales and Brains got to play this while the other two teams played Dodgeball. Not able to see what happened on that pitch as I was dodging balls on the other pitch I can only say that it was again a draw! 9-9. I did glance Rupert from root6 ghosting past several players for an impressive try and I am also reliably informed that Erik from Vidispine also managed his first try in his first game of rugby.
After copious amounts of pizza and pop the teams split up to play either soccer or touch rugby during a 3rd period of sport.
Injuries
For a group of largely unfit middle-aged(ish) men (the ladies from Tradefair, TV-Bay and Bubble & Squeak somehow did not make it!) there were surprisingly few injuries.. less than 10% which I think is pretty acceptable (unless you are the in that 10% that is)! No sprained groins or ankles, no groans of oooh me back and also no need to break out the defibrillation paddles. We did however incur:
Clash of heads (fooooooooseball) between Tom and Flavio. Toms good looks forever scarred by a knee high 50/50 challenge. Both Tom and Flavio left some blood on the floor in Vegas.
Broken finger (with a very soft dodgeball .. draw your own conclusions) for our Jon. Jon claims it was weakend in a previous game he participated in but we all know the truth. As Jon traipsed off to hospital to get his now properly broken finger (post much I think its dislocated' wiggling and jiggling) sorted out the rest of the team posed for a solidarity based photo, I say all, Roger and Rikard (another Swede!) did not get the memo:
The view from Object Matrix
After such an amazing evening and based on the feedback from the good the bad and the injured next year is on! Pitches are booked for Monday 7th April 2014 from 7pm-9.30pm. Buses, pizza and pop included! 60 person limit this time but will run a waiting list. Massive thanks to all who came and those companies that sponsored the t-shirts. On a positive note Mr Dispraxic did not break anything or anyone this time around though I am sure we will pin Jons injury on him at some time in the future.
More pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/objectmatrix/sets/72157633216874157/
Companies that attended
NBC Universal (UK/USA), DGIT, BBC Wales, AJA, Avid, AAMedia, CentralParq, CIS (USA), Object Matrix, NMR, MOG Solutions, Glookast, root6, Vidispine, Cantemo, Orange (france), France Televisions, IVORY, Re:fine Group, Cambridge Imaging Systems, Tradefair & Object Matrix!
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