Ulster University Student Thomas Maguire was crowned the winner of the Student Sport Ireland Back Garden Intervarsity as his football skills and footwork saw him defeat TU Dublin Badminton Club and Ulster University Sport (combination team) in last Wednesday’s final.
As physical sport came to grinding halt due to Covid-19 restrictions in mid March thousands of students across the island of Ireland were left without any competitive sport. With that in mind Student Sport Ireland came up with a novel idea of the Back Garden Intervarsity, that would see students and colleges put up videos of their skills and talents in their home settings and take on other colleges in public polls daily on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
There was 27 entries in total in the competition from 10 different colleges on the island of Ireland. (TU Dublin x 15, Ulster University x 3, IT Carlow x 2, IT Tralee, University College Dublin, Waterford IT, Athlone IT, National College of Ireland, Queens University and Trinity College Dublin x 1 each) The competition went live on social media on April 21st with a reach of over 600,000 people and over 12,500 votes during the competition.
Thomas Maguire is a student in Ulster Universty, a member of the Ulster University football team and also plays in the Irish League for Cliftonville FC. Over the four rounds of the competition Thomas displayed some incredible touches and control of the football in his back garden, and was a deserving winner of the competition.
Thomas will now go forward to represent Student Sport Ireland in an international challenge online against Uni Australia who are running a lockdown league challenge currently.
Here are the links to Thomas’s videos from each round en route to glory
