University of Pisa win 2008 World Championships

In a shock development today the University of Pisa became the first Italian and ESL team to win the World Universities Debating Championships.

The tournament will be held from 28th December 2007 to 4th January 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand. However the closing date for initial registration was reached on March 31st with only the University of Pisa having entered the competition. Thus the 3 teams of the University will battle it out over 9 preliminary rounds, Octo Finals, Qtr Finals, Semi Finals and a final.

A source close to the World Championships said that while they were disappointed with the level of interest in the tournament they had to accept the communicated deadline. "We had hoped for around 100 times more teams but we were clear about the registration deadline and have to stick to that out of fairness to the team who registered on time. At least a swing team will get to be the first Thai team to speak in the final which is a fantastic achievement."

When asked to comment on the University of Pisa’s impending victory and the surprisingly low turn out for the competition Colm Flynn, founder of the blog “World Debating News” responded, "Oh God! I forgot to post that registration e-mail. Lising is going to kill me! Oh Bugger no!".

When contacted for comment a clearly delighted member of University of Pisa Debating Society responded “Che cosa? Non parlo inglese. È questo il primo aprile?"

Update: At this stage it is past midday in most time zones that hit on the site so yes in case anyone didn't guess that was an April Fools post. Hope some people found it funny. And now back to our regular humour packed programming....