The third matchday of the Survival Cup, which started on Thursday, August 13, officially came to an end on Monday, August 17. Eight teams — seven teams each from groups A through G and a team qualifying as the best loser — have now made it through the first filter, the group stage, and will compete in the next stage of the competition: the quarterfinals.
Matchday three, though originally scheduled to start on Wednesday, August 12, couldn’t start because of booking issues for the Old football pitch. On Thursday, however, WBE/AEE faced Quantity Surveying (QS)/Urban and Regional Planning (URP) after a disappointing outcome in their first match, where they lost to Medicine and Surgery.
Even though both teams were already one foot out of the competition, losing their first matches to MBBS, the chance of qualifying as the best-losing team was still up for grabs. QS/URP proved too tough for WBE/AEE after finding the back of the net twice while conceding once, taking their goal difference to -1 ahead of WBE/AEE with a negative 3 goal difference.
In the second match of the day, Political Science shot themselves to the quarterfinals after scoring two goals and keeping a clean sheet from Sociology/Psychology. Unfortunately, the two-goal lead was enough to deny Sociology/Psychology a place in the quarter-finals later on as the best losers; they earned a positive one-goal difference, just behind Mathematics/Science and Technology Education with two.
Matchday three action continued on Saturday, August 15, with a goalless draw between Petroleum Engineering and Nursing/Dentistry; in the second leg, both teams will continue to battle for a quarter-final spot. Industrial and Production Engineering forced Economics into a 1-1 tie and sent them packing from the competition, with the latter earning just one point throughout the two group stage matches.
The second team to be eliminated that day was Chemistry/Microbiology; Mechanical Engineering put three goals past them to seal their place in the next stage of the competition.
Forest Production/Wildlife came from behind against Computer Science/Physics on Sunday, August 16, to win the match 2-1. Therefore, all Group E teams earned three points. Still, only Public Stats qualified with a positive two-goal difference ahead of Forest Production/Wildlife and Computer Science/Physics with negative two and zero goal differences, respectively.
On the same day, Archaeology/Anthropology/Civil Engineering earned three points from Veterinary Medicine with a 2-1 victory to top Group D with four points and proceed to the quarter-finals.
The last two matches of Matchday 3 and also the end of the group stage were played on Monday, August 17. The matches were Agricultural Economics/CPEB versus Industrial and Production Engineering and Nursing/Dentistry versus Petroleum Engineering.
Agricultural Economics/CPEB qualified with four points after coming back from behind to hold Industrial and Production Engineering in a two-goal draw. Nursing/Dentistry and Petroleum Engineering met the same fate: a shared point with a total of four goals scored. Since they had completed their two-legged encounter, the group winner and last quarter-finalist had to be decided on penalties.
Eventually, Petroleum Engineering qualified after converting all their four penalties, while Nursing/Dentistry couldn’t net their second and third penalty kick, ending the penalty shootout 4-1 in favour of Petroleum Engineering. That put an end to the group stage of the Survival Cup.
Immediately after the match, the quarter-final and semi-final draws were made, and here are the fixtures.
Survival Cup Quarter-finals
Slot 1: Mechanical Engineering VS Medicine and Surgery
Slot 2: Civil Engineering/Archaeology/Anthropology VS Political Science
Slot 3: Public Stats VS Agricultural Economics/CPEB
Slot 4: Petroleum Engineering VS Mathematics/Science and Technology Education
Survival Cup Semi-Finals
Slot 1 VS Slot 2
Slot 3 VS Slot 4
The fixture dates will be announced in due course.
Omoyemi Adeoye Abdulgafar
