Some guys have all the luck* - Rod Stewart

Manchester United was the only big team to win last weekend in the opening weekend of the EPL season. They won thru this goal:-

Yes, it was not just a deflected goal - it was a DOUBLE deflection!!!! How "lucky" can they be??? But this seems to be their story - well, not all the time, tho but a lot of the times. They always seem to get the best of luck.

Still, i know that in football, teams do "make" their own luck. Credit must be given to them and it looks like they will win the premier league again this season.

But while some people seems to have the good luck all the time, others seem to have bad luck all the time!!!

Maybe it's me! I'm the "curse". But i'm referring to the Law School's moot teams.

I've always refused to believe in the concept of "luck". You are either good or you're not. But since taking part in moot competitions, i've realised that luck plays a HUGE role in determining the outcome.

Take for instance, your team ends up in a group which consists of the competition whipping boys (the team that everyone beats) and another team which failed to turn up. Surely then topping the group is a foregone conclusion!

Or how about your team having to face a judge who fell asleep during the competition? When threatened, the judge decides to give more marks to your team - so what turned out to be bad luck initially became good later!

I've grown to accept it a lot - after all, it happens in any sport. In the prelims, if you end up in a "Group of Death", your chances to progress will be slim.

But in the recent competition, we were again the victims of cruel luck! There were more new judges taking part and these people think it fit to award mooters marks like 98% and 99%!!!! Ridiculous!!!! That is close to perfection!!!!!

We're not talking about maths where if you get the answer correct, you will get the full marks! Even in law exams, getting a 70% is considered exceptionally good!

So it was really painful in the recent competition when 2 of our teams won all their moots easily. They were unbeaten. Unfortunately, there were other teams which also won all their moots - so to decide who to proceed, the individual marks were used.

Unfortunately for us, although the judges sang the praises of our mooters, they were pretty conservative in their scoring - and rightfully so. We had the opportunity to moot before experience judges. However, the other teams had the luck to moot before judges who had no qualms to award maximum points on almost all categories - so naturally, the marks they acquire clearly were more than the marks we did.

We never got the chance to moot against them so we never really knew how good they were. However, i must say that my mooters were really really good. Even a judge of a well known international moot competition thought one of my teams were among the best he has ever seen.

But that's how it is.

Last year, we missed out by half a mark. This year, we missed out despite winning all our moots and doing well. I felt so bad for my mooters. They of course were not too thrilled!

But thankfully, they recovered from it faster than i did.

A good lesson in life, tho. In future, they will experience many situations when they have an airtight case and they submit it perfectly - but at the end of the day, it all depends on their luck of who will be their judge they are appearing before.

C'est la vie.

*A hit for him back in 1984