There are some subjects that I’d rather not speak about. Some things are too painful, some issues too sensitive, to be openly discussed, even anonymously. Yet with this week shaping up to be much like the last, it’s about time I came clean and admitted it. The thing is, there isn’t any college football being played at the moment.
It’s hard to convey the disappointment us players are feeling right now. It’s hard to take knowing that you’ve sacrificed spending quality time with your family at Christmas in favour of lonely hours spent kicking a ball against a wall by way of training, only for your first few games of term to be cancelled. But you have to remember that, for you, playing football is a job, whereas for the handful of fans who turn up to watch you each week it’s something they can’t live with out. Most of all at this time I feel sorry for them.
Having said that, I’ve been a tad frustrated by the decidedly ambivalent attitude of some figures within the club hierarchy towards this string of cancellations. The senior tutor has spoken for what seems to be a significant proportion of the college’s non-playing staff in suggesting that the current lack of games will be a welcome chance for college footballers to focus on their studies. Perhaps they were simply trying to offer consoling words; either way they certainly managed to stir up a bit of dissent in the dressing room.
Nonetheless there is a sense in which their message rang true. I’ve been using these past couple of weeks to make up for the lack of attention I habitually pay to other, more important, things in college – friends, hall, the bar. Ultimately, I know I speak for many of my colleagues when I say that the events of the past week have forced me to admit to myself that there is more to college life than football.
