Disclaimer: *when we say guaranteed, that’s a bit of a white lie…
As I’ve been wasting time this summer I’ve noticed a proliferation of articles suggesting various ‘life hacks’ which are supposed to be short-cuts to good things; be it a quick way to make new friends or 3 steps towards a bikini body, buzzfeed has been there for us. Unfortunately all this laziness, combined with the typical summer holiday food binges, has left me less than ready for the – ahem – intense nature of the collegiate sporting calendar. Therefore, inspired by the internet, Cherwell Sport presents… 5 Short-Cuts to College Sporting Greatness. (What follows may not actually make you fitter, or even a better sportsperson.)
1. Start jogging. A week’s worth of meandering round the block at only slightly quicker than walking pace will have you well-prepared for pretending to track back the next time you’re stuck out on the wing in a football second-team match! Perfecting how to look like someone heroically racing towards your own goal-line is the sort of thing which really helps you to show the kind of camaraderie and finesse that college sport is known for.
2. Paint your face in bright colours and go to support a local team. If there’s one unarguable fact about Oxford sport it is thus: You’ll end up on a rain-soaked field trying to remember why exactly you signed up for rugby whilst the blue face-paint which was absolutely essential to your bop costume the night before drips from your visibly hung-over face. Prepare for this eventuality by rocking up to the local non-league football team and making sure they understand your passionate support for them. This is a good chance to make sure that your hilarious chants scan okay too.
3. Update your kit. We all know that, while good performances are a laudable aim, looking the part is equally important. The best way to do this involves wearing as many items of stash as possible, so get the year off to a good start by ferretting out the best left-over stuff from last year. I mean, how will you convince incoming freshers that you really are the best right-back since Cafu if you don’t look sharp.
4. Get the diet right. There are two ways to go about this one; the first involves taking things seriously and watching your diet, the second, well, not so much. Basically when term gets going there are only a few things you can count on. Whereas the real world has death and taxes, in Oxford you really can’t forget about the kebabs. Therefore, anyone aspiring to make their mark on the sporting scene needs to plan for, and get used to, training – and living – on Hassan’s finest. In conclusion, get used to loading up on the carbs and meat-of-suspicious-origin now.
5. Practice your anecdotes. The sporting anecdote is a thing of beauty. In fact it may be the founding principle upon which this section of the newspaper rests – thanks for that by the way – and this is central in making sure that people think of you as a sportsperson. Simply put, if you can’t regale bystanders with a twenty-minute long account of that time when you almost scored a screamer in that really important match, you’re probably not trying hard enough.
Thanks for reading to the end of this. If you’re awesome enough to follow these snazzy instructions to the letter, let us know at [email protected], because it’d be just great to know how you’re getting on. Good luck, perhaps you’ll be puffing hard on one of the many Oxford fields soon.
