College reserve team football is not exactly seen as the pinnacle of sport in Oxford. When the topic of sporting participation comes up and I mention that I play for the college, the first reaction is usually incredulity (since I do not exactly look like an athlete, and first team college football is well-respected). The second reaction, when I reassure that I only play first team football when injuries and tutorials mean they lack a full team, is slight relief on their part that the universe still makes sense but also slight bemusement, which increases when I point out that whilst I lead a team, it is actually the college thirds.
The perception carried by some that college reserve sport is not to be taken seriously carries weight in some regard. We do not enter the field of play fired up with adrenaline intent on claiming victory at all costs, willing to hack down and injure opponents to cynically stop play development. Nor are we a well-drilled organisation that trains regularly and has tactical meetings.
In last week’s LMH Men’s 3rd team fixture, two members of the team turned up less than sober and then had to leave at half time, leaving us with ten men, whilst the game was occasionally broken up because neither of (both blue-shirted) teams had a full set of kits and some of those without looked too similar to each other and had to change. Formation was decided on by a raising of hands for each position and who wanted to play where, including a surprising lack of desire from anyone to play up front resulting in a regular defender making his first start as a forward.
Inasmuch as serious means professional, therefore, it is a fair point to look at reserve sport in Oxford as some kind of lesser playing arena, something for the more casual if still enthusiastic players. Indeed, it is often the bane to our reserve teams when we come across a player insistent on loudly complaining to the referee about every call, or dangerously throwing themselves into tackles without any kind of apology, seemingly intent on harming their fellow students (one of them rather aggressively once admitted that it was his intention to do so).
However, to judge such levels of football on such grounds would be to entirely miss the point of why they bring such entertainment and joy, and why so many people still play (even if it was not quite enough for us to have a full team in the second half). It would be like saying that the lower down the English football pyramid you go, the importance falls, when in fact the importance merely changes. For lower league or non-league football the purpose is in part to act as a feeder system for the elite tiers, and in some ways reserve teams are a platform for players to demonstrate their worth to the first teams.
More importantly, at least in my opinion, reserve team football brings about the same amount of entertainment, passion, emotional release and energy as first team sport, but without the stress or disappointment that taking the sport too seriously can bring.
As an example, the noble LMH 3rds team did not exactly have the most successful of seasons last year. Finishing the season with a 4-4 draw against Teddy Hall’s 3rd team represented the only point of the season, with the other nine games all lost (and only two by a margin of less than four). One defeat was even as distant as 8-1. Yet, the team kept drawing in players, week in and week out, who kept enjoying themselves and getting stuck into the spirit of the sport, and the love of the game. After that 8-1 defeat rather than glumly despair, one of our regulars merely piped up that it was the close ones that hurt the most, and we all trooped off chuckling, ready for the next one (which we lost 6-1).
All that brings us up to last week, which was above all a demonstration of the ability for reserve college sport to bring as much joy, as much passion and energy as any other level, even in the lowest tier of the reserve divisions. In our first league game of the season, the LMH 3rd team claimed its first win since November 2014, with a stolen winner in the last ten minutes having put up a ridiculous defensive performance and survived unscathed (with the aforementioned 10 men) a second half onslaught after a half-time score of 3-3. The game had everything you could want: some very fine goals from both teams including a lovely dinked finish that saw us fall behind 3-2 in the first half; intensity and passion with both teams fighting hard right to the death; a pretty fast pace to the game; chances and shots galore, and even a penalty just to add a bit of drama if the late winner against the run of play was not enough.
That is the beauty of reserve sport here in Oxford, and the beauty of amateur sport everywhere. It contains all the purities and all of the beautiful elements of sport at all levels of the game, without any of the negative distractions. Sport at its finest, even if not at its highest quality.
