After two intense days of competition and twenty hours of travelling via five differ- ent modes of transportation, the Oxford University Equestrian Team arrived back in Ox- ford late on Sunday evening – albeit with the stench of horse still lingering. Although not returning victorious, achieving fifth position in a European competition is an outstanding feat which has certainly helped prepare the team for the forthcoming Varsity match with Cambridge.
Departing from Oxford at 4pm on Friday, the team arrived in Nancy, France, in the early hours of Saturday morning.

After very little sleep, we awoke to find that disaster had struck: we had missed the team bus to the venue due to a miscommunication (cue mass panic and phone calls riddled with language barrier diffi- culties). The team finally arrived at the competition venue at 7am thanks to a parent driving us from the hotel – but it had been a rough start. For us Brits, trips abroad normally equate to hot sunny weather, but northern France only had the same rain to offer as Oxford, accompanied by five degree temperatures – so we were grateful to be riding inside for the first time this year.

Whilst Nancy itself left a lot to the imagination, the historical stud of Rosières–aux–Salines was a fantastic venue, nestled in a sleepy French village said to have been built by Louis XV. The horses that we were given to ride came in various shapes, sizes and colours but fortunately we had lucky draws and both our mounts actually knew how to jump fences, which proved to be a great bonus. A morning of horse jumping followed, plagued both with technical fail- ures and many riders parting company with their rides. As the only British university, we felt the weight of not only the reputation of Oxford but the nation resting on our shoulders as we entered the competition arena for the first time on Saturday.

Solid performances were recorded by all, however, with podium positions only narrowly missed, whetting our appetite for Sunday’s team competition. The journey back to the hotel was filled with some interesting European dance music being played over the radio and a few awkward silenc- es as our lack of French got the better of us once again.

Afternoon activities included laser quest, with each team taking it as seriously as the jumping competition itself. Fun was had by all with the Oxford cohort coming out victorious.

Upon returning to the competition venue on Saturday evening, we were able to watch the international show taking place, which excit- ingly featured past Olympians. More awkward conversation was exchanged and champagne drank, before finally heading back to the hotel for an (albeit brief) night’s sleep, since Sunday morning brought with it another 5am start.

The sun had just begun to rise as we arrived in Rosières–aux–Salines and with it came, at last, respite from the rain, giving team morale a much needed boost. Whilst the warm up didn’t go exactly to plan, with instructions being shouted in French not proving helpful, nerves were successfully put aside as the team entered the international arena once more.

Superb performances saw the Oxford team achieve fifth place overall; a fantastic result considering we were competing on borrowed horses, whilst many of those placed above us were not.

It was a shame that the Tabs did not put forward a team for this prestigious event, but perhaps they were put off by the might of Oxford and the possibility of embarrassment before the upcoming Varsity match! A huge thank you must go out to the EDHEC jumping team for organising the international event.

With one last moment of high farce in a series full of what Australians would call comedy but an Englishman could only call torture, Jade Dernbach is run out go- ing for a second run she was never going to make – and at last our winter of discontent is over. The abject humiliation of the latest tour Down Under has been such that even the soli- tary ODI win was met with more surprise by players and fans than celebration.

What Team England desperately needs is to simply go home, lick their wounds, rebuild their confi- dence, and forget about all things antipodean for a good few months. Unfortunately for all who take an interest in the fortunes of English cricket, March brings with it a short stop over in the Caribbean for a few limited overs games before the team head to Bangladesh for the World T20.

To say that recent preparation for this event has not been ideal is a gargantuan understatement. Al- though some elements of the recent T20 series were encouraging, the most notable Eoin Morgan’s return to form, there were few signs that England can seriously challenge for the title. Taking a longer view of this side’s develop- ment, however, may provide ground for a little optimism. 2013 was a year of mixed fortunes for Stuart Broad’s men what with winning three, losing three and one ‘no result’.

All of these matches were against either Australia or New Zealand, both formidable teams when the right selection balance is found, and the three victories indicate that on their day this side can beat the major teams. These outcomes also need to be appreciated in the context of England as a side in transition.

Last year saw captain, Broad, and coach, Ashley Giles, re- ally settle into their roles, learning well as they went along. In terms of personnel there were many changes as new players were tested while established game changers rested in the midst of the Ashes preparations. These factors of uncertainty arguably make the perfor- mances of the team more impressive. One huge positive was the emergence of Alex Hales as a certain opener, to be depended upon to give the innings impetus in the first six overs, after his rise to the top of the international batting rankings in this format.

Adding to this is his exciting partnership with Mi- chael Lumb and the presumed return of Kevin Pietersen. Now there’s a dynamic top order who should be able to provide platforms for the likes of Morgan and Buttler to let loose in the middle and closing overs. Perhaps the only success of the long Ashes winter was the per- formance of Ben Stokes, who must surely start in a T20 side which could only benefit from an occasionally explosive batsman and a bowler with genuine pace.

On the slow wickets of the sub-continent, the ability to bowl in the low 90s is often the only way for seamers to have a noteworthy impact on proceedings. The major concern will obviously be the lack of quality spin options now that Graeme Swann has sadly departed the international scene.

To some extent the dearth of serious talent in this area has been exposed in recent weeks with both Tredwell and Danny Briggs coming under serious pressure from the de- structive tendencies of Finch, Bailey & co. With this in mind, Samit Patel should be brought back into the fold as an accomplished batsman whose slow left armers were used to good effect by Nottinghamshire in the domestic T20 season.

This may seem a left-field proposition but it’s arguably less of a risk than throwing the ball in the 10th over to the callow Briggs or one-dimensional Tredwell. Clearly England’s chances in the forthcom- ing competition will be greatly affected by the form of the other teams. The tournament’s location in Bangladesh might lead many pundits to back a sub-continent side, with India being the most prominent choice.

Their recent results in New Zealand, however, indicate a team that is not exactly in the greatest nick. Moreover, the nature of T20 is that any side can in a period of a few fortunate overs find themselves in a position to win any game. Perhaps then, albeit without the best prepa- ration, there are more grounds to hope for an improved England performance in March than the winter has suggested.

Most of you have probably heard of modern pentathlon. Unless you were in outer space for August 2012 it would have been difficult to miss Team GB’s Samantha Murray winning an Olympic silver medal in the women’s event, Britain’s last medal of the games. Maybe you signed up for the university team’s mailing list at the Freshers’ Fair, or maybe you just walked past the stand laughing at the people who are crazy enough to want to do five sports in a weekend, let alone a day. I doubt, however, that many of you have actually tried modern pentathlon.

The prospect is rather daunting; it not only involves running and swimming but pistol shooting, fencing and show jumping, sports that most people have never even tried their hand at, let alone competed in. So why do it? The origins of modern pentathlon go back to the adventures of a cavalry officer caught behind enemy lines whilst trying to deliver a message. He had to defend himself with his pistol and sword, ride a horse, swim across a river and run in order to complete his mission.

The founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, believed that this event “tested a man’s moral qualities as much as his physical resources and skills, producing thereby the ideal, complete athlete”. He campaigned to have modern pentathlon in- troduced into the Games and was eventually successful, with the event first being contested at Stockholm in 1912.

The demands of speed, strength, stamina and co-ordination, on top of the mental toughness and self-discipline required to be a successful pentathlete, meant that the sport was used for many years as part of the final examinations at several European military academies. This all sounds a very long way away from the comfort zone of our Oxford Bubble, but the sport is no less challenging and rewarding today.

A usual competition consists of a fencing match, a 200m swim, a twelve fence show jump on an unknown horse over a course of approximately one metre in height, and a combined event in which competitors have up to 70 seconds to shoot down five targets and then run one kilometre, repeated three times. The Oxford University Modern Pentathlon Association (OUMPA) caters for all levels, from complete novices to GB pentathletes; Christ Church’s Tom Lees recently finished a very impressive 4th place in the first national ranking competition of the year.

Notable alumni include Steph Cook, who won the gold medal in the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Competitions are taken seriously and the club has a very successful record, with the Men’s team having recorded 17 consecutive wins over Cambridge to date in the annual Varsity Match, equalling the record held by men’s boxing.

Modern pentathlon at Oxford University is full of vitality. Having explained the history, basic rules and Oxford competition record, I would agree that it doesn’t seem like the most easy or accessible sport. But I can honestly say (with personal experience on my side) that most people have only done one or two of the sports involved before coming to Oxford, and some are complete novices in them all.

As challenging as it is training for five sports, pentathletes are lucky enough to have the variety of training for a different one every day – there is rarely a dull moment! And if you still need convincing that pentathlon is the most demanding, diverse but most importantly enjoyable sport to try whilst at Oxford, make sure you follow the Varsity Match on from 4th April this year; with a potentially record-breaking winning streak up for grabs for the Men’s team, it’s definitely not one to miss.

I am incredibly glad that people no longer argue that Barcelona are the greatest team ever. I feel that after their reign of terror, football can now move into the light. There is a glorious revolt which has taken place. Thank God the dictators are dead.

The problem is that Barcelona were in part the instigators of, and partly the victims of, this awful fad for football statistics, which is now conditioning how we view the game. It is something of a Stalinist view of the beautiful game, quantifying football by production- passes completed, touches of the ball, percentage of possession. It’s the game stripped down to numbers, a bleak, cold universe which fails to describe the anarchic joy which playing and watching football should be. The problem is that data does not adequately define what is good, and what is bad. It provides a list of numbers, utterly without context, and therefore useless.

The fad is American in origin, springing from the baseball discipline of sabermetrics, which uses statistics to measure performance. This wisdom (highly successful in baseball) does not translate well to football, because of the limited nature of baseball. It is a game with only one or two variables at best, as the positions of the players are relatively static, and the ball is delivered from a set position. Outcomes are far more defined in baseball- a strike is a strike regardless of how it got there. Football is different. Goals are far rarer, and actions leading to them are more cumulative and more complex- for instance, a player makes a pass to a teammate who then scores. Who is at fault for the goal, the defender marking the goalscorer, the goalkeeper, or the midfielder who didn’t stop the pass? Difficult to answer, and with no statistic that can accurately apportion blame. Because it is more complex, football requires more subjectivity in its decision making- a pass might be completed, but is it helpful, or does it slow down the move? Such judgements are by their very nature subjective, as there is no definite way to assess how they further the achievement of the object (a goal).

So here we have the fallacy of statistical analysis in football- whilst it attempts to give (and often claims to be) objective, whilst we can measure each action, we struggle to determine how well each action can contribute to scoring, or preventing the opponent form scoring.

Enter Barcelona from 2009-2012. This was a highly eccentric and successful team, which fetishized possession and had an equally strong attachment to silverware. At the same time that sabermetrics was making a bigger cultural impact in the wider sporting world, Barcelona were running around being very successful. Which led many to try and analyse their success statistically. Now a team which fetishizes possession will always have a number of statistcis which set them apart- usually the amount of passes completed or time in possession of the ball. This led to teams thinking that success was based on possession. This is almost football as monetarism- by controlling the supply of possession, Barcelona hoped to win, just as some economists felt that controlling inflation would guarantee prosperity.

The fact that Barcelona held possession to compensate for their shortcomings, and as an aesthetic choice (most of their defenders couldn’t defend, but instead were there simply to pass the ball, and Barcelona had, since the time of Johann Cruyff decided that football should be played only with the ball, defending being a plebeian and unnecessary activity) , was largely ignored. Stats, and especially possession stats, were the ones that mattered. There is a long intellectual history in possession football, but it was ultimately realised (and greatly aggrandised) by Barcelona, without consideration of football’s other intellectual traditions, which in terms of success have always matched possession football.

Thus we have the current state of the game – a place where Michael Carrick is occasionally extolled as great player simply because he completes a lot of passes. The fact that the majority of these goes sideways, to players who are in positions which don’t threaten the goal, are ignored by his supporters.
This is obviously total bollocks. I disagree with Barcelona on aesthetic grounds (I believe them to be dangerous fundamentalists in a Stalinist mould, but you can’t argue they are not successful), but the modern obsession with possession is an unseemly fad. Football is so anarchic that it is impossible to control possession for an entire game, and does not in itself do anything to achieve its objective. We should therefore, only regard possession statistics in context- they have to actually contribute towards going towards the other teams goal, and has to be of actual benefit to the team. Completion doesn’t mean quality.

Now for my aesthetic disagreements. I feel that constantly recycling possession until the other team makes a mistake is actually rather boring. Barcelona were like matadors, not the popular vision but the reality, delivering a thousand cuts until the bull finally collapsed in exhaustion, and then sticking a sword in its neck. This is not art, which football at its best is. Yes, you can pass the ball ten yards forever. Well done. I don’t find this exciting. What I do find exciting is speed, precision, and creativity.

It is skilful to constantly pass the ball, but it is limited. One can do far more things with a football, and they are equally valid. Crossing for instance, is far less efficient than passing, but it is fun to watch defender and striker compete for the ball, and to cross well is far harder than to pass short. There is merit in both, beauty in both, and football is great when it recognises the beauty in all parts of the game, not just the ruthlessly efficient ones. Possession football in its essence is boring. It displays one skill, and repeats it endlessly, removing athleticism and power from the contest.

It does not fulfil all that we require from football, for it removes combat, it removes variety. Just as in life we do a range of different things to give us pleasure, so in football. A symphony is not a symphony if you just play one note, over and over. Therefore I am glad Barcelona are gone. They have been very efficient, but I cannot feel joy in repetition. Their one dimensionality was finally exposed- by defences who made few mistakes, and could attack as well. Balance, beautiful balance, so unheralded, so worthwhile, won in the end. It is good for football that they are gone. Barcelona were Stalinists, interested in only one thing, and forgot, as do all dictators, that football and life are far more complex, and that true success is doing many things beautifully, not just one thing well.

So long then, Dimitar. After seven and a half years in the Premier League, the closing of the January transfer window brought the news that Dimitar Berbatov had left Fulham for Monaco on loan. With his contract due to expire in the summer, it is likely that English crowds will have seen the last of his aloof genius.

He remains eternally undervalued. His career in England had fizzled out, to the extent where he could slip out of the back door unnoticed, with an air of sulkiness so perfectly embodied by Harry Enfield’s character ‘Kevin the Teenager’.

For a player who scored 122 goals in 304 appearances for Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and Fulham, his inconspicuous departure is an indictment of English football culture. This is because Berbatov operated on a quixotic higher plane, which required a level of comprehension that was unattainable for us mere mortals. It was announced that he was a footballing sensation but for most, Berbatov’s skill remained frustratingly ephemeral meaning the public refuted this claim with the unabashed conviction of a drunk, stumbling about uncontrollably whilst shouting at a passer-by that they was not, in fact, under the influence.

Having failed to recognise a master of soft-shoed goal scoring guile, the nation began a collective character assassination that the Daily Mail would have been proud of. Berbatov was too lazy. He did not try. He did not pray before bedtime. This savage vitriol swept the footballing landscape so that even Sir Alex Ferguson was fooled. Despite scoring or creating 83 goals in 149 games for Manchester United, he was forced out. Sorry, but you are not a team player. But this inability to understand Berbatov is indicative of English football as a whole.

His talents are worryingly underappreciated, especially compared to a Lee Cattermole type player: someone who is desperately lacking in technical ability, but is first class at aggressively shouting at his teammates for conceding a corner, so much so that the vein in his forehead becomes more visible to astronauts than the Great Wall of China. This is the passion that makes the Premier League a global spectacle; people do not tune in to see Berbatov, a man who saunters around the final third before nonchalantly scoring the winning goal with the deftest flick of his boot, only to be substituted in injury time so that he can slope off before the M25 gets bad. It is a modern criticism of football that pundits, managers and fans alike are becoming increasingly reliant on statistics.

But the astonishing numbers are all we have to show for Berbatov’s brilliance. Constrained by our untrained eyes, Berbatov was not appreciated as a modern great, despite the records showing that he scored more Premier League goals than folk heroes Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Dennis Bergkamp, or the £130m worth of talent that is Cristiano Ronaldo and Fernando Torres.

Now aged 33, Berbatov is likely to see out his career in foreign lands, not only in the hope for one last mega pay cheque, but also to glance around furtively to see if the crowd are cultured enough to comprehend his subtly artistic footwork and languid, broad brush-like movement. If they are not, then the footballing world will have lost a master-craftsman to the pantheon of high-art postmodern virtuosos.

In his retirement, he is more likely to frequent the artisanal district of Montmartre than grace this island with his misunderstood sagacity.