It happened right around the top of the hill.

More specifically, it happened as I puffed, chugged, panted and more or less crawled my way to the highest point of South Parks during the third and final lap of a six-mile cuppers race held by the Oxford University Cross Country Club.

“It” refers to the claiming of first prize by team veteran Tom Frith of St. Anne’s, who launched a field-decimating move at the base of the aforementioned hill on the course’s second lap to capture his second straight Michaelmas cuppers victory in a blazing 33:05. That made him 37 seconds faster than University College fresher William Christofi, who came in a further 17 seconds ahead of Worcester’s Adam Speake to round out the top three.

Nearly seven full minutes had elapsed since Frith’s victory by the time I stumbled my muddy way across the line in an uninspiring 29^th. By that point, Oxford’s third-best finisher in last year’s Varsity Match had had plenty of time to consider his thoughts on the race.

“For the first lap there was a big group of us, and I think it was quite slow for everyone,” remarked Frith afterward, referring to a lead pack of nine that slowly split away from the main field early in the competition. “And that was the strategy for me: just to sit in and see how the race went, and if I felt good, kick away on one of the hills and really put a good sustained effort in and see if I could break away from them.”

Break away he did. So devastating was Frith’s attack that it eventually shattered the early front-running group; by the race’s end, more than three minutes separated first and ninth place.

The early slowness of pace—which saw the whole of the men’s field stick together in a rather uneasy manner for the race’s first 400 meters—was perhaps attributable to the newness of the course. Cuppers are normally held on the more or less flat grounds of Port Meadow, but this year’s shift to South Parks meant that the whole route, save for a couple sweeping turns was literally an up-and-down affair.

While this factor, in addition to occasional patches of slippery turf that made some downhill stretches slightly treacherous, may have slowed down the runners’ times somewhat in comparison to last year, Frith was satisfied the change of scenery.

“It was a very good race to mimic the varsity course,” opined Frith, referring to Wimbledon Common, where the 123^rd Gentleman’s Race with Cambridge will take place on Saturday of 8^th week.

Cross country captain Naomi Webber echoed Frith’s sentiments on the change of course. “I thought the new course worked really well and was a really good test of the strength of this year’s athletes,” said Webber.

On the women’s side, the race broke up much more quickly, with a core of three to five runners leading the race from start to finish. A steady final kick during the race’s last uphill portion was enough for Trinity’s Claire McIlvennie to snatch a three-second victory from Sophia Saller of St. Catherine’s with a time of 25:55 for two laps. Joanna Klaptocz of St. Hugh’s was a further four seconds adrift in third.

For McIlvennie, who attended Middlebury College in the U.S. as an undergraduate is now an MSc student in Geography, the race was her first on English soil. Still, she was quickly impressed by the sense of team spirit that pervaded Saturday’s competition.

“I felt like the lead group worked together quite a bit, especially on the first lap,” said McIlvennie afterwards. “Knowing that there was such a tight group definitely kept me motivated, especially coming up the hill in South Parks on the second loop. Having other runners to work with always makes a race more exciting.”

“It would be an amazing experience to run in the Varsity match at the end of the season,” McIlvennie added. “This was a great step in that direction.”

In the team competition, St Catherine’s claimed victory by 46 points over Lady Margaret Hall on the women’s side, while Worcester more than doubled up St. Edmund’s Hall to earn the men’s prize.

But as was the case with last week’s Athletics cuppers, the real race has yet to be run.

“Last year we lost a lot of good runners, but it’s reassuring to see we’ve got a lot of good freshers,” concluded Frith. “I was really pleased with the show today.”

The football loan is a curious thing. Whereas the out-and-out transfer is a clear break-up between player and club, a final tearful (or not-so-tearful) farewell, a clear parting of ways, the loan hints at the presence of an iota of sincerity and even insecurity lurking in the murky recesses of the modern football club’s cold, black soul. Whether it’s allowing a young starlet to ply his trade in the lower reaches of the football pyramid whilst still having the decency to pay his wages or taking a brief break from a disruptive figure in the changing-room, the loan is football at its most romantic, a way of saying ‘never say never’ in a game otherwise dominated by ruthlessness and heartbreak, a bashful acknowledgement that while things might eventually work out fine in the end, in spite of how volatile or uncertain things were in the past, the club and the player going their separate ways may also ultimately be for the best. And with that homage to the temporary transfer, here is a short list not of the most inspired loan signings, nor of the very worst, but of the most surprising (and in one case, truly baffling) short-term stints, those football hook-ups that no-one saw coming.

3. Amr Zaki – Zamalek to Wigan Athletic

Eyebrows were raised when plucky Wigan Athletic persuaded obscure Egyptian Premier League outfit Zamalek SC to let them borrow burly striker Amr Zaki for the 2008/09 Premier League season. However following Zaki’s whirlwind start at the JJB Stadium, the supercilia of world football’s gobsmacked face almost vanished completely; not only did he net two goals against boyhood club Liverpool at Anfield, including a stunning acrobatic strike, his breathtaking start also briefly propelled him to the summit of the top scorers’ list. The romance did not last long. Zaki was fined heavily for failing to return to Wigan following a World Cup qualifying match with Egypt and left the club at the end of the season. He then turned down a move to Portsmouth after refusing to be a part of a squad containing Algerian and Israeli players. It seems that Wigan were wise in ending this relationship early.

2. Mauro Zárate – Al-Sadd to Birmingham City/Lazio

After playing just 6 games for Qatari outfit Al-Sadd following a whopping $22 million transfer, Zárate was sent off on loan to Birmingham City for the remainder of the 2007/08 season. Despite adding some flair and creativity to an otherwise dire Birmingham side, immediately endearing himself to the lovestruck St. Andrews crowd, his exploits were not enough to prevent Birmingham from getting relegated. The footballing gods (i.e. his agents) then decreed that the Argentinian maestro was to leave the fair city of Birmingham for the Italian capital of Rome, the birthplace of Western civilization, on the latest leg of his football odyssey.

After a fine start to his loan period with the sky blues of Lazio, Zárate caused controversy when he was seen giving a fascist salute whilst watching a game with Lazio fans, although he claimed that he didn’t realise the significance of the gesture. Naive? Possibly. Foolish? Undoubtedly. Following a third loan stint at Internazionale (it didn’t go well), Zárate’s football adventure has come full-circle as he now plays for Argentinian side Vélez Sársfield, the club where he began his football career. A modern-day footballing Odysseus if ever there was one.

1. Julien Faubert – West Ham United to Real Madrid

Julien Faubert’s brief fling with Real Madrid in 2009 is undoubtedly the most bizarre loan signing in the history of the game, a relationship which is the footballing equivalent of Caligula and Incitatus. In order to truly comprehend the absurdity of this loan signing, let’s imagine a conversation the then-Real Madrid manager Juande Ramos may have struck with the chairman to push the deal through:

Ramos: Boss, we’re half way through the season, we’re the defending champions, I feel we need some temporary cover on the right side of midfield in case we get any injuries later on in the season. This duel with Barcelona is going to go right down to the wire, we need the very best.

Chairman: Of course, Juande. We’re Real Madrid, one of the richest clubs in the world; with our resources, we can bring in virtually anyone who’s on the market. Who’s your main target?

Ramos: Julien Faubert.

Chairman: Hmm, I can’t say I’ve heard of him. Do you have any more information? What club does he play for?

Ramos: He plays for mid-table Premier League side West Ham United; he ruptured his achilles tendon in his first season and made just eight appearances. He scored no goals. He made no assists.

Chairman: Impressive… and his international career?

Ramos: Just the one cap for France in 2006.

Chairman: I’m sold. Get him in.

After missing training when he thought he had a day off and falling asleep on the substitutes’ bench during a match, Faubert returned to West Ham United having made just two appearances for the Galácticos – making this a loveless loan that was doomed from the very beginning.

Thanks to Merton College, Oxford University Women’s Rugby Football Club now have a training pitch that sits safely above the water level. They’ve discarded their snorkels and are hard at work, with new coaches Matt Williams and Gary Morris, fighting to maintain their position in the Premiership South.

Now, however, they’ve hit a glitch. After their sponsorship deal fell through in late summer, they are in financial trouble. OURFC have lent OUWRFC the money to pay for floodlights to light the ground, and the girls have set their minds to inventive ways of raising the funds to pay them back.

With the tagline “#shoetheboys”, each time their Floodlight Fund reaches £500 one member of the Blues team will challenge their equivalent position in OURFC. The first challenge took place last week at Iffley Road, between scrumhalfs Jessie-Joy Flowers and Samson Egerton. Sam won (by default, and not without some serious pre-challenge nerves).

The next challenge, which takes place this week, will see winger Charlie Brown take on OURFC’s very own “Nigella” Sean Morris in a Ready Steady Cook style cook-off. Both competitors are confident, and Paddy Power are refusing to offer anything other than evens. Sean has been spotted strutting around OURFC rolling pin in hand. Meanwhile, Charlie was overheard quoting inspiration Harriet Van Horne, Vogue Magazine, Oct 15 1956: ‘Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.’

Track the girls’ progress here: http://thefloodlightfund.wordpress.com/ or on Facebook and Twitter and tweet @OUWRFC with your ideas for challenges!

Univ rowers, porters and alumni are getting ready to stage a 24 hour charity rowing machine relay in the college quad this weekend, as part of a fundraising campaign in memory of two prominent Boat Club alumni who died last year.

Olympic silver medal-winning cox and two-time Boat Race winner Acer Nethercott, who learnt to cox as a novice with the University College Boat Club, passed away unexpectedly from a glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor earlier this year. Just a few months earlier, former Univ Men’s 1st VIII rower James Townley died while serving with the Royal Engineers in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. 

Event organiser Edward Beard said, “Both men were extremely well-liked and popular members of the Univ Boat Club – Acer often returned to encourage novices to try the sport and showed them his silver medal, which he kept in a sock. Their loss has been deeply felt throughout the Boat Club, University College and wider British rowing community.”

More than fifty rowers, porters and College staff have signed up to row in non-stop relay on two rowing machines over 24 hours in a challenge to raise £2000 for Cancer Research UK and Help for Heroes. They have already reached £1,675 from Old Members, rowers and ex-servicemen and women.

One of the event’s notable supporters, London 2012 Olympic coxless fours gold medalist Pete Reed, wrote, “I’d like to pass on my heart felt congratulations and thanks to the University College Boat Club for their enormous efforts to raise money in memory of your old friends Acer and James. I was a close friend of Acer as so many people genuinely were. He is still, and always will be, a huge source of inspiration for me.”

Boat Club President Elizabeth German said, “We’ll be rowing in Radcliffe Quad for 24 hours from 10AM on Saturday. By being visible in the college grounds, it will be really easy for people to see us in action, and show their support for the worthwhile causes we’re supporting.”

Details of the event, and how to support and donate, can be found at: www.virginmoneygiving.com%2fucbc-24hour-ergathon