Tuesday 9th September 2025
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Why a Razer Gold card is the ultimate student-friendly way to pay for games

External Contributor
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Why a Razer Gold card is the ultimate student-friendly way to pay for games

Balancing coursework, social life, part-time jobs, and maybe the occasional existential crisis is enough on its own. Add in the cost of gaming subscriptions, in-app purchases, and DLCs, and suddenly being a student gamer feels like a luxury lifestyle. But what if there was a way to keep your gaming life alive without linking your bank card every time? There is, and it’s called the Razer Gold card.

Whether you’re picking up indie games on sale, buying skins, or powering through battle passes, Razer Gold lets you manage your spend while still enjoying premium digital content. And for students trying to game responsibly, that control matters.

What is a Razer Gold card, and why should you care

Razer Gold is a universal virtual credit system used for thousands of digital games and services. Think of it like a prepaid card just for gamers. Instead of entering your debit details or linking multiple payment platforms, you simply redeem your Razer Gold and use the credits wherever they’re accepted; easy, fast, and secure.

The card allows users to load up on credits without any auto-renewals or surprise charges. For students managing limited funds or trying to avoid overspending, this gives you full visibility of what you’re spending and where.

It’s accepted by over 42,000 games and entertainment services globally, including fan favorites like PUBG Mobile, Genshin Impact, and Blizzard titles. Plus, for every purchase, you earn Razer Silver (a rewards system), which can be redeemed for more games, hardware, or even discounts. That’s like getting rewarded for something you were already going to do anyway.

Why students prefer prepaid over linking cards

Sharing your card details with every new platform or random game shop isn’t exactly safe. And when a subscription slips past your memory and renews unexpectedly? Nightmare.

Prepaid digital options are gaining traction among student communities because they offer peace of mind. You’re in control of how much you load, and you never spend more than you intended. It’s also a great solution for parents who want to set limits for younger students or teens who game.

And if you’re the type to share game credits with a roommate, friend, or gaming group, it makes it easy to gift and top up without getting too personal about finances.

Smart spending in a digital-first world

Gaming is no longer just a hobby; it’s a social platform, a creative outlet, and even a career path for some. So, making smart financial choices around gaming isn’t just practical, it’s essential. Whether you’re building your Steam library, upgrading your in-game character, or just enjoying a Friday night with your go-to multiplayer crew, the way you pay matters.

Razer Gold helps you stay on top of that. It’s a payment method built for how students live, play, and budget.

University life doesn’t mean sacrificing your digital life. With prepaid options, students can stay immersed in the games they love while maintaining control of their finances. It’s fast, secure, and surprisingly rewarding. And the best part? Digital marketplaces like Eneba offer great deals on all things digital, so you can game smarter, not harder.

Why Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is a smart choice for students

External Contributor
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Why Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is a smart choice for students

Being a student often means stretching your finances while trying to maintain some semblance of a social and personal life. Between tuition fees, textbooks, overpriced coffee, and rent, it’s easy to feel like your hobbies need to take a backseat. But that’s not always true, especially if one of your hobbies is gaming.

Gaming is no longer just a fun way to kill time. It’s a social outlet, a method of stress relief, and sometimes even a creative pursuit. And while games can be expensive, subscriptions like Xbox Game Pass Ultimate make the experience significantly more affordable for students who want quality entertainment without breaking the bank.

What you get with Game Pass Ultimate

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is not just a subscription; it’s a full-service access pass to the gaming world. It includes:

  • Over 100 high-quality games
  • Xbox Live Gold (for online multiplayer)
  • EA Play membership
  • Game access across console, PC, and cloud
  • Perks like discounts and rewards

From major releases to underrated gems, there’s always something new to try. Whether you’re taking a mental break from studying or organizing a game night with flatmates, Game Pass delivers flexibility and variety.

Why prepaid makes more sense for students

If you’re looking to save money and avoid the monthly billing cycle, an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate 12-month subscription is a great choice. Buying it upfront ensures you won’t forget about auto-renewals or accidentally overdraft your account during exam week. You pay once and enjoy 12 months of gaming. Isn’t that cool?

This model is especially helpful for students managing a tight budget. You know exactly what you’re spending and what you’re getting. No surprises, just steady, uninterrupted gaming for a whole year.

Gaming with friends, wherever you are

One of the best parts about being at university is the community. Whether it’s living in shared halls, bonding over late-night snacks, or finding people who love the same games you do, connection is everything.

With Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, you and your friends can enjoy co-op games, sports titles, shooters, and more without everyone needing to buy the same game individually. It fosters collaboration and competition while keeping everyone’s wallets happy.

You can even play on your phone using cloud gaming if someone else is hogging the console. It’s gaming that fits into student life, unpredictable schedules, and all.

Ideal for experimentation and discovery

When you only buy one or two games a year, you’re more likely to stick with what you know. But with Game Pass Ultimate, you can afford to experiment. Try a game you’ve never heard of. Play something outside your usual genre. Find new favorites that you wouldn’t have considered spending money on otherwise.

This level of access opens doors for casual players and hardcore gamers alike. It’s about freedom, not commitment, perfect for students whose preferences and time are always changing.

The Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription isn’t just convenient, it’s a smarter way to game. It offers students a full library of high-quality entertainment, access to premium services, and the freedom to play anywhere, anytime. Best of all, digital marketplaces like Eneba offer deals on all things digital, making it even easier to get started. For students who love gaming but don’t love financial stress, this is one subscription worth every penny.

The Oxford Revue at the Fringe

Leon Moorhouse
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The Oxford Revue at the Fringe

★★★⯪☆

Returning for their 62nd annual pilgrimage to the Edinburgh Fringe, the Oxford Revue rolled into town with their new sketch comedy hour For Revue Dollars More, accompanied nightly by their stand-up showcase Stand-upping Citizens. Between cowboy puns and character comedy, the Revue delivered a solid 45-minute sketch cavalcade that landed somewhere between “mildly chuckle-worthy” and “genuinely funny”. Nothing truly terrible, thankfully, but also nothing to write home about.

The sketch show was a mixed bag, with a few hits and some just fine filler. Many of the sketches were blink-and-you’ll-miss-it brief, and while they could be punchy, these often ended just as they were finding their feet. That said, Leo Bevan consistently made the most of them, with a delivery tailor-made for quippy one-liners. One of the more memorable moments in these shorts came from a bit involving someone arrested for “resisting arrest”, a joke that, oddly enough, seemed to haunt the Fringe, popping up again the next morning when I watched Cry-Baby: The Musical performed by the Latymer School. 

Martha Davey, who had already impressed as a charismatic MC in the stand-up show the night before, was another standout. Channelling Miranda Hart with the right dash of chaos, she excelled in the ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ sketch, fully embodying a hilariously posh mum with unnerving accuracy. Her quick mouthed gym instructor routine had its moments too, though it ran over slightly.

One misstep was the “Improv” interlude, which turned out to be… not improv. Just another sketch, albeit one with a slightly looser feel. It wasn’t bad, but it missed the opportunity to offer a refreshing break in rhythm after a solid 45 minutes of sketch, sketch, sketch.Some real improvisation could’ve added a welcome element of chaos or spontaneity.

The runaway highlight of the show, however, was Adam Pickard and his recurring sketch set to Right Said Fred’s ‘I’m Too Sexy’. Pickard, who also featured in the previous night’s stand-up showcase, brought the same deadpan swagger to the stage here. He launched into the “sexy” persona with unexpected precision, committed, in sync with the music, and all the funnier for how seriously he seemed to take it. What could’ve been a one-note gag became a recurring delight.

The show closed with another musically driven sketch, this time set to Elvis’s ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. Like others before it, the sketch leaned into the Revue’s apparent penchant for gory humour, which consistently earned some of the biggest laughs. Bloody, and well-timed, it was a fittingly high-energy finale, matched with some decent vocals from Bevan.

All in all, For Revue Dollars More was an enjoyable, well-performed show that made for a fine opener to my Fringe week. It didn’t quite embed itself in my memory, but it made for a pleasant hour of chuckles, and a few pretty great moments.

Academia is hell, literally: R.F. Kuang’s ‘Katabasis’

Charlie Stevens
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Academia is hell, literally: R.F. Kuang’s ‘Katabasis’

R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis touches on a range of near-universal academic experiences: impostor syndrome; frantic, caffeine-fuelled study sessions; watching someone effortlessly ace every single test you suffer through; and, of course, accidentally sending a professor to the depths of Hades. For the novel’s protagonist, Alice Law, all of these experiences are just a string of inconveniences standing between her and completing her PhD.

Alice is a student of “Analytic Magick” at the University of Cambridge under the supervisor Jacob Grimes. Readers will benefit from having some familiarity with logical puzzles, because, in Katabasis, this ‘magick’ involves harnessing the power of philosophical paradoxes with chalk pentagrams to achieve the impossible. Manipulating the ambiguity of Sorites Heap can produce a flask that never runs out of water, for instance, whilst a pentagram invoking the Achilles Paradox can fix an unsuspecting victim to the spot. It is in the disastrous aftermath of one of these pentagrams gone wrong that the novel opens, a small error in the chalk outlines having had fatal consequences for Grimes. 

As a magician, Alice is familiar not only with philosophical problems, but with the many stories from sojourners who have trekked through the underworld and returned. Armed with piles of research from the university archives, Alice decides to set off to retrieve her professor’s soul before he – and his ability to sign off on her work – are lost forever. What she does not count on is the fact that her fellow PhD student and greatest academic rival, Peter Murdoch, will be along for the ride. From there the narrative unfurls, switching between Alice and Peter’s journey through hell and flashbacks to their time at Cambridge, with hints at something much darker than scholarly ambition underlying their hell-bound journey. 

The story twists and turns in unexpected ways, with no character able to evade their complicity in the toxicity of Cambridge’s elite environment. Kuang herself studied at both the University of Cambridge and Oxford – the latter of which was heavily critiqued for its role in colonialism throughout Kuang’s 2022 novel Babel, or the Necessity of Violence. Current Oxford students will be pleased to know that just as Babel held nothing back in its unflattering depiction of 1830s Oxford, Kuang also pulls no punches in her depiction of 1980s Cambridge. 

However, where Babel focused on discrimination on a systemic level, Katabasis gets personal: Alice’s life at Cambridge is a horror story of the nepotism, prejudice, and sheer misfortune that mark academia, implied through the personal relationships (or lack thereof) that have shaped her experiences as a PhD student. As she reflects on Grimes’ tutelage, Kuang gradually unfurls the web of fear, adoration, and dependence that has come to surround her relationship with the supervisor, to the point where following the professor to hell seems to Alice, perversely, like the most logical course of action. 

The very system of magick Kuang weaves for her latest novel becomes an allegory for the hopelessness of academic life. The text gives brief but dense explanations of how these enchantments work, and how linguistically complicated pentagrams factor in. For an ambitious author who seems to desire equally ambitious readers, the intellectual challenge of Katabasis is not an inherent disadvantage, but the story definitely does not hold the reader’s hand.

Readers can either attempt to dive deep into the nuances of each enchantment and understand how they function, or they can simply trust in Kuang’s highly original fantasy fabrication, and live in blissful ignorance of its philosophical detail. The key point in the story is that the basis of all magick is belief regardless of truth; without unjustified overconfidence that your spells will work, they will certainly fail. Thus, as Alice summarises with grim satisfaction, in Katabasis’ fantastical world: “You could do anything if you were delusional enough.”

This capacity for fooling herself comes in handy for Alice both when inscribing pentagrams, and trying to convince herself that academia is a meritocracy. The parallel between the hellish, essentially illusory nature of both magick, and academia, is one that Kuang emphasises repeatedly throughout the novel. Early in their journey, for example, Alice and Peter traipse through hell’s court of Pride, where library-dwelling souls are taunted by never-ending reading lists and ambiguously-phrased assignments – experiences that unsubtly parallel those of the two PhD students. Kuang’s laser-focus on the toxicity of academia is a particular strength of the novel, with Katabasis’ deconstruction of the tendency to glorify the mind at the expense of physical and mental health one of its most well-executed themes.

Despite the focus on elite academic environments, Katabasis never becomes overly alien to those outside of these institutions. For, although the complexity of Katabasis’ fantastical elements will likely distance any reader who lacks a philosophy degree from the minute details of the tale, the overarching message remains accessible: the novel promotes, above all, the importance of self-care and self-assurance. Salvation is achievable when characters trust their own abilities, rather than seeking endless validation, a sentiment that even those without personal experience in the many horrors of the underworld (or academia) can take inspiration from.

Katabasis is a bold work which manages to explore powerful questions of life, death, and logic, alongside painful personal realities. Once again, Kuang draws from her own experiences to scrutinise the joys and terrors of world-leading institutions, mixing in a highly original magic system to drive her points home with a blend of dark humour and unflinching emotional honesty. While laden with philosophical paradoxes ranging from the ancient to the modern, the story keeps the reader engaged with its pace, action, and humour, which all produce a propulsive, insatiable need to know what happens next.

Protests outside Oxford asylum hotel as campaigners call for unity and compassion

Laurence Cooke and Peter Chen
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Protests outside Oxford asylum hotel as campaigners call for unity and compassion

Around 50 protesters from Stand Up to Racism (SUTR) and other local groups gathered yesterday outside a Holiday Inn Express near the Kassam Stadium to oppose a smaller anti-immigration demonstration. The counter-protesters rallied in support of the asylum seekers currently housed at the hotel by the Home Office.

Section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 allows the Home Secretary to provide accommodation and support to migrants who are destitute.

Similar protests were held at the hotel last week in the wake of demonstrations against asylum hotels across the country. Local tensions have also been inflamed by an alleged hate crime outside Oxford Central Mosque on the 19th August. 

Anti-racism activists arrived from around 2.15pm holding banners and signs, which included a St George’s flag emblazoned with the words “love asylum seekers” and a banner from the Oxford Green Party. 

Across the road, anti-asylum protesters, draped in Union Jacks and St George’s flags, began gathering from approximately 3pm, with numbers reaching 20 within the hour. A police presence ensured the groups were kept separate across the road, with some anti-migrant protesters dancing along to trumpet music from the other side. Reggae music also blared from an SUTR speaker, as one English nationalist declared to the anti-racism activists: “I’ll love you all just the same.” 

Guardian columnist Nell Frizzel was spotted talking calmly with a group of opposing protesters, part of what one anti-racism protester told Cherwell was a concerted attempt to “include and re-educate the far-right”.

Other interactions were less amicable with verbal insults exchanged and one anti-immigration protester’s drone occasionally flying at low altitude over the opposing group. 

Anti-migrant protesters voiced their grievances about the recent break-ins and criminal damage in the area, which they attributed to the asylum seekers housed at the hotel. 

Each camp filmed the other side intently, with one man wearing an elaborate bodycam. Some anti-migrant protesters appeared to be local residents, and were diverse in age and gender. They continually referenced alleged sex crimes from the asylum seekers and identified the police officers present as “people you can talk to”.  

On the other side, those gathered had written welcome messages for the asylum seekers on a piece of card to be delivered into the hotel. Protesters chanted that the real enemy was not immigrants, but “profit”. 

This follows the release of an open letter by Oxford-based charity Asylum Welcome calling for “Unity and Compassion in Oxfordshire”, which has gathered more than 2,000 signatures in less than 48 hours. Signatories include Liberal Democrats MPs Calum Miller, Olly Glover, and Charlie Maynard.

Dr Hari Reed, Co-CEO of Asylum Welcome, said: “We’re living through difficult times, and acts of kindness make a world of difference. This response shows that our community rejects division and stands alongside people seeking sanctuary.”

In a statement, SUTR told Cherwell: “Racist scapegoating by politicians like Nigel Farage, Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch and the prime minister Keir Starmer has emboldened known fascists to call demonstrations around the country spilling over in to [sic.] racist intimidation and violence. 

“Far right misinformation and agitation is drawing some people’s anger at the austerity and injustices caused by the rich and powerful, by the very scapegoating politicians, and abusing it to fuel hatred that is making our communities unsafe and unwelcoming, and lets the real culprits off the hook.” 

Disclosure: one of the authors of this article, Peter Chen, volunteers at Asylum Welcome’s immigration advice clinic.

Oxford Commas at the Fringe – Interview

Lara Machado
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Oxford Commas at the Fringe – Interview

The Oxford Commas are a contemporary gender-inclusive a capella group who had their Fringe debut this year. They kindly agreed to talk to Cherwell about the trials and tribulations of preparing their new show. ‘Aca-demic Weapons’, performed at theSpace, paired anecdotes about student life with a wide repertoire of songs ranging from Justin Timberlake to Ed Sheeran. 

Cherwell: How was the rehearsal process?

Oxford Commas: Rehearsals were more intense throughout Trinity, which raised some challenges as many of our members had to contend with finals or prelims, but we’re extremely proud of the group’s commitment. We’re also grateful to St Catz, who allowed us to run our ‘Fringe Bootcamp’ the week before we went up to Edinburgh, as this helped us to add the finishing touches to our set.

Cherwell: The Fringe is often associated with theatrical productions. How did you find being a musical act in this more dramaturgical context?

Oxford Commas: There were definitely moments where we felt the difficulties of being a musical act, with some people put off from taking a flyer when they heard we were an a cappella group. However, it really helped that many a cappella groups from across the country, including The Oxford Belles and Out of the Blue, were performing at nearby venues during the same week. This lead to a strong sense of community within the genre, and we often went to watch other groups and vice versa.

Cherwell: This is your first time at the Fringe as a group, what advice would you give to other similar groups and societies wanting to do the same?

Oxford Commas: Definitely begin planning the process early. You will definitely save a lot of money (Fringe is very expensive) on venue cost, transport and accommodation, as well as be able to keep up with all the smaller things that you need to do for a successful Fringe run. Some colleges were also willing to give us grants for our Fringe run, so make sure to check for potential opportunities there. Partnering with an established Fringe venue also provides you with more promotional and media opportunities, and can help new shows seem more professional. Most importantly, enjoy it! The run-up to Fringe will seem like a logistical nightmare, but once you’re there it’s incredibly exciting and a major achievement for any group, so please take time to appreciate what you have achieved.

Cherwell: How did you select your set list and adapt your show for a Fringe audience?

Oxford Commas:  As debutants competing in an a cappella scene that featured Fringe veterans both from Oxford and elsewhere, we wanted to do something quite unique to stand out. We decided to lean heavily into life at Oxford as inspiration for our set, wearing gowns while flyering and performing, and weaving our set list around speeches relating to different aspects of Oxford life. Given the time constraints we faced (having only settled on our theme halfway through Hilary), we had to be realistic in our ambitions, so we utilised a combination of arrangements from earlier this year, and some new arrangements to create a coherent set that fit our theme. The gowns definitely made a big impact while flyering, and our speeches were well received by audiences too.

Cherwell: Did anything about the process surprise you?

Oxford Commas: Flyering was a lot more enjoyable than many of us anticipated. While a whole day of convincing passers-by with cries of “Oxford A cappella” was far from ideal for our voices before the show, it was lovely to see just how many people were actually interested in our concept and stopped to talk to us about it. It was also surprising to see just how effective flyering actually was. Many shows might have a tendency to invest heavily in posters and advertising boards, and as fun as it may be to see yourself across Edinburgh, the majority of your audience will be gained through the group’s hard work on the ground. Pre-show busks accompanied by flyering worked incredibly well for us.

‘Aca-demic Weapons’ at the Fringe: Oxford Commas Review

Alexander Kwon
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‘Aca-demic Weapons’ at the Fringe: Oxford Commas Review

★★★★☆

A capella groups from Oxford have long been favourites at the Edinburgh Fringe, with Out of the Blue, Oxford Gargoyles and Oxford Belles often returning year-after-year to sold out performances and enthusiastic audiences. This year however marked a new act on the festival scene: The Oxford Commas. Self-described Aca-demic Weapons, and dripped out in their sub-fusc (commoners and scholars alike), they burst out into song with their opening number ‘Believer’ by Imagine Dragons.

With a confident and self-aware quirkiness, the entire ensemble delivered each number with passion. Spoken interludes from the group’s members included jokes about student life at Oxford covering everything from exam stress to college marriages,accompanied with gentle swaying chords from the Commas. The performance sustained  a delightful energy with every member of the 13-strong ensemble engaging and interacting with the audience. From a rendition of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ with numerous references to the movie Saltburn (including a graveyard scene featuring Slane’s iconic hymn melody ‘Lord of All Hopefulness’) to Måneskin’s ‘Beggin’’ which included a particularly vibrant tenor solo. 

Despite the high-octane atmosphere curated throughout, there were some extremely beautiful moments shared in the intimacy of quartets and slower chorale-like sections in songs, which showed off the close rapport and rich basso profundo sound many of the ensemble possessed. It was in some of these moments however, that minor intonation issues were exposed.

Some of the show’s highlights were a particularly humorous interaction with an audience member in Ed Sheeran’s ‘Thinking Out Loud’, and the choreography during the medley of ‘Do You Mind’ and ‘Poison’ which saw the ensemble dashing across the stage and singing to each other in a tightly coordinated frenzy. Comparatively, the choreography of many of the other numbers felt slightly stilted. The somewhat indulgent body-swaying that occasionally gripped the singers felt much weaker than the more engaging and active movements.

Overall, Aca-demic Weapons was a thrilling debut show that really showcased the passion and energy that the group bring to every song. Hopefully, this means a return to the Fringe in 2026.

Cherwell Mini Cryptic #2 – Rockers and Rollers

Zoë McGuire
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Made by Zoë McGuire using the online <a href="https://amuselabs.com/games/crossword/" target="_blank" style="color: #666666;text-decoration: underline">crossword puzzle maker</a> from Amuse Labs

Need a sweet treat? Last week’s mini cryptic has you covered.

Are Cryptics a bit ruff for you? Why not try this week’s mini crossword.

Follow the Cherwell Instagram for updates on our online puzzles.

For even more crosswords and other puzzles, pick up a Cherwell print issue from your JCR or porters’ lodge!

Cherwell Mini #19 – Barking Mad

Zoë McGuire
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Made by Zoë McGuire with the <a href="https://amuselabs.com/games/crossword/" target="_blank" style="color: #666666;text-decoration: underline">crossword creator</a> from Amuse Labs

Still thirsty for puzzles? Why not try the last mini:

Follow the Cherwell Instagram for updates on our online puzzles.

For even more crosswords and other puzzles, pick up a Cherwell print issue from your JCR or porters’ lodge!

Oxford Handball’s historic season: From promotion to British Champions

João Matos
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Oxford Handball’s historic season: From promotion to British Champions

The Oxford University Handball Club Men’s team, the Blues Team of the Year, has achieved what many thought impossible: winning the English Premier League and British SuperCup – the highest national tier of handball – all while balancing the academic demands of life at Oxford.

Handball, though under the radar in the UK, is one of the most-played sports in Europe. Fast-paced, physical, and high-scoring, it is often described as a mix of football, basketball, and rugby; some even label it as a dry version of water polo. Next season, you’ll be able to find Oxford University Handball Club (OUHaC) on the European stage, competing in the European Handball Federation (EHF) European Cup.

Just one year after earning promotion to the Premier League, Oxford’s team stormed through the competition to become national champions. In doing so, Oxford has gone toe-to-toe with university and non-university clubs, many with greater resources.

“This season has been about more than just results”, said Aaron Leu, team captain and OUHaC President for the 2024/25 season. “It’s the joy of playing together, the commitment from everyone involved, and the shared effort to grow both our club and the sport in the UK. Being successful on court is just the cherry on top of an already special journey.”

The Premier League campaign concluded in spectacular fashion at the English Final Four, held in London over the Early May Bank Holiday weekend. On Saturday 3rd May, Oxford beat Loughborough 32–24 in the semi-final. The following day, they faced reigning champions London GD in the final – the very team that had knocked them out of the English Cup earlier this year, in a hectic semi-final that went to overtime. This time, Oxford dominated, securing a stunning 36–25 win to lift the national title. A well-earned holiday on Monday helped with the recovery.

But the season was not over yet. Having qualified for the British SuperCup, Oxford had one final test: a showdown between the top two teams from England and Scotland, with a place in European competition at stake.

Just two weeks later, Oxford’s season reached even greater heights in Edinburgh, where the team clinched the British SuperCup title after a dramatic weekend. In the semi-final, they overcame Scottish league runners-up Kelvinside with a commanding performance (38-26). The final saw them face London GD once again, for the fifth time this season, after two wins and two losses. It was the ultimate challenge of the season.

And what a tightly contested final it was. With 17 goals by the back Soma Polonkai, and a heroic last-second penalty save by goalkeeper Joshua Sammet, Oxford forced overtime and ultimately triumphed 38-36, sealing yet another trophy to cap a remarkable year. 

“One of our biggest strengths is definitely the team spirit”, said Polonkai. “We have players of all age groups, different backgrounds and from all over the world but ultimately there is one thing that is common in all of us: we all love this sport. The English Premier League title was a true representation of our team spirit and the British SuperCup final just confirmed that if we fight together, we can achieve amazing things as a team.”

This season’s glory is not limited to league play. In February, Oxford claimed a tremendous victory over Cambridge in the annual Varsity Match, defeating their historic rivals by a record margin of 53–14. 

Later in March, the University team also secured the British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) Championship for the third consecutive year, cementing their dominance at British university level with a hard-fought final win over Loughborough.

OUHaC’s roster is a reflection of Europe’s handball tradition. Most players hail from across the world, many with years of top-level experience in their home countries.

“Its diversity has always been an important strength of our handball team”, said Jan Kropf, head coach and senior player in the team, who joined OUHaC ten years ago. “We have players with very different skill levels, allowing players new to the sport to develop their skills by learning from the experienced players…The importance of this could be seen in the British Supercup final, which we won in overtime, also because our key players were in great shape until the end of the match.”

Crucially, the team is not limited to Oxford University students. It also includes players from Oxford Brookes University, Oxford researchers, and members of the local community – a true collective effort that has helped the club succeed in both university-exclusive and open competitions.

Behind the scenes, success has required logistical wizardry. With no official-sized handball hall in the city of Oxford, training is held at Iffley Sports Centre – too small according to the rulebook – and all official matches require travel.

“We’ve had to treat every match as an away match,” explained Fernando Ramos Lopez, who juggles roles as coach, player, and fixture secretary. “We don’t have a properly sized court in Oxford. We manage to deal with that for training, but it makes it difficult to build home support during official matches, since we don’t actually play at home and people have to drive an hour to watch our games.”

Despite these challenges, the club has persevered, relying on member fees, university support, endowments, and a fair amount of improvisation. A GoFundMe campaign helped fund travel to the British SuperCup, with nearly £1,000 raised within a week. The club and committee are now working to secure funding in support of what they hope will be another successful season.

OUHaC is not only winning trophies – it is also investing in the sport’s future. Alongside the men’s and women’s university squads, the club fields a second men’s team in the regional league and runs youth coaching programmes in Oxfordshire schools.

These school partnerships are a requirement to compete at the highest national level, but for Oxford’s players, it’s about more than just ticking a box. Starting next year, the school teams will come together under the banner of the Oxford University Youth Handball Team. This new setup will welcome young players from across Oxfordshire who are eager to explore one of the most exciting and complete sports in the world. It’s a chance to grow, compete, and be part of a thriving handball community from an early age.

“Handball gave us a home away from home, it brought us together and gave us a sense of belonging,” said Martí Català, player and coach. “Now, we want to leave a legacy behind — something that lasts. That means getting more Oxonians to discover the sport, fall in love with it, and keep it growing long after we’re gone.”

The club is open to players of all levels, from international stars to absolute beginners. One thing is guaranteed: you’ll get a warm welcome, a decent workout, and a post-victory pint with the team. You might even score a few goals, unless you’re too busy googling what handball is.

With growing support across the country and preparations already underway for next season, Oxford now turns its focus to European competition. Their next challenge is the second round of the EHF European Cup, set to take place in Luxembourg against HC Berchem in October; a new stage, but the same strong team spirit.

As goalkeeper Sammet recalled: “The only thought in my head before the penalty was: this season cannot end here”, and it did not. Sammet’s decisive save in the dying moments of regular time took the British SuperCup final into overtime, a turning point that exemplified the team’s resilience. “I am incredibly proud to be part of this team, and what we achieved this season: how we managed the challenges of injuries, exam stress, and missing players by playing as one team, fighting for each other. I am excited to see what next season brings!”

For more information or updates, contact us at [email protected] and follow @OxfordHandball on Instagram. Both the semifinal and final matches can be watched on YouTube, on the Scottish Handball Association channel.

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