So rarely can a scoreline fail to tell the story of a football match. A 1-1 draw, between the sides that finished second and third last season respectively, would have been considered a good result for both sides before kickoff and a safe bet for the observer. However despite the relative quality of the two sides, the game quickly descended into farce.
None of this was helped by a no-show from the qualified league referee, leaving both sides to offer an inexperienced, unqualified individual to adjudicate over a game at the highest level of college football. The result was, almost ineviteably, chaos.
Yet the game started in good spirits as Anne’s had the entirety of the pressure in the first ten minutes as Wadham started poorly and failed to clear their lines. The closest effort early on came from left winger George Kynaston, who latched onto a neat through ball on the right hand side of the area to lash a shot off the bar. Anne’s contined to press, peppering numerous shots form range, but failed to beat an inspired Marc Rimmer in the Wadham goal.
Yet the game soon fell apart, with a number of tough challenges from both sides leading to unnecessary squabbling between the players, and without an impartial figure to provide authority in such a pressured environment, tempers rose sharply to boiling point.
Initially this failed to break Anne’s stride, with two further Kynaston efforts striking each post and a scrambled effort at a corner was headed over the line by Sean Lennon on the post. Yet with tempers fraying beyond repair, Wadham’s stand-in referee was soon subject to a barrage of abuse, particularly from Anne’s central midfielder Stephen Clarke who provided one expletive comment too many directly at the referee and was swiftly ordered from the pitch. Pandemonium ensued as the vast majority of the twenty two on the field, and some substitutes, rushed to air their grievances.
All this finally stemmed Anne’s flow and Wadham began to find some fluency to break the deadlock. A handball ten yards inside from the right hand touchline gave Tim Poole the chance to swing in a freekick, which deflected off countless players before Rob Deakin bundled it over the line.
Wadham held their lead until half time, allowing both sets of players to cool off and assess a farcical first half. With the boundaries of respect set by the new Anne’s referee, the second half started more conventionally, yet neither side provided any sort of flowing football. As legs tired, chances started to come; first a Wadham cross swung in on the right hand side was swiftly controlled by Michael Edwards but his attempt at a shot was quickly cut out.
Soon though Wadham’s continuing sluggishness cost them, and Anne’s began to again pepper Marc Rimmer’s goal. Yet much like in the first half, genuine chances were hard to come by. When last season’s top goalscorer Ed Border finally did get the chance to move clear he was cut out by the magnificent Shane Grosser at the heart of the Wadham defence.
The pressure though, finally told, as a switched ball sent the Anne’s left back racing along the left wing before sliding along an exellent ball into the path of substitute Jonny Pearson to slide into an empty net from a yard out.
Just as the game looked settled, there was still time for tempers to flare one more time, Tim Poole was sent free on the right hand side to square the ball to Wadham captain Adam Searles to bang the ball into an empty net. Poole though, was controversially adjudged offside by the Anne’s referee without a decision from the linesman, much to the suspicion of Searles, whose own four letter rant lead to his dismissal. After that, little drama ensued and the game fizzled out to a draw. Both sides though, will ultimately see the draw as a good result given the opposition, and will be looking to forget this absurd encounter and move on in their attempts to break Worcester’s dominance.
What OUSU needs
When Peter Bowden ran for OUSU Rep at Lincoln College, his manifesto was deceptively funny. He promised to make all the good things OUSU did better, and make all the bad things go away. And that’s not a summary.
But as with most of the stuff he writes, beneath the acidic, controversial humour, there is a rich vein of potent criticism and commentary. What he was saying was what a lot of people have been thinking for a while now: that OUSU is all petty politics and no action.
This is why Iwu’s election last year was, in my opinion, a step forward for our student union. Let’s take an example: when I first heard about student-run clubbing-venture ‘Pulse’ last Trinity, I was cautiously optimistic. When I found out that OUSU had last week entered into a partnership with them I thought, “OUSU have actually got something right”. For that Iwu deserves applause.
From the current early marketing campaign, it is clear that Pulse is run by two enterprising, experienced students who have a clear understanding of the Oxford nightlife scene and who are willing to outthink their competitors.
Are these two guys, though, the first ever Oxford students to have this entrepreneurial flair and experience of club promotion? I remain unconvinced. So why the hell hasn’t OUSU – in the face of a mammoth Rock Oxford and a sickly looking Zoo – not attempted this sort of venture before? Why have we been relying on Business Managers and VP (Finance)s of previous years to run our club nights? Rock Oxford’s success has been based on a network of student promoters. OUSU could have contracted their Zoo nights out to some of these people years ago, by simply offering them better incentives to defect. Instead it waited for these promoters to come to OUSU, with a viable policy thankfully served up on a platter. That’s just not good enough, and is a blemish on past OUSU Exectuives.
When the potential candidates in the OUSU Presidential contest become evident in the next few weeks, I want to see someone coming forward who has the initiative to propose these kind of schemes. I don’t want woolly phrases or simple platitudes; I want the kind of serious proposals that students can assess on a logical basis.
Hand in hand with this hope is the assertion that an OUSU President has to be competent. Anybody can stand up and claim an idea as their own, but what Oxford students deserve is a candidate who can prove that they have been a success in the past, and will continue to be a success in the future. Given that, for instance, welfare service provision is dependent on OUSU, there’s no room for mistakes, and no room for ineptitude. In short, we can’t afford to see OUSU suffer through a series of debacles that, say, the Oxford Union has been subjected to in recent years. In a university where thousands of the brightest young minds in the world are congregated, how hard can this really be?
Most importantly, I’ll be looking for an OUSU President that cares. And I don’t mean about OUSU or – whisper it quietly – about themselves, and their political aspirations. I mean about the students of Oxford; the services they receive, the support they get and the faith they have in their representative body. This point shouldn’t be underestimated; being OUSU President is an unglamorous job. Early mornings; hard work; constant criticism. We have to look for someone who’ll cope with all that, and still negotiate for endless hours to implement the plans they’ve promised us, the students they represent.
It is my full belief that there must be a student who fulfils all these criteria: initiative, competence and passion. But mixed in with this belief is the knowledge that only the average student – you and I – can elect him or her. If we truly wish to see a resurgent OUSU continue along its upward trajectory, we must admit our own responsibility to ensure this; we must find the right candidate, and not content ourselves to be fooled by the shiny signs that inevitably find themselves outside our colleges come election day.