Sport makes you do strange things. Why, for instance, did I find myself skidding down the High Street on a borrowed bike with no lights at 7 p.m. on a Monday night, drenched to the skin? I honestly couldn’t tell you what made me do it, but I could tell you that two hours later I was glad that I did. On a night when the rain for most of the match could only be described as torrential, Oxford lit up Iffley Road for 80 minutes when they crushed the Worcester Warriors 43-8. The Zurich Premiership outfit would have been expected to challenge the Blues, who so far are unbeaten this season. These men are paid to play rugby, and I imagine would not have enjoyed the experience of being turned over by a bunch of undergraduates and the odd All Black.

And indeed, from the start it looked as if the professionals would be too strong for the amateurs, as Worcester raced out of the blocks. A simple step by their fly-half broke the gain line and some powerful drives at the fringes bought them to the Oxford 22, before a cross kick in behind the Oxford backs found no one at home and was pounced upon by Tom Wheatcroft for the opening score. Despite Worcester missing the subsequent conversion it looked as if Oxford were in for a miserable night. However, almost immediately Oxford began exerting pressure at the other end of the field, being held up over the line before conceding a scrum. Although the move broke down, pressure from the scrum forced a charge down and Ross Swanson was quickest to react, plucking the ball out of the air and touching down. With the conversion putting Oxford up 7-5, the game suddenly had a very different complexion.

Oxford started dominating the breakdown, seemingly turning the Worcester forwards over at will. The Blues were further helped by the fact that Worcester were unable to secure any form of line-up ball, whilst their back three seemed to be involved in a competition as to who could make the most mistakes. It was unsurprisingly not long before Oxford pulled further ahead. This time the foundations were laid by the pack, who rumbled the ball into the Worcester 22 through four or five phases, before Brendan McKerchar, the Blues scrum half, darted down the blind side and offloaded impressively to young wing Will Browne, who finished in style.

With another successful conversion from Gregory, and the Blues pack controlling the ruck area, the only thing stopping them from establishing a strangle hold over the game was their persistent infringement. After Worcester spurned one kickable opportunity, they finally put some more points on the board, making the score 14-8. Although this put them within a score of the hosts, Oxford did not seem unduly troubled and immediately turned down the opportunity to reply when given a penalty.

‘Oxford lit up Iffley Road for 80 minutes’

The decision to go for the scrum was vindicated however, as once again Oxford’s forwards showed good ball retention skills before finally crashing over the line. As it neared half time the only saving grace for Worcester was that they seemed to have the ear of the referee, as he continually penalised Oxford at the breakdown. Thankfully, Worcester repaid his kindness by refusing to win any set piece ball whilst the backs seemed to forget how to catch. Despite the visitors’ inadequacies, when they did occasionally hang onto the ball they were met by a very organised and aggressive Oxford defence. With seconds remaining, Oxford once again camped themselves inside the Worcester 22, and the seemingly inevitable try came in the form of Richard Lutton barrelling over from short range. As Tom Gregory’s kick went sailing inexorably between the posts, the half came to an end, leaving Worcester to wonder how they had ever found themselves in this position. At 26-8, and with Oxford completely in the ascendancy, it looked as if the result was now merely a forgone conclusion. Both teams seemed to think this was the case as well, with the second half becoming more of a subdued affair. After a mistake by the Worcester winger under a high ball, Browne dropped on the ball for his second try of the night.

‘A solid victory quickly turned into a rout’

Oxford now seemed content to dictate the pace of the game, giving most of the bench a run out. The wholesale changes disrupted the flow of the game somewhat, especially when the impressive Ross Swanson made way, whose quality passing had giving the backs a real sense of pace all night. One of the Blues substitutes determined prove his worth was Simon Ackroyd, who was intent on making an impression on the ribs of the Worcester players. The Keble flanker put in a number of crunching hits, and he seemed determined to try and mark.

What seemed like a solid victory quickly turned into a rout in the final ten minutes, with both Tom Gregory and Tim Catling both crossing to complete Worcester’s humiliation. Catling, whose blistering speed had only been contained by Worcester due to the fact that he had had limited space all night, finally got the opening he craved for, and gladly raced over. As Oxford lost their inhibitions and started running from everywhere they started making a few mistakes, although Worcester still seemed unable to capitalise on any scraps they were given. When the final whistle blew, the result was comprehensive, Oxford’s victory complete. With the Varsity Match always looming ever larger on the horizon this was a very good result for the Blues, who continued their unblemished record. Although a long way off, this Oxford team look as if they have the makings of champions.

Two months into the Boat Race campaign and we’ve been dodging unconventional obstacles. The most impressive name in our squad is owned by Winter Mead III (Christ Church). Winter failed to show for training one morning and wasn’t seen for two weeks, much to our collective surprise. News reports that the US government had extradited him on outstanding criminal charges were proved false and in fact his visa had simply expired. A late night visit by the Foreign Office saw him rapidly deported him back to the states.

It’s like the satisfaction of watching a child learning something for the first time – our American colleagues are slowly understanding English culture and how to look after themselves (Winter excluded), but there are still some lapses. Colin Keogh (Oriel) thought he had to learn Latin fluently in order to complete matriculation. After studying Loeb Latin texts for days, he was alerted to his mistake.
In Week 1 we lent our support to the Oxford Rugby boys in their match against Brookes. As the only twenty supporters for Oxford Uni in the grandstand, we were slightly outnumbered by the one thousand Brookes supporters. They were merciless in directing war-cries at us and as the scoreboard swung between the two teams, we were even pelted with beer cans. This behaviour was totally unprovoked by us and had nothing to do with our shouts of support. Thankfully our side won with a last-minute drop goal to steal victory.

It’s not all fun and games. Recently we have done a lot of physiology training at the OUBC building on Iffley Road Sports Complex. It involves rowing hard on an ergo followed by the coaches taking blood samples from our ears (seriously). Sounds harmless enough, but some staff take sadistic delight in stabbing us with needles far more than necessary. When arriving for such a test, rowers are confronted by something like a scene from the movie Hostel.

There is blood sprayed over the floor, rowers staggering dazed with half-missing ears and coaches cackling like lunatics and chasing them with syringes. Apparently this is all necessary for our training.

We have shared several more crew dates, including with the Oxford Athletics Club girls. Kukui generously hosted us for the evening. Yet many of our guys are still unlucky in love and we are hoping to be approached by other clubs for crew dates. Preparations have begun for the Boat Race Ball and it is shaping up as an outrageously great event.

Second division favourites Magdalen followed up victory over Christ Church last week with a 48-24 trouncing of Worcester, affirming their promise. A somewhat scrappy game frequently interrupted by penalties saw the Magdalen pack repeatedly dominate their opponents. With neither side impeccable in defence, this was the determining factor, and the scoreline pays suitable tribute to the overwhelming Magdalen drive. Coupled with some incisive play by their backs, Worcester’s response was never truly adequate, mixing the classy with the confused.

The tone was set from the first by a scrum, following Worcester’s kick-off, which Magdalen drove from their 22-yard line to the centre, from which position they harassed the Worcester line mercilessly. Outside-centre Paul Morris set his fullback up nicely after a deception and the beleaguered defence scrambled to recover; a second run shortly after from the same player, however, resulted in Magdalen taking a line-out close to the Worcester line. Inside-centre David Miller capitalised on this proximity and claimed a try, duly converted by his namesake Boycott.

Magdalen repeated the trick within minutes, driving another scrum to the Worcester 22-yard line; the consistently impressive number 8 Obi Agbim broke out from this and set Miller up with his second. Boycott this time could not convert a tricky kick, but with a 12-0 score and complete dominance this did not cause any concern to the small coterie of Magdalen supporters gathered at the touchline.

Indeed, Worcester’s first aggressive moves of the game came about only as Magdalen errors; a knock-on in the scrum and a spilled line-out allowed them to edge close to their opponent’s line. At this point Magdalen’s only serious failing became apparent: their inability to clear from their own line. Worcester persistently clogged them, and finally Beecroft finished off a swift move between his inside-centre and fly-half to score his team’s first points. A conversion was sorely needed but missed out on; nonetheless, with Magdalen seen to be vulnerable when pressured, Worcester sniffed a chance.

Almost immediately, though, this was snatched from them; Magdalen’s pack thundered to the opposite end and a pair of Morrises, centre Paul and hooker Charles, pushed through for the latter to score under the posts. The easy conversion only confirmed Worcester’s plight. Agbim then added personal flair to Magdalen’s powerhouse attack; rising to take a pass from his team’s line-out, he charged from the centre to add a fourth, and by the half-time whistle Worcester trailed 26-5.

They began the re-start determinedly; for the first time they held a scrum, and won a Magdalen line-out.

Unfortunately for them, however, they were swiftly pegged back to their own line; a series of scrums and scrabbles could not prevent the Magdalen flanker bursting through to enable Agbim to take his second. Worcester stuck to their guns, though, and a superb run by fly-half Tom Bryan down the right flank was rewarded by O’Connor’s try, which Bryan duly converted to render the score 33-12. Agbim quickly matched this, completing a hat-trick with a fleet-footed dash, and Magdalen were by now confident enough to test their inside-centre’s kicking abilities, replacing the scrum-half in attempting the conversion; sure enough, he missed, but as a statement of confidence, it was a soaring success.

Worcester captain Moubray made a powerful answer with a full-blooded charge to the Magdalen line, which scrum-half Campbell popped over, but by now both teams were tiring. The Worcester defence could not hold back a charge-down by the number 10 and subsequent try, but nor could Magdalen protect their line. After a prolonged Worcester presence and several scrums, the Magdalen pack at the last seemed not quite so authoritative as before, with one lock sin-binned for withholding the ball and they conceded a final Worcester try as a result.

The last play of the match was fittingly to Magdalen however; having stolen a Worcester ball Richard Ogden was able to cross over, and take his team to a deserved 50, a marker for other sides to be wary of. Neither team’s performance was polished or invulnerable, but Magdalen will reckon to have the force to ride roughshod even over the most sparkling opposition.

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.

Global sport has been careening into financial absurdity. Recently, Gordon Brown pointed to an “age of irresponsibility” as the worst offender behind the notorious credit crunch. With unprecedented sums bandied about in sport, can we suggest that it too is heading for failure?

Football, naturally, is the chief culprit. Wages and transfer fees here have been mind-boggling since the conception of the Premier League, but now the numbers are approaching the, well, mental. The debt of the nation’s two ‘richest’ clubs, Chelsea and Man United, is estimated at a whopping £1.5 billion, and the buck does not stop with the big boys. F.A. Cup holders Portsmouth are reportedly spending a surely unsustainable 90% of their income on wages, while West Ham are the subject of a lawsuit from Sheffield United to the tune of some £50 million. Even lowly Luton Town, bottom of the football league, are suffering a pretty ridiculous 30 point deduction this season as punishment for various financial irregularities.

However, football isn’t sitting alone in the naughty corner of the sporting world. Cricket, one of the world’s most traditional sports, has become the latest victim of a cash-ridden greed virus. 2008 saw the start of the Indian Premier League, or IPL, contended between a group of eight American-style franchises. Yet this is no ordinary league but a towering branded behemoth, a gravy train without parallel in the sport. World stars have been bought for extraordinary sums in auctions by the franchises; India one day captain Mahendra Dohni went for a huge $1.5 million, while the Indian Cricket Board made $800 million dollars in branding and TV rights in the run-up alone. More recently, American billionaire Alan Stanford has set up a 20-20 game between a Stanford Select XI and England with the winning team taking $20 million to be split among the players and staff. For those looking for a genuine reason why such a match might take place, don’t worry: there really isn’t one.

Boom and bust

All this is just damn unstable. Chelsea’s debt is estimated somewhere around £730 million, yet at the moment some £500 million is written off as interest free loan from their benefactor and billionaire owner, Roman Abramovich. Can this really last? Theoretically, were Abramovich to get bored with his plaything, Chelsea would be faced with just eighteen months to assemble an unobtainable sum of money to pay him back. Debate will rage as to the likelihood of billionaire owners going AWOL on their clubs, but financial problems for these people are not as impossible as they may seem. Just two weeks ago advisers close to Abramovich were forced to play down talk that he had lost some $12 billion with share collapses, a tidy sum even for one so unimaginably wealthy.

If this seems ridiculous, consider the potential problems for Manchester United, with debt almost as large and owners not nearly as wealthy, or Fulham, with their Premier League survival still so dependent on the whims of the enigmatic Mohammed Al-Fayed. Many would resist tears if such clubs went bust due to their own mistakes, but the consequences for fans would be dire. Sad it may be, but supporting football is life for many and the choice of club something ingrained in their person. If the biggest and richest aren’t immune to decline, what’s to protect the little guys?

If all this seems like just pointless talk about ridiculous sums of money and posing prima-donnas, it’s not. These financial extremities damage the very fabric of the sports they are supposedly helping to evolve. The quality of the traditional English county league is under great threat from the riches of the IPL; Nottingham and Lancashire lost key stars David Hussey and Brad Hodge to Kolkata and the IPL, respectively. They and the numerous other stars departing for Eastern shores will spout forth about wanting to play regularly amongst the best players in the world, but as one member of the Lancashire county hierarchy recently admitted, if a county can offer £60-70,000 a year to it’s top stars while the IPL clubs offer nearer £250,000, what’s a player to do?

Testing, testing, twenty-twenty…

Moreover the newly acquired wealth of cricket damages its purity. Test cricket is considered by all in the know as the pinnacle of the sport, a five-day epic contest. Now, the IPL and the Stanford match are threatening this ideal. With so much money becoming available in 20-20 cricket, what’s to stop players from concentrating on short-term, risky strategies suited to this form of the game, rather than the perfection of technique required for test cricket? This is not what 20-20 was founded for. It was meant to bring excitement back to the game with swashbuckling six-hitting and frantic last-ditch chases: to bring fans back into the game as a whole. Now it is beginning to damage the game at its highest level. This may sound like the sort of baseless speculation traded by traditionalists, but the money involved justifies the fear. Just this year Sri Lanka failed to guarantee that their best side would come on the test tour to England next year, as many of them, including stars such as Jayawardene, Sangakkara and Muralitharan, have clashing fixtures with their IPL clubs.
Even competition suffers. Everton are a classic example.

In recent times they have been the only side to break the dominance of the so-called ‘Big Four’, with a fourth place finish at the expense of rivals Liverpool in 2005. Yet their progress has hit a glass ceiling as their relative poverty in Premier League terms has pulled them back. The Everton hierarchy explicitly addressed the problem at the club’s EGM; the Chairman, Bill Kenright, is reported on the BBC Sport website to have flatly stated, “I’m a pauper when it comes to other chairmen…I want Everton to have a billionaire, but it is not me.” Evidently no longer is it enough for a club to have a great manager and to rely on team spirit, making that first tackle. Now, money talks to such an extent that even a multi-millionaire possesses insufficient funds for success.

Yet for all this, is sport actually dying? Is it heck. While we can all pontificate about the potential decline of the elites, there are some areas of sport that will never die. Take Oxford college sport. Does this rely on wads of cash? I would say I wish, but I really don’t. What sport at such a grass-roots level survives on is passion, enthusiasm, camaraderie; all the things that makes sport so great in the first place. While all the worries expressed above are more than legitimate, as long as the factors that make sport so exciting remain, such worries can be shelved, for now.

As part of the squad that beat Cambridge last year, coming third in the individual competition, Amy Morreau has proven herself to be a focused, determined, and skillful individual. Yet on first meeting Amy, with her cheeky giggle and laid-back attitude, you might never guess that she was the current Oxford Gymnastics captain, nor that she ever represented Wales in her discipline. The 20-year old from Cardiff could hardly be any more modest about her achievements and more passionate about her sport, unlike some arrogant young athletes. As she herself jokes, ‘it’s not always gym-nice-tics’.

Amy recalls that her agility wasn’t always seen as a gift. ‘I always seemed to be the only one of my friends as a child who could attempt a handstand at an early age, the only difficulty being the way down…my mum was slightly concerned, but thought the best solution must be gymnastics lessons’. Fast-forward fifteen-odd years and Amy is dedicating a huge part of her life to doing what she loves.

Training five times a week back in Wales and twice weekly at University, whilst also fitting in a physics degree at Worcester College, Amy admits that training can put quite a strain on life: ‘I’m a fun-loving person. My friends and family mean so much to me, but sometimes training for competitions or performances just has to come first’.

Another side to gymnastics which has captivated Amy has led her into acrobatics and ultimately to the circus: ‘I found a unicycle in my shed one day and just decided to learn how to ride it. When I had mastered that, my dad took me along to join the local circus (NoFit state circus), where I got stuck into acrobatics’. Her dedication to the more spectacular side of gymnastics has seen Amy utilise her skills to entertain and thrill at venues across the U.K. including some remarkable shows at this year’s Glastonbury festival.

So what does the future hold for the pocket-sized, happy-go-lucky Amy? A mischievous smile betrays no signs of the drive within her as she shrugs off any suggestions of dropping her big-top ambitions: ‘Hopefully I’ll get a degree and can dedicate myself to the circus a bit more. I’m not quite ready for a proper job just yet!’