The best thing about the Café Metropole is the chairs. They are wicker, made out of real straw and have armrests which slope into a gentle incline. I can sit in one of these chairs for hours without feeling in the least uncomfortable. They’re sufficiently upright to allow you to work on the marble table top without feeling awkward and the waiters check all of them regularly so you needn’t experience the annoying see-saw effect when one of the legs is too long. The cast iron tables are good and sturdy too. Couches along the walls cater to those in languorous mood. No one objects if you have a short nap stretched out on one of these beneath the crisp folds of a newspaper. Gazettophiles are well catered for at the Metropole. The management places a comprehensive selection of newspapers and periodicals at our disposal. everything from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to Mad magazine is on offer. All these publications are suspended from the walls attached to solid oak rods so they cannot be dismembered. Not that the clientele of the café would be so thoughtless. Those with time on their hands – students, artists, writers – are well represented. Professionals escape the tedium of their offi ces and conduct conferences on one of the couches. The café is big enough for small children to be unobtrusive so that families feel welcome. Workmen take their morning café at the zinc-topped bar. Men of letters (even journalists) get a ten per cent discount. That is unless the major-domo, a red haired Italian called elio, has taken issue with that morning’s editorial. Always ready with a bar of Pavarotti, he reserves choice verses of Catullus in the original Latin for initiates. If anyone has had a book published or even a single poem, a glass of prosecco is obligatory. The service is always impeccable at the Metropole and the same waiters and baristas have been there for decades. They like to talk to the customers without prying into personal details. The manager doesn’t instruct them to pressure idlers into ordering more drinks to justify taking up a table. In truth, there is no manager. The Café Metropole has been owned and run by its staff for as long as anyone can remember. Profits and tips are split equally: no one gets a bigger share. They all have an interest in the café’s continued popularity. Indeed, they are rich men. elio spends August in a Tuscan villa and the sports cars beside the door belong to the waiters. Their wealth does not come from ripping us off. An espresso costs 70 pence at the Metropole. I have never had a bad one there. It arrives in a small white cup and saucer. It is short and strong. Anyone stupid enough to order a double will be given two separate cups of coffee. The surface of the coffee is coated in a thick brown cream. When I pour on the sugar, it remains suspended there for a few moments before sliding to the bottom. You shouldn’t stir coffee like this. It is intended to be a tale of two flavours; down it in one and savour first the robust bitterness and then the slow flowing sweetness. They take such pride in their coffee at the Metropole that often I have been presented with a perfect looking espresso only to have it whipped away by the same waiter. He goes to berate the barista and returns with another sumptuous espresso, this one on the house, apologising that the previous effort hadn’t reached his standards. For eight pounds you can get the dish of the day, a glass of house wine and a coffee at lunch time. The food is always good and simply prepared. A cassoulet on Monday perhaps, fish pie on Tuesday, spaghetti carbonara (prepared in the proper way, without cream) on Wednesday, mushroom risotto on Thursday and maybe fresh fried mackerel on Friday. I find myself eating there every day for weeks on end. The head chef is Greek and called Bruna. She speaks six languages with twelve accents. Ask why she doesn’t dish up any Keftedes or Moussaka and she’ll say, “Go to Athens if you want gas.” On the last Friday of each month, regulars are invited to an eight course feast. The last one began with tuna carpaccio coated in truffl e shavings and ended with the largest raspberry souffl é I have ever seen. In between, chicken with slivers of foie gras inserted under the skin was particularly memorable. elio scurries continually with a succession of oddities plucked from the Metropole’s cellar, insisting we try each one. We pay forty pounds for the privilege but this can barely cover the costs. No one arranges to meet anyone at the Metropole. You’re always bound to see someone you know. Many come to work there but it’s accepted that conversation takes precedence. Strangers are always welcome to join in. Anyone looking forlorn at the adjacent table will have their opinion solicited. Many a beautiful friendship has begun this way and more besides. Elio proudly declares that the Metropole has been responsible for at least 24 marriages (seven divorces, alas), 67 children and one Nobel Prize. They don’t sell cigarettes at the Metropole but if you ask them they’ll produce a wooden box of cigarettes gratis. No one takes advantage of this generosity. The tables are spaced well enough apart and the domed glass ceiling is high and well ventilated so that abstainers barely notice the smell. Pipe and cigar smokers have a refuge at the Metropole too. The only music at the Metropole is the jazz band that plays on Thursday nights and the occasional string quartet. There is a transistor radio behind the bar on which the waiters listen to football but the thought of introducing a sound system throughout the café has never occurred. When one of the waiters suggested introducing a television for the big games, he nearly lost his share in the business. The Metropole opens at seven and closes at two. Often have I woken after twelve and gone to the Metropole for a soporific cognac though I tend to see a friend or at least elio looking for advice on the sonnet he’s writing. I forget why I came there and stay till after closing time arguing some finer point of versification. If anyone ever gets out of hand as the night wears on, elio knows exactly when to call a taxi. everyone’s been in the same position so no one looks down on a drunk. The incident is never recalled when the beleaguered party returns to the café and elio will feign ignorance if he or she attempts to apologise for their conduct. The walls of the Metropole are hung with photographs, drawings and paintings donated by customers. These are all of a high quality, elio has good taste. Indeed, artists regard it as an honour to have a work accepted by the Metropole. The café is acknowledged to have accumulated one of the city’s best art collections. Only a small portion of this can be displayed at any one time. I have seen such treasures in the back rooms: a signed Cartier-Bresson print, paintings by Bacon and Hockney, Giacometti sketches, and one remarkable early Picasso provided by a lifelong customer in his will. In fine weather, most choose to sit on the terrasse. Beer is the drink for thirst; anyone showing off with the wine list outside will go out of elio’s good books. I’ve spent whole days sitting in the sun out there. The seats are arranged in rows so people watching is natural. The Metropole is in a secluded square in the centre of the city. There’s no traffi c but people are always walking through. On average, I’d say one in four stop at the café. I never expect to pass by the Metropole without stopping for a drink. even if I am going to an appointment elsewhere, someone I know will inevitably call me over for a half pint. did I mention they only serve half pints? It’s no more expensive to have two half pints at the Metropole than a whole one in a pub. “Festina lente, festina lente” murmurs elio if anyone ever asks why. Astute readers will have grasped by now that the Café Metropole does not exist, at least anywhere that I know. It is my ideal café. I know a few cafés which have some of the qualities of the Metropole but nowhere are they all combined. Some of its qualities are unlikely to be found anywhere. An ideal is to be aspired to, if never obtained. In Oxford we are particularly poorly served for cafés. No one seems to regard café-going as an assumed daily activity like brushing your teeth or walking the dog. Nowhere is there even a hint of the Metropole’s social dynamic. People don’t go to cafés alone because they’re unlikely to bump into a friend in a similar position. It is surprising that, of all people, students can’t master the art of stylishly idling the day away. The Oxford student’s life is certainly a tale of woe. He or she will, in a typical week, sit at their desk working until the early hours nearly every other day. Such a lifestyle is tiresome and many rely upon a much-loved stimulant to help keep them alert. In Oxford, coffee is the industrious student’s most common companion during the long, long winter nights.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Figs, Figures and Figureheads
RAIN IS never pure but it feels good on my tongue. Nothing is ever pure but it feels good on my tongue. Nothing but rain has passed through my imagination for days and yet these translucent drops fall into that membrane and out the other side like copper. An autumn of bronze and green. Cymbals spin past my head. The funeral? A congregation of broken fuses, of gone-out light bulbs, comes clicking back to life as people spoke. Soggy red jewels gleamed and rattled in their old aortas. The people in the nave murmured like a cornfield of black cotton heads. My father was burnt to a crisp. He rests in that porcelain chrysalis at the front of the church like the icing from a cake of burnt novels. Someone placed a single clammy fig next to his body, a Lilliputian at the beck of a giant, and read “the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind,” from some part of the Bible. “I love the Bible, it’s so absurdly accurate, so absurd, so accurate.” I remember him saying that. That ash is not my father. These letters are not my father. “You must remember son, all things are relative. One god in ten makes it. I’d say that’s about right. I mean what’s a god? An idea? A father? A lover?” My hair, like fat leeches, bleeds rain into my tears. I wipe them. Most of my father’s trees were there. Ben Pigeon (Pink Horsechestnut, 1982, if the front door is 12 o’clock he is 2:30) turned out to be as interesting as his foliage suggests, an artist who designed the fiver. He numbed me, “Your father was the sole inspiration for the sun on that note, he made me look at it differently.” Maggie demant (Japanese Mapel, 1999, due west) numbed, “He couldn’t possibly have loved your mother any more. It’s just not possible for a human being to love more than that.” Vincent Moon (Sycamore, 1997, in line with the new electric pylons) informed me that “He asked me to look after his will, it’s fairly straight forward, he left it all to you.” He hands me the frail reincarnated pages bound by a white plastic spiral I puncture the silver seal of a box of wine like a fish eye. I leave. I walk back towards the house in the sponge strangling sky, Mary orbiting – a moon always at six o’clock as I spiral straight. I walk up to the road and look back down towards the house. A confetti of soaking dust, a deluge of melting glass softens my shoulders. Just then I notice a strange vehicle honing into view. It is a wooden cart being pulled by an old man; the metal spokes grinding the shrapnel of the roadlike teeth being crushed into a mortar by a pestle. As the rickety blue wood and brown bolts approach closer through the drizzle I notice that a horses stuffed head has been fixed to the front of the cart. On the flat of the cart lies another, full-bodied horse staring out of an eye like a lame universe. The man has hair like a candy-flossed cloud, a tongue as hard as the road, taught skin and a learned smile. He looks up at me from his arched back. “Out for a walk?” I nod. “My horse got lame, have to take him home, the master becomes the mistress, or the mistress becomes the master, you know what I mean. He’s been heroic everyday til now, like Michael the First,” he gestured to the stuffed head, its eyes had “Golf is Life” embossed on their perforated white balls. “He was such a good horse, and now poor Michael the Second’s on his way to the glue factory in the sky.” He whimpered. “don’t you mean horse heaven?” I say. “Oh yes, that’s right… Still must be getting on. No time for horsing about!” He burst into laughter, his blazing whispers of hair at the mercy of this heavenly acupuncture. Michael the Second’s head dripping wet on to the whale skin of the road. I walk and watch the old man’s image and cargo disseminate past a startled, soaking Mary. As I se the house an out of control police car, its engine bleating, its lights fuelled by petrol bombs and channeled into two cones of yellow comes steaming past me and crashes into the first fig tree on my left. The ancient trunk gives like it is filled with a person on a stage not wood and then sags onto the bonnet. The door swings open and a woman I recognize flops onto the grass, clutching a bottle of whisky that swills and evaporates from her wrist. She crawls for a few metres and then raises herself up. “There you are!” she ejaculates. “Wanted to speak to you,” she wipes the mud from her shins. “Let’s get you inside.” “No, I need to speak to you here.” I start walking and she follows. “I am just going to say it before I get sober enough to not say it: you have a sister, my daughter, she was with me the other day when we came around with my mother. I will love your father until I am dead.” She pauses. “Are those toes?” The headlights of the police car set the compost heap alight. Mary had caught me up. Stars fall like figs on to a white bonnet. Figs, Figures and Figureheads continues next week.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Passe Notes: The Hildabeast
So, not a graceful creature of the savannah, I’m guessing? Sadly not. Rather an inmate at Oxford’s last remaining women’s college. Disappointingly though few of the beasts grazing the banks of the Cherwell are particularly leggy or graceful, unless they happen to be an errant deer from Magdalen.
Where exactly is St Hilda’s then? Both geographically, and in terms of options for the desperate, the college is situated half- way to Brookes. It’s pleasant pastoral setting provides an oasis of peace where the only disruption is the ticking of the girls’ synchronized menstrual cycles. However, despite it’s tangible appeal for many Oxford students Hilda’s lies in the same category as Camelot, a place they have read about in books but which may or may not exist. If all else fails though you can always look at bottom of the Norrington table, as it crops up there without fail.
Really – I’d heard it is an academic powerhouse? Perhaps in comparison to the ‘University’ of Luton, but it has to be said it’s no Merton. Hilda’s perennial placing in the Vauxhall conference of Oxford’s academic league may have something to do with it scavenging the scraps that fall from the table of the admissions process, but it is mentioned less often that the Hildabeasts actually do no worse than girls elsewhere in Oxford. They just haven’t got any boys to get firsts for them. Proof indeed that curly handwriting and diligence can only get you so far.
So why don’t they admit male students? It is rumoured that the cost of mass urinal construction would be too much for the college’s fragile finances to bear. And Hilda’s also undeniably supports gender equality in the university. After all, for St Benet’s to continue to educate the cream of Oxford – the rich and thick – then there has to be somewhere for their sisters to go when they don’t get into Bristol.
Apparently the college has a particularly diverse student body? Indeed it does, although contrary to popular belief and the pictures in the alternative prospectus of drunken girl-on-girl twister action, not all St. Hilda’s students are lesbians. With such a foreign legion present many of them are bi…lingual. Others applied to proper colleges and ended up there through no fault of their own.
But aren’t the girls heavily involved in all aspects of student life? Certainly. The same alternative prospectus boasts that “Hilda’s girls are amongst the best at getting out there and finding it.” A fact which is attested to by the college’s notorious 4am fire drills, when the bewilderhildabeasts standing outside in the rain are invariably gravely outnumbered by shifty looking men in ill-fitting borrowed pink dressing gowns. If you are desperate and dateless, get on the case up Cowley Place. Just don’t wake up and smell the oestrogen.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Blues sport
Oxford fencer makes top ten at European Championships Sophie Troiano of Christ Church also represented Great Britain, fencing in the women’s foil. Ken Okamura
First half Oxford blitz does for Nottingham netballers Oxford extended their netball winning streak with a 39-27 win against Notingham II. Oxford had the game won by half time, having raced to a 25-10 lead. In the second half they slowed up, and the Nottingham side closed up thanks to Ellie Crush, their exceptionally accurate Goal Attack. Oxford’s lead never looked in doubt, however, and they pulled away again in the final quarter.Meanwhile, the Roos annahilated Staffs II by a staggering score of 121-1.Binyamin Even
Women Hockey Blues suffer disappointing drawOxford slumped to a disappointing draw against St Mary’s this week, squandering a torrent of possession and chances to end up all square at 1-1. The first half saw a succession of squandered short corners and a gradual erosion of the composure. The turning point appeared to have arrived deep in the first half when Beth Wild won a penalty flick after two atrocious challenges; but Vicky Anderson was denied by the post. Jo Sumpter finally broke the deadlock, but Oxford continued to waste opportunities. They were punished after half time, as Mary’s scored a controversial equaliser following a scramble in the Oxford area. The Blues will aim to get back on track against Bath next week.Lisa RavenscroftMagdalen fresher Jamie Kenber has claimed ninth place at the Junior Eeuropean Championships in Tapolca, Hungary. The current British men’s senior foil champion was unbeaten in the poule round, followed by two knockout contests, before losing to Italian Martino Minuto in the last sixteen, 15-9. He also formed part of the British foil team which came fifth.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
College sport
BNC maintain 100% hockey record at New’s expense: Brasenose confirmed their status as favourites for the college hockey Championship with a 4-1 win over previously unbeaten New College.After an evenly balanced opening period, a quick break by the pacey Phil Siddorn released Guy Hemus to put BNC ahead. With both sides disorganised at the back Brasenose again capitalised, Mike Herring thundering in a short corner. Just before half time, however, New struck back, a fast break seeing the ball in the BNC net for the first time this season. But BNC were soon on top again. Herring stretched their lead once more, before completing his hat-trick after Maitland had won a penalty flick.Alexander SmithQueen’s concessions ensureCorpus’ first division survivalA conceded game handed Corpus/Somerville victory in the relegation dogfight at the bottom of the first division of college rugby this Tuesday.Going into the final round, any of the teams risked the drop. However, Queen’s, beset by injuries, were forced to concede their final game against Corpus/Somerville, leaving them with no wins for the season and Corpus with two. Having already beaten they were assured another season of first division rugby, thanks to a regulation stating that results between teams finishing on equal points will determine their order.Binyamin EvenCatz win not enough to claim title: St Catherine’s ended a memorable season with a convincing but forgetable 60-0 win over exeter. Exeter have been unfortunate with Catz started slowly, but they eventually found their stride in the second half. exeter captain Joe Bailey gave credit to his side in the face of such a resounding loss; "You can’t fault the effort of this team, we struggled to even string together a side due to injuries but it’s been a privilege to play with such a special group of guys." For St Catz this victory completed a successful season, and Captain Fergus O’Sullivan warned future rivals that "we’ve got strength to build on, next season we’re aiming for the top spot." injuries this season and the match was ended as a contest early on when yet another injury to Will Cochrame left his side with just fourteen players. Nick HawkerHugh’s cruise to four goal victorySt Hugh’s set out their intentions for the Premier division football campaign in emphatic style, overwhelming champions Queen’s with two goals in each half.Queen’s never looked likely to penetrate Hugh’s’ rock-solid defensive partnership of Alex Lesley and James Bath – and never even forced the goalkeeper to make a notable save. Woeful all round except in their ultimately futile determination to snatch a consolation goal, the champions will be wondering whether next season might be spent in the First division.Joshua Freedman ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Oxford come from behind to crush tired Cambridge
Oxford beat Cambridge 22-25 18-25 25-12 25-22 15-7Oxford’s volleyball team went from hell to heaven last Wednesday as they turned around what was looking like a straight humiliation at Iffley Road. As the canon-like booming of the two sides’ spikes died down, however, the Blues were left victorious by three sets to two, leaving Cambridge to ponder how they let slip a two set lead. Throughout the match, Oxford were the classier side. Led by captain Jack Turner and giant spikers Greg Dochuk and Anders Karup, they had too much power and skill for the Tabs when they got their plays right. Early on, however, they rarely did. No matter how tall your spikers are, nor how acrobatic your captain, they are of little use if you serve into the net, or misread your team-mates’ set ups. The Blues had suffered some injury enforced changes, but their play was too inaccurate to be excused by this, as even experienced combinations misfired. despite the solidity of some of the Cambridge play, they were largely gifted the first two sets by Oxford, 22-25 and 18-25. At this point, the Blues’ supporters were getting nervous. The Volleyball club has organised itself to ensure women players always attend men’s matches, and vice versa, and the results were impressive: a dozen or so knowledgeable, fanatic and incredibly vocal supporters, cheering every Oxford play, even when supposedly acting as line judges. Back on the court, some choice words must have been exchanged in the Oxford huddle, for they came out a different side. Rather than gift Cambridge an early lead through needless errors, they tightened up their play to move into a comfortable lead. Despite one Cambridge timeout after another, Oxford’s lead soon grew from 7-4 to 16-9. Aided by a dig by libero denis Zuev from almost six feet outside the court, Oxford closed out the set 25-10. The fourth set was to follow. To their credit, the Tabs raised their game, but the set turned with a series of seven successive winning deliveries from Jeff Young, including an ace. Though Dan Maranhao was arguably lucky to get away with a yellow card after ‘verbalising the referee’, the Tabs never recovered from Young’s winning series, losing the set 25-22. In the fifth, tie breaker set, the Tabs’ heads finally went down. Oxford raced to a 6-0 lead, and by the time the Tabs got into the set, Oxford had it, 15-7. Turner, commenting on the win, said "We came out very slowly, and we took a lot of time getting our heads in. But we were always much more aggressive, we just needed to play simple volleyball and not get carried away. It’s only our second game, so it was just a question of getting match fit and in practice."ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Gallic farce amidst golf’s gender battle
The Royal and Ancient Golf Club’s decision to allow women to enter the Open Championship will provide the likes of Michelle Wie, teeing off in her first professional tournament as the announcement was made, with the chance to challenge their male counterparts directly.The move is progressive and open-minded, in fact the very nature of an ‘Open’ Championship dictates that gender should be a side issue, but was always likely to ruffle a few feathers.Frenchman Jean Van de Velde, last witnessed wading through Carnoustie’s Barry Burn on the final hole of the 1999 Open Chamionship, offered the most absurd reaction The piqued 39 year old claimed, in protest, that he would attempt to qualify for next year’s Women’s British Open at Royal Birkdale: "I am definitely going to approach them to get an application and if they let me play in the qualifying event then I will. I’ll even wear a kilt and shave my legs."We thought we’d seen the last of his legs in Barry Burn, but Van de Velde, it seems, is serious. despite the fact that no female professionals except Wie have expressed even a long-term thought of competing with men, he insists that a line must be drawn in the sand trap."Those guys playing in The Open a hundred and fifty years ago and who won it three or four times must be spinning in their graves. My whole point is where do we draw the line?" Van de Velde asked after hacking his way through a seven-over 78 at the Volvo Masters in Spain (a men’s tournament). "If we accept that women can enter our tournaments, then it applies that men can play with women."Maybe the Frenchman is willing to play the fool to provoke discussion of wider issues about the separation of women’s and men’s events and the spirit of competition, but we simply can’t take his suggestions seriously. Someone of the calibre of Tiger Woods, for instance, would never consider such an absurd or unsporting suggestion as entering a women’s event, and the prospect of Van de Velde doing so is uninspiring. It smacks of a cheap publicity stunt by an out-of-form player who feels threatened by the emergence of women with the ability to humiliate him yet further, this time on a golf course.Besides, Van de Velde is overlooking the Ladies’ Golf Union "gender policy": "It shall be a condition of any competition organised by the Ladies’ Golf Union that players must be of the female gender." Looks like the Philips Ladyshave can be put away for a rainy day, then. There is also the clause: "If there is uncertainty as to a player’s gender then, in order to ensure fair competition, a member of the committee may ask a player to provide proof of gender to a medical expert" – and Van de Velde certainly wouldn’t make the cut on this front.The crux of the matter is this; an influx of dominant men into women’s events would damage the game irreparably, whereas the likes of Wie or Annika Sorenstam would have to play "up" to the standard of the field in order to compete. The argument simply cannot be made in the opposite direction. What is more, players like Wie and Sorenstam competing with men would surely help to dissolve misogynistic condescension and inspire young girls with the confidence and ambition to follow in their footsteps. ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Wenger’s dilemma
I knew being at Oxford was like living in a bubble when, in five weeks, the only live football match I’d seen was Balliol v Worcester. Stuck in my high-security college, I’ve had to turn to the newspapers, the internet and the occasional viewing of Match of the As Chelsea march on, barely looking over their shoulder to catch a glimpse of their retinue (not that they’d be able to see anyone at that distance), Arsenal proceed to lock themselves inside their sole style of play that brings about any effect.I’m not the first one to say Arsenal need to vary their style if dominance domestically and in Eeurope can be achieved. But what they really need to do is not just try and perfect the present team, but have a whole new outlook. Arsenal need to resort to imitation.Eeuro 2004, Liverpool in their Eeuropean Cup win and Porto a season ago. Martin Samuel, the Times columnist, was on the right track when he wrote earlier this season that Arsenal’s 2003-4 side, who went the full Premiership campaign without defeat, were not just great but inimitable. Only Wenger could have moulded the team that could play in the blistering style they did.Chelsea, Samuel added, are only half of that: they are great – the best in last season, I believe – but they are not inimitable. Arsenal’s style was unique; Chelsea just churn out the same old stuff we saw done by Greece when they won Except Chelsea are better at it, and that’s why they win.In the current climate, Chelsea et al are the models. If a team wins something they’ve probably employed that style. Copying it effectively leads to success.But mimicking the top-level style is not something any old team can do well. In January 2004, Liverpool beat minnows Yeovil Town in the FA Cup third round, initially struggling as Yeovil’s tight defence frustrated them, but eventually clearing up with a comfortable 2-0 victory.The following morning, Simon Barnes, another Times columnist, (you think I have time to read two newspapers?) remarked that Yeovil had shot themselves in the foot. They had tried to imitate Gérard Houllier’s team by playing the civilised style that Premiership teams go for. They tried to pass, and defend with tactical precision, and keep to a system, and attack with caution, and all the things José Mourinho probably tells Chelsea to do. But they weren’t good enough at it, so they lost. Years ago, noted Barnes, Yeovil – – the kings of cup upsets – would have abandoned any tactics or discipline and gone all out to overwhelm Liverpool with passion and hard work and the help of an intimidating set of drunken fans. Instead, Yeovil played like a modern Premiership team, the fans sat and sang “Yeovil till I die” in the sweetest voice they could, and everyone wondered why they barely came close. In a battle between two identical systems, class will inevitably prevail.Currently, Arsenal can only beat the best if they are on form on the day. To achieve bigger things at home and in Europe, Arsenal need to imitate the imitable Chelsea. But unlike Yeovil that Sunday afternoon, Arsenal have the class to live up to the system. Eeven with Patrick Vieira gone they have enough quality players to form a system to compete on equal terms with Chelsea. Arsenal must stop wondering why their system is failing and start adapting to the present. If Chelsea’s bubble is going to burst, Arsenal have to get out of their own.Day to keep up with the world of football. Otherwise, escaping the vacuum is not easy. And it seems that my team are suffering from a similar problem. Arsenal have started the season – in fact, continued from where they were in May – in a bubble that seems to have been cutting them off from their rivals.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Raw Tongan power carries the day
Oxford 14Tonga 34Oxford came off worse in a match of brutal intensity against the touring Tonga national side. Though they remained competitive throughout the match, they conceded a disappointing six tries to lose by 14-34. 34-14 is a convincing defeat, but Oxford did not play badly. They were simply overpowered at the end by the sheer physicality of a Tonga side famous for its size, power and aggression even on the international scene. Almost to a man, the Blues were smaller than their opposite numbers; they lost over ten stone to the Tongans just in the front row! While their energy lasted, Oxford were impressive both in the pack and behind the scrum. The defensive gaps of the previous week were sealed, and Tom Tomblestone led the side in attack with two outstanding tries.The game started badly for the Blues with the poor conditions making handling difficult. Peter Jenkins made a mazy run toward his own tryline and Matt Sherman’s attempt to clear the ball was charged down. The Blues reacted slowly to a short period of pressure, which allowed Vaea Poteki to waltz over the line unopposed after Tonga created a large overlap with only three minutes gone.After this early shock Oxford began to assert themselves. The lineouts were solid and the good work upfront paid off when it allowed Tombleson to score a magnificent solo try. The ball was passed down the line to Tombleson who raced his opposite number to the line, diving into the corner. Whittingham knocked over a fantastic conversion and Oxford took a deserved 7-5 lead.Tonga’s game plan was clearly to use their power advantage to decisive effect. However, Oxford’s forwards excelled themselves, sucking up punishing bursts around the fringes and drives down the middle. For a while, the game descended into a stalemate. Only when half time approached did the match get going again. After the Blues had been denied a dangerous attacking position through Ross Lavery by a poor bounce off a grubber kick, Finau combined with Teviat Tiueti to score a breakaway try, converted for a 12-7 half time lead.In the second half Tonga’s sustained pressure began to tell. Finau burst through with such momentum that Oxford could barely catch him, let alone stop him. However, he was forced off after his second try, giving the Blues some much needed respite. Tombleson struck back immediately with another solo try, his jerky running leave Poteki watching from the ground as Tombleson sprinted to the line. Whittingham made another excellent conversion and with 25 minutes to go, the game looked even. However, Tonga now stepped up a gear. Vliiami Maasi was driven over the line in a thundering drive, Rodney Mahe scored after Tonga had been camping on the line and Eelisi Vunipola broke through with six minutes to go. There was one last opportunity for Tombleson to show off, and his run past three men lit up a poor last 20 minutes for the Blues.Tonga play a class of forceful rugby Oxford are unlikely to encounter again. Coach Steve Hill was proud that they “stood up to the physical side of the game”. With the final run in to Varsity now begins with a fixture against Major Stanley’s XV, and Oxford are ready to pounce.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
Freshers fall to Tabs
Oxford Men 85Cambridge Men 96Oxford Women 92 Cambridge Women 98The Freshers’ individual performances suggested promise for the upcoming year. Oxford dominated the distance events with David Woods and Ian Kimpton making it a one-two in the 800m, before Kimpton went on to convincingly take the 1500m. Richard Franzese left the field trailing in the 3000m race, ably supported by Mike O’Neil in second. A similar picture emerged in the women’s distance competitions, with Rachel Ward dominating the 3000m and 1500m competitions.This year has seen an influx of women sprinters and they did not fail to deliver, with victories for Frances Smithson, Natalie McManus and Caitlin Hanley in the 100m, 200m, and 400m respectively.Unfortunately the male sprinters could not follow their example, failing to register any victories, though Mark Ponsford made up for his disappointment in the sprints by taking victory in the high jump.Oxford showed greater depth in the field than in previous years, with wins for Nathan Fleming in both the javelin and discus. Frances Smithson stormed to victory in the triple and high jumps, and was just pipped in the long jump by team-mate Stephanie Madgett.Ddespite some encouraging performances in Freshers’ Cuppers, Oxford were again left trailing in the first varsity athletics meet of the year. However, the Tabs should not start celebrating a repeat of last year’s overall victory too soon; significantly fewer points separated the teams this time and, bearing in mind Oxford’s record at the main Varsity event, it bodes well for a change in fortune for the Dark Blues.ARCHIVE: 5th week MT 2005
