Matthew Jeynes
Every year it is the same. Every year York teams are forced to play matches while at a huge disadvantage. Why? Because York insists on starting their terms after everyone else. Most clubs begin their campaigns this Saturday, before most Freshers have even started to recover from their Freshers’ Week hangover.
The Men’s Lacrosse 1sts even had to return over a week early to play a North of England Men’s Lacrosse Association fixture on Saturday 4th. Fortunately, they were playing a weak Hull team and they thrashed them 17-2, but the fact that they had to return that early just isn’t right. And now the merger of BUSA and UCS, and the subsequent rearrangement of the league system, has has put the final nail in the coffin.
In previous years, the AU had managed to rearrange BUSA matches that were unfairly early for our teams because the BUSA format was a league, followed by a cup competition in the Spring term.
However, now that BUSA has transformed into BUCS, the league and cup competitions now run concurrently. So, whereas the cup competition used to be for the top teams in their leagues, it now runs as an FA-cup type competition, in which every team is entered and has to work their way through the rounds.
This means that there will now be more fixture congestion, making it harder to rearrange early matches, and the congestion will no doubt disadvantage York teams later in the term.
What makes the problem even worse in the eyes of York’s sportsmen and women is that few of them really know why we start so late. Even the AU President isn’t sure, believing it to just be a tradition that would take too much effort to change.
Another reason given is that we start late to allow time to squeeze in more conferences, which the University organise to subsidise their income while us students are on holiday.
Whatever the reason, the situation needs to change. Who would honestly prefer to have a ridiculously long summer holiday, and only 3 weeks at Christmas? A five-week Christmas holiday makes far more sense.
But the main benefit would be to the sports teams, who will finally be able to actually hold trials before they begin their BUCS campaigns, and will avoid the awkward fixture congestion that results from having to re-arrange matches.
It is time for us, the students, to make our voices heard. It is the start of a new year, the Athletics Union has been re-branded as York Sport, and we have an AU President who genuinely wants to take the fight to the University over improvements. It is time for a new start.
We need to press the University to change our late start. And while we have their attention, we must press them over better facilities, in particular a new running track. The track that we have is barely worthy of the name. The fact that College Sports Days take place on it every year without major injuries is nothing short of astonishing. We are now forced to pay £40 for AU membership and for the sports centre. It’s about time we started getting value for money.
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