Jo Carter Weekly - Week 5

With all this success, shouldn’t the students of York University be flooding to fortress 22 Acres to witness the success? In the title deciding football match against Leeds, a reported 40 supporters turned out to give their backing. But should this be higher, and could the AU do more to promote University sport?

Carter acknowledges the fact that more can be done, and informs me that "more and more is being done to publicise the big games, through means of posters, facebook and word of mouth", but that it is "a challenge to get non-sport playing students to go and support."

"If the WAGS and housemates do not always go and support, is it realistic to get students who are not friends with anyone in the team to go?" asks Carter, to which the answer must be no. There is no real University camaraderie in the way that a school has, but this must be largely down to the differing sizes of the establishments. Obviously camaraderie is high within the teams, but sometimes they seem like a closed circuit to many.

"Sports are generally played at the same time so even having the second team support the first team in most sports is difficult", so not even the club can support itself. One club that does not play its fixtures at the same time is the hockey club, and there is "notably more support" for this sport due to this fact.

"Roses is set out so as few matches clash as possible, and there is much more support for these fixtures, which in part is due to the scheduling but mainly down to the rivalry": a statement that brings us nicely onto the promotions versus Roses debate. Is one rivalry more important than sustained success?

"York and Lancaster are so evenly matched - reflected by both teams being joint 33rd in the BUSA league tables - that there is not much difference between BUSA success and Roses, as Lancaster are a measuring stick for us". Even though Carter describes the choice as "hard to make", she refers to Roses as an "institution" and says that "everybody enjoys the bragging rights".

Asked whether promotion in three quarters of BUSA competition would outweigh a Roses victory, she said: "It would be amazing to achieve this many promotions, but promotion teams are quite often full of third years who leave and weaken the team, so that the higher league is too much for a relatively new team."

However, she does recognise that Dom O’Shea’s football first team was weakened after departures, but still gained another promotion. "Roses is year on year competition against a very similar University sports-wise, and gives us a marker of how University sport is developing through the years". Roses is not the be-all and end-all, but it's very, very important.

One way to improve our chance of Roses is to improve the standard of coaching at University, and the AU set out to do this at the start of the year with the Student Volunteer Programme, in which students could gain coaching qualifications and help out local schools and clubs.

"At the start of the year, a working relationship was set up with the council to get students placements in the York area". However, this relationship has proved fruitless as students details have been passed to the council and nothing heard back for months.

"The AU is having a massive review of the scheme, attempting to cut out the middle man (the council), bringing it back to the AU. This scheme has so much potential with so many volunteers and clubs, but just no link. A staff member would be given the job of setting up relationships with schools and clubs, as well as sorting out courses with the FA. If all goes to plan this should be fully functional by next year, but placement are already being sorted out."

The future looks bright for coaching, but the council has conducted itself poorly in this arrangement, and this should be noted for any future use of the council by the AU.

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