Football 1sts stepping to the plate

On the eve of their first match of the season, York’s football 1st team find themselves near the top table of BUCS football; can they raise their game?

Like Britpop, Sonic the Hedgehog and dodgy haircuts (curtains anyone?), the TV show Gladiators was synonymous with the 1990s. My favourite part of the show was always ‘The Eliminator’, the final event which could always be relied upon to separate the local gym buffs from the true athletes. The nature of ‘The Eliminator’ meant that you could breeze through the first few obstacles and still exit the competition if you failed to negotiate the ‘Travelator’, where contenders had to run against a gruelling escalator-type machine to reach the top and swing through the ‘paper burst’ to victory.

Having negotiated the overhead ladders and see-saws of BUSA leagues 4 and 3B, it could be said that York’s football 1st team find themselves at the ‘Travelator’ stage of the new BUCS Northern Conference. Granted, we are not talking BUCS Premier level, the pinnacle of student sport, but very few on campus will remember the last time York began a season as high as division 2B.

York last played in this league back in the 2004/2005 season when they garnered just a single point from a possible thirty, followed by another miserable relegation the season after. As well as virtually extinguishing the ridicule and despondency associated with men’s football in previous years, successive promotions have re-instated the team to a level which they feel they should be operating at.

The rise of the team has been similar to that of new captain Mat Witherwick (he only joined the football club this time last year), but nobody is under any illusions regarding the size of the task facing the current crop of first team footballers.

At the banquet of university football, York have been scrapping for leftovers in recent seasons, with opponents including the likes of Bradford and a York St. Johns 3rd team. However, they can now tuck into the feast, with some delicious looking fixtures against universities with a rich sporting pedigree including the 1st teams of Sheffield Hallam, Sheffield and Teesside.

The first game is a home encounter against the only 2nd team in the division, Leeds Metropolitan. However, considering that their 1st team plays in the BUCS Premier division, being told you’re playing their second eleven is like being told that you’re scheduled for a boxing match with the sparring partner of a Mayweather or Klitschko.

One positive for York is that most of the squad from last season are still available for selection, the only exceptions being Henry Smith, Andy Ramsden and Andy Rixon. The squad will no doubt miss the flair of Smith and the work-rate of Ramsden, whilst replacing Rixon at centre-back could be - quite literally - a tall order.

The situation is by no means an emergency but Witherwick may call upon the service of former 1st team defender Ian McKellow, who has recovered from a long-standing knee injury that ruled him out of contention for the whole of last season. The midfield has been boosted by the addition of Mark McCleod, an ex-Darlington player. In attack, it is hoped that Dom O’Shea, Mark Gouland and Ed Murrills can continue to score goals with the same ruthlessness in a higher division and the 2nd team is brimming with exciting strikers ready to step into the spotlight.

In my first year at York, I found the general ethos of sport was one that downplayed expectations before the BUCS campaigns had even started. “We start later than other universities, we’re only a small university, we don’t offer sporting degrees” was just some of rhetoric seemingly used to excuse abject failures and poor performances. All those statements are true to some extent, but in football at least, the fact that Durham 1sts (the final team in York’s division) have consistently sat in top echelons of the BUCS leagues is evidence that the relationship between academic status and sporting success does not always have to be an inverse one. Organised captains, good spirit in the individual teams and operating as a clique-free zone whereby talented freshers can reach the top teams all contribute to successful BUCS campaigns.

If the football 1st team can build on momentum gained from the last two seasons, climbing the ‘Travelator’ and bursting through into the top division may prove within the capabilities of the current squad.

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