Trinity College Field Club President’s Report James Hughes (2018)
COLLEGE ACT I V IT IES
To reference some famous sporting comebacks ‒ Istanbul in 2005, Ben Ainslie and Oracle Team USA, almost every Harlequins game of the recent 2020–21 season ‒ all these seem like good analogies for the Field Club last year. COVID-19 undoubtedly ‘had us in the first half’, and it has inevitably been challenging to sit down and write this report and reflect on what has been a strange year for the Field Club. I am especially thankful to and keen to praise our College sports captains and their teams for their perseverance in the face of various obstacles, and for their willingness to adapt to the new circumstances and still do their best to organise trainings, matches and generally keep College sport on life support this year. Holding classic events such as the Chaplains’ squash in the virtual sphere will never feel the same, as you cannot engage in the age-old tradition of encouraging inebriated freshers to hand over their email addresses and competing with the Boat Club for sign-ups! At the beginning of Michaelmas, we were encouraged to see an especially enthusiastic and substantial fresher intake, which bode well for the season. Furthermore, having submitted countless risk assessments to College to ensure Old Field could remain open, we were incredibly optimistic as Michaelmas term began. Unfortunately, many sports reliant on external spaces, such as basketball and swimming, were incredibly hamstrung, but for the most part captains adapted admirably, sticking religiously to the COVID rules set out by national sporting bodies, such as sanitising balls between what felt like almost every other phase of play. Sports such as mixed lacrosse experienced a surge of popularity and saw some impressive success in their early fixtures, whilst rugby, with some impressive new fresher performers, played an entertaining, albeit strange, new non-contact format labelled ‘Ready4Rugby’. We were especially proud to see almost no COVID outbreaks within team sport throughout these early weeks; I will remain proud of how College sport was one of the best outlets for people to escape their rooms and socialise in the brave new world of COVIDrestricted university. Unfortunately, rising cases forced us to curtail College sport at the end of term; ahead of a new national lockdown, the safety of students was obviously paramount. With students forced to stay home over Lent term and thus losing important calendar events such as the Christchurch exchange, we once again T R I N I T Y A N N UA L R ECOR D 2021 74
