Rugby Union: Rhythm of the Blues

THE University match is one of the modern miracles of rugby football. By rights, it should have gently expired some years ago. Many good judges thought it would indeed die away, and correspondents predicted that it would be replaced by an annual encounter between Loughborough and St Luke's. Wilfred Wooller wrote a yearly piece (either in a newspaper or in the match programme) lamenting an admissions policy which would have excluded him from Cambridge, whereas in the 1930s he had been welcomed.

I think Wooller would probably have got in at any period on grounds of personality, fluency and cheek - what the admissions tutors like to call 'promise'. But there is no doubt that a more stringent admissions policy, based on academic achievement, caused a justifiable apprehension in rugby and other sporting circles.

One of the effects of this policy was to favour the products of public (that is, private, fee-paying) schools. This was the reverse of the effect which it had been meant to produce by the well-intentioned academic bureaucrats of the early 1960s: but such is often the way with reforms.

Everyone took A-levels, so the argument went. Therefore, let admissions to the university be regulated by A-level results rather than by internal scholarship examinations, by interviews or by connections. As a consequence, however, the public schools turned themselves into A-level factories, in which, having more resources than the state schools, they were highly productive.

What effect this development had on university rugby is problematical. Almost certainly, the ending of national service had a greater effect. But the ancient universities compensated for these changes in various ways.

Cambridge invented a course in Land Economy and encouraged graduates of other universities, notably Durham and Loughborough, to come to the Fens. Oxford specialised, as it had always done, in older students from the United States, South Africa and the Commonwealth.

New colleges mysteriously appeared on the scene, St Edmund's in Cambridge, St Cross in Oxford. In both universities the women's colleges, which had became largely co-educational, provided a ready haven for aspiring male sportsmen. Only recently, six members of the Oxford team came from St Anne's while Cambridge forwards have been known to hail from Girton.

These adjustments would be sufficient to explain the continuation of university rugby at a certain level of competence. But they do not explain the increasing popularity of the December fixture at Twickenham. Part of the explanation probably lies in the growth of corporate hospitality.

Nibbling a cold lamb chop and sipping Rioja from a plastic cup in a cold wind while standing in a group by the boot of a car is not, I confess, my idea of a good time.

But to many men, and an increasing number of women, it evidently is. The University match has not only maintained but consolidated its position as a social event. Not that it is fashionable or smart, exactly. It never was. In former times, the match was attended predominantly by men who were able to take the day off work, and had some connection with rugby football and the ancient universities. If they did not actually go to Oxford or Cambridge, they might have done had it not been for some misfortune or accident. Today the audience has widened.

But the match would not attract the support it does if it were merely a social event. A colleague wrote in a Sunday paper that the standard of play was that of the Courage Second Division. This may be so. It may be too charitable, even. A couple of weeks ago a virtually full- strength Cambridge went down comprehensively to what was in effect Harlequins Seconds.

And yet, anyone who a few seasons ago saw Clive Norling conduct rather than referee a non-stop match witnessed a memorable game. Gone are the days when, almost immediately after the match, the England selectors announced the teams for the first trial at Blundellsands, of whom four or five threequarters would be promoted straight from the Oxford and Cambridge sides.

It will still be fascinating to spot the players of the future, like Chris Oti or Adrian Davies. Above all, the match will stand for something, which is more than can be said for the divisional and county games which failed to hold my interest last Saturday.