At the start of the last academic year, as many flocked back to London in the vain hope of a semi-normal University life for the upcoming year ahead, Sport at King’s was meant to be the one source of ‘continued normal’.
Sports had been allowed to resume at a grassroots level in England, the outdoor gathering limit of 30 was still more or less justifiable and at the time it seemed absurd that outdoor activity would become a casualty of a nationwide lockdown yet again.
Alas, it was (of course it was, retrospectively). As chronicled in a piece by Roar last year, the stop-start nature of King’s Sport was one of the biggest blemishes on an all-round rotten year for all university students.
Its resumption in mid-April did much to raise spirits among students- coupled with the Prime Minister’s ‘Freedom Day’ plan (touch wood, still (extremely few) Covid restrictions are in place at the time of writing this piece), and sunny weather in late April and early May to match, it was a relatively cheerful way to end a poor year.
Perhaps most importantly, it served as a prelude for this academic year, where we live in a (perhaps vain) hope of an uninterrupted year of sporting action, both in the stadia to go and watch but also to play ourselves.
I myself have never been more excited to get back on to the football pitch. Demanded by my GKTFC superiors to download the BUCS Play App to have a look at fixtures in my new role as captain, it has whetted my appetite to an unprecedented level. Rough plans of squad formation and position targets for freshers have begun. Ideas for fresher trials have come in to my head. In turn so have ideas for training sessions.
The latter of which is a key point. Seemingly across the board, the training schedules for most sports clubs have resumed to the 2019/20 norm and most clubs have seized back their ‘rightful’ training slots. GKTFC will return to Monday training sessions- an absolute godsend when last year the Tuesday night training sessions fell just over 12 hours before our game would start the next day, leading to stiffness and an all round sour attitude when running in a game.
There is further cause for optimism. Despite being like running on rocks in early May, the return of the much loved Griff for Lacrosse and Football makes fixture scheduling both easier, and, perhaps most significantly for a student, cheaper.
Overall, at time of writing we are three weeks away from Freshers Week and the start of a new year, and *touch wood* no Covid restrictions are in place. The first few weeks back should be a festival of sport, and let’s hope King’s does its bit to keep it that way.
