It’s a sinking feeling. You have your six other teammates at the ready, your €140 sign up fee in hand, you’re raring to play some five-a-side football. You then make the innocuous error of misremembering when the application form opens, you thought it was 10 a.m., but instead it was 9. In the blink of an eye, your sole chance of playing recreational football this semester has gone up in smoke. The sign up sheet is already full.
For the competitive footballer, the opportunities are not exactly profligate either, with two 11-a-side options for men and just the one for women. The cut and thrust of college football leads to sides full of the highest quality, smatterings of LOI Academy players past and present fill out CUFL starting line-ups with no restrictions on club affiliation applying. If you miss the cut in the extremely competitive trials process, your only option to play the full-sided game is to drop down the divisions in the Leinster Senior League or EWFL or to chance your arm in the wild west of the United Churches Football League. There is no alternative to take through the university.
The reality is that Trinity’s offerings in the football sphere are paltry to say the least. The demand for playing the world’s most popular sport far outweighs the opportunities given by the University. Many types of potential players, both recreational and competitive are falling by the wayside.
Meanwhile, rugby, a minority sport in comparison by both Irish and global measure, is placed front and centre on campus. Rugby features a burgeoning list of squads and a fruitful recreational outlet through the touch variant of the game.
The goal then should be for football, the more popular sport, to be elevated to this kind of level of opportunity. For this endeavour, Trinity can afford much inspiration from other institutions, both at home and slightly further afield.
UCD is a shining example in this regard. It is a university where all levels are truly catered for. Their League of Ireland First Division setup has successfully bred a prevailing football culture on campus. UCD’s competitive collegiate sides have much more depth and their pick-up 5-a-side games satiate much more demand.
The best innovation of all however is the institution of the UCD Superleague, a semi-competitive full-sided competition boasting skill assessed divisions to offer the fairest contest possible. The competition caters for between 1,080 and 1,200 students drawn along various lines of allegiance. Finding a team to play for though is certainly no tough task. Here a demographic that Trinity has entirely neglected finds solace. Those that don’t make the cut at collegiate level, but still want to play 11-a-side football have their haven.
Take another example, a university of equivalent size to Trinity in the UK, the University of Bath. Again, the institution offers a high level of representational football, the for-fun five-a-side, and not one, but two different recreational full-sided leagues. One is dedicated to the blocks of campus accommodation students are assigned to and the other to the department of study in which the student is partaking in. Once again, Trinity is being blown out of the water in this respect.
When looking at these examples, it feels as if there is little excuse for the college to give football a leg-up. Student demand is unquestionably there. The introduction of a recreational full-sided option along with a vast enhancement of the capacity of the present five-a-side leagues should be especially imperative.
The familiar excuses regarding a lack of space may be trotted out, but both examples listed from other institutions avail extensively of external resources. The days of free playing fields and parks may sadly be over, but with a fee adequate playing venues can be utilised and students would be willing to pay the modest price as they do for participating in any football club.
Hopefully, with enough of a push, football at Trinity can finally be given the attention that it deserves.
