After a fantastic weekend of sporting highs and lows, so far the reflection has rightly been on memorable matches or unexpected performances, which led to an overall win for Lancaster University at Roses 2012.
Roses is the biggest inter-university sports tournament in Europe, and obviously a huge amount of organisation has to go into ensuring all events run smoothly over the weekend.
Last year Sam Asfahani and his team made Roses one of the most memorable tournaments yet, so it was with anticipation that we travelled to Lancaster, for many it would be our first taste of an away Roses, to see how Lancaster would respond.
For the most part they did not disappoint. The campus is remarkably similar to York being situated out of the main town and with an all-encompassing bubble-like feel, though with two noticeable exceptions; as sadly remarked upon by one of our netball freshers “there are no ducks”, and of course, they have a pristine and extremely impressive sports centre.
A very far cry from the draughty and tent-like quality of York’s Sports Centre, the Lancs sports centre boasts a sports hall, full sized swimming pool, warm lobby area, squash courts, various meeting rooms, a new gym and a climbing wall.
Aside from these surface impressions, I think there are a couple of significant points on which Lancaster Roses committee let themselves down slightly.
Firstly, apart from the fact that on arriving at Lancaster on Saturday morning after waking up at some ungodly hour, we were informed that the food supply on the campus had run out. Although, thank God, this later turned out to be untrue, it did represent a lack of communication across the tournament which was evident throughout the weekend.
In stark contrast to the almost frighteningly bright yellow of the York stewards at sports events such as Varsity, or the visibility of the well-known York Sport committee who were on hand at all times at York Roses 2011, Lancaster stewards were nowhere to be seen. And if they were to be seen, they were cleverly disguised in the Dennis the Menace themed sports kit that the rest of the Lancaster competitors were sporting.
As part of a competing sport club, being dropped off on the wrong side of a campus that must span a couple of kilometres in length was not the most convenient thing in the world. However, if there had been stewards on hand to greet and direct, all problems would have been alleviated and we would have been saved a good half an hour of aimless wandering. We were eventually picked up by a plain-clothes member of the Lancaster student union, but there was a definite lack of organisation and a sense that no one really knew where we should go. There was a similar lack of signs directing people to the sports centre and main pitches; an easy addition which would have made a world of difference to both spectators and competitors.
As demonstrated by Vision’s comprehensive live-blogging throughout the weekend, student media outlets were completely up to date with both individual match scores and the overall points for the Universities as a whole. However, all these systems relied totally on someone checking the internet, and although students at home could quite understandably be hanging off their desk chairs in anticipation of the next blog post and score update, the actual competitors bizarrely had no idea.
I thought one obvious omission for the whole weekend was a central scoring system, perhaps a large digital scoreboard close to the sports centre, which would have enabled any passer-by to keep up with the all-important progress of points. As it was, I lost track of the times people asked who was currently in the lead, it seems that the only ones who knew were said members of student media.
It is a shame that such an integral part of a highly competitive event such as Roses remained in the background for so many attending, and even competing in, the actual event. I would hope that it is something to be addressed in future Roses tournaments as it would significantly improve the experience of the tournament as a whole, and add to the excitement and urgency of the atmosphere.
Roses is one of the most unique parts of the university experience at York, and hopefully will continue to be one of the most exciting events in the sporting calendar. Although the sport itself was of the highest quality all weekend, and the sporting facilities are impossible to fault, Roses at Lancaster was a slightly less well organised event than would be expected of a tournament of such high calibre and size.
With a brand new committee and the opening of the long-awaited York Sport Village, all that remains to ask is how will next year compare?
There was a giant score board as soon as you walked in the front doors of the sports centre!
@Are you blind
But what about all the people playing on the fields? Or people actually inside the sports hall rather than those simply hanging around foyer? Or in the swimming pool or climbing wall or the outdoor netball pitches or the central hall for dancesport etc etc etc the list goes on. No one ever really knew the score.
Also, the score on the board, which was being used as Lancaster’s scoring system, was almost always wrong and had to be corrected a number of times over the weekend
We had the enjoyable privilege of coming up to watch our son play for Lancaster in the 1st team rugby match as part of the Roses event – a disappointing result for Lancaster but a well fought contest, deservedly won by York due to their excellent defensive organisation and a fine display by their fly half . It was our first experience of the event and we were hugley impressed. In that context, to see an article with a sub-heading of “Poor organisation marred York’s Roses 2012 weekend” strikes me as extraordinary – and the tone of the article carping and unbalanced. A career in tabloid journalism may beckon for your correspondent, but in the mean time a more balanced, objective and constructive review would seem more appropriate.
I’m sure that there were elements that could have been done better for competitors – that is almost bound to be the case, but I have to say the phrase early in her article “For the most part they did not disappoint” is betrayed by the tone and content of the rest of the article. I can only say that as visitors / spectators we were hugely impressed by the scale and organisation of the whole event and the apparently friendly but highly competitive rivalry that was on display. The Roses is clearly a highly complex event to put on and we felt that this had been achieved fantastically well. I’m sure that the Lancaster and York committees will continue to learn from the experience of putting this event. We are certainly looking forward to the “away fixture” next year – I do think that this year’s organisers deserve recognition and praise for the things that were done well as well as opportunities for improvement. Finally, as a matter of fact, we had no problem identifying stewards when we got lost / needed assistance and they were easy to locate and unfailingly helpful
This article is one of a pair of Roses 2012 comment articles that feature in the 224 edition of York Vision. Red rose glory is the other in that pairing, which addresses some of the issues you criticise Nina for. Here, the writer praises Lancaster for their facilities as well as their abundance of supporters at each game, while Nina’s article addresses the “opportunities for improvement” as you suggest.
I’m sure you will agree that there would have been very little point writing two comment articles simply talking about everything that was good about the competition, especially as the article was written by a competitor whose weekend was affected by the issues she addresses. Nina is not criticising the event as a whole, but as a competitor, it cannot be denied that not knowing the score would mar your weekend. Not being aware of how close the York and Lancaster scores were, how important a win for your particular team could influence the tally, or even when the competition had been won, is certainly a flaw, and something that should be improved for future Roses competitions.
Here is the link to the Red rose glory article: http://www.yorkvision.co.uk/comment/red-rose-glory/
Here is the link to the full page where the twinned articles feature on page 14:
http://www.yorkvision.co.uk/paper-editions/roses-pull-out-issue-224/
neutral observer sounds fit