I am what I suppose you might describe as an armchair version of a Jesus College sporting alumnus; not in the television-watching sense but because I spent my College years sitting in front of eight (or sometimes four) considerably more athletic students at the back of a JCBC racing shell.
I got into coxing by accident; attending a “free beer” invitation to a JCBC Freshers Week event in 1975, believing myself to be too small, and too unfit, to be at risk of being recruited for anything. A few weeks later however, as the only candidate for the job, I found myself coxing the Men’s First Eight having had a crash course (literally as it later transpired) in steering a very delicate and expensive and, in those days, wooden craft through the sometimes crowded waters of the Isis.
But I was hooked. I spent the rest of my Oxford days and the first year of my career in London coxing boats, and I was privileged to be made Captain of Boats in my Finals year when we won Blades in the Torpids of 1979.
I also participated in the inaugural Oxford Vs Cambridge cox’s race where eight diminutive college coxes from each University competed, coxed by burly University oarsmen. Adding to the fun was the fact that the celebratory dinner was the night before the race not afterwards, so there were hangovers all ‘round as we rowed the length of the course!
Not that my enjoyment was necessarily shared by all involved! Of those who most likely tolerated my presence in the cox’s seat more than celebrated it, three individuals stand out. Firstly there was our long-suffering bow-man, Stuart Woodward, whom as a non-swimmer I had to twice ask to leave a sinking boat. Then there was the delightful College Bursar, Admiral Jamieson, who used to go to his filing cabinet for a hidden bottle of sherry each time I knocked on his door, saying only “I have a nasty feeling this is going to be another expensive conversation, Will”. And finally there was the wonderfully skilled, patient and kind Peter Bowley, our College Boatman, who spent interminable hours crafting superb and often invisible repairs to the fragile woodwork which I had damaged in some collision or other.
But it was a joy. Over forty years on, many of my closest friends (and indeed my wife) come from that group of oarsmen and women who first met in the late seventies and on into the early eighties on the often chilly waters of the Thames.
Having gone to Oxford not really intending to get involved in sport, attending that JCBC free beer evening in my first week turned out to be one of the best decisions I made!