We’ve all been there before, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying. Go to bed early the night before, wake up with the cockerel and have a nutritionally stellar breakfast before spending mid-morning getting pumped up (admittedly I don’t think I’ve ever managed any of these, but folk myths are what they are) only to receive the dreaded email from your captain at around 11, invariably beginning, “Sorry gents...”
Yes, the game’s off, and those bastards down the road have deprived you of your weekly game of whatever as well as, to pile woe on top of woe, providing you with an extra training session. Just what you wanted.
Cancellations are a blight upon the college game, and they seem to be getting more common. In rugby, at least, more games than I can remember are being called off at the moment, and what’s really surprising is that there’ve been at least three in three weeks of Division 1 competition. While the likes of the (now dearly departed) Graduate Barbarians and Wadham down at the opposite end of the college rugby ladder are opponents you prepare for half-expecting not to face them, doyens of the top league Christ Church, to name but one of the recent offenders, are not your common or garden forfeiter.
It’s all a bit easy to simply condemn the colleges that can’t get a side out though. Helpful, of course, especially when you need to blame somebody for the sprint shuttles you’ve been made to undertake instead of a fixture, as soon as you get your breath back that is. But still, too easy to be of much use. More importantly as a man who presided over a lot of forfeitures in my time at the helm of Keble 2nd XV I’d hate to come across poacher turned gamekeeper.
The heart of the matter is that sometimes getting a side out just isn’t likely. Possibly it’s the captain’s fault - you’ve skimped on raising awareness of the game, or you’ve forgotten, or you can’t play this week so the wheels have come off the whole affair. This is pretty rare though, most captains know their onions otherwise they wouldn’t be in post in the first place. Much more common is the perfect storm of commitments. I’m not sure what strange alchemy it is but there are certain Tuesdays or Thursdays where nine regular players’ tutes have been moved to the absolute least helpful time, and three of the others had too big a one the night before and have spent the morning getting familiar with the view from inside their toilet bowel. In times like these there’s not a lot you can do bar accepting that discretion’s the better part of valour. Borrowing a few players is one thing but you can hardly borrow fourteen.
What criticism I will make is for some of the regulations. There is, for example, absolutely no reason a side who’ve had a game against them cancelled shouldn't receive a bonus point. All this leads to is a potential situation where luck rather than talent decides the league, and a team who’ve run into a few forfeitures get it in the neck for their bad fortune. Shoddy.
A special word should be reserved for the old and ignoble game known as cancellation chicken. Common in lower league competitions it’s when a captain, in the knowledge that neither side are likely to have a full team, attempts to lull the other captain into conceding first by either stony silence or (in the even less kosher form of the ruse) outwardly lying about the strength of his side. It can go well - certain Division 4 sides would still be languishing in Division 5 without it - but it doesn’t half make you feel dirty.
So cancellations aren’t anyone’s idea of a Good Thing, but they are understandable. College sport’s a rickety old beast at the best of times, and you can get spoilt by a clean run of fixtures into thinking that it’s a well-oiled machine instead of relying on a base of cajoling, blackmailing and dragooning. I’m still holding out hope for a game next week though, so let’s hope for Machiavellians wearing the armbands.
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