Rich’s Blog: City Starts Strong In All Three Leagues

When I joined City in autumn 2013, the club was pretty much at rock bottom. We had just finished bottom of OKA league one with no wins and were struggling to field a second team — but club spirit was still good! 

Even last year we were only able to field six players for an infamous and ill-fated trip to Basingstoke. 

But this season we’ve started strong in all three leagues to consign those dark days to history.

City’s regional team this weekend pushed last year’s champions Bristol Thunder close with a 22-17 loss in the Western Regional League. If the team plays like that all year we can expect some great wins.

City 1 has also come out of the blocks fast in OKA league 1. The team started the season with a 20-9 win against the newly-promoted Southampton City 1, which bulldozed its way through league 2 south last year and has very experienced players in the likes of Andy Nye and David Creed. 

City 1 followed this with a 14-14 draw against the rapidly-improving Farnborough Jets, though this was a slightly disappointing result given that we held the lead at half time. But the team roared back with a 23-9 win against the always-strong Basingstoke Bulls, which is our first competitive win against them in three years. At the time of writing, City 1 sits proudly atop OKA league 1.

Meanwhile, in OKA league 2, we are also top. City 2 has recorded 12-7 and 12-6 wins against Didcot Dragons 1 and 2 respectively to top the division.

And City 3 (aka Team Tiger) has also started tigerishly and shows that the club as a whole is gaining great strength in depth. We followed a narrow 13-15 loss to a strong Didcot 2 on opening day with a 7-5 win against Isis 2, and then a 5-10 loss against an experienced and promotion-chasing Isis 1. The fact that City 3 can now mix it with the first team of fierce local rivals Isis shows just how far we are coming.

The performances of all these teams show that there are plenty of reasons to be positive this year — and the first match for City 4 later this month is another indication of how far we are coming. Meanwhile, the atmosphere off-the-pitch is as good as I can remember it. The Oxford City spirit has always been strong, but the regular wins make it that much sweeter!


If we keep this up then we can expect many more successes in 2015/16. One, two, three… City!

- Rich Heap, web editor