Issue 157

AU Season up and running

08th October 2007

The AU season begins with teams starting to train and the all important socials and initiations taking place before the sports start playing over the course of the next fortnight.

Membership of the AU was up this year compared to last year and whilst as ever there was a queue to join the AU in freshers week, most sports are registering more members then the same period last year.

The number of people who had joined by the end of the week was 300 up on last year with more applications waiting to go through and people expecting to join over the next couple of weeks. The new membership system involved going to the Athletic Union website entering your details and paying for the AU membership before receiving your AU card in the freshers marquee.

Members that found the time to apply online found the time spent queuing was shorter then previous years but the message to apply on line before arriving did not get through to all new students.

AU President Simon Griffin was aware of the queues at freshers fair to join but happy with the number of people using the new online membership system. He put the queues down to not being able to contact all the freshers before the fair and the fact that it was a new system which was always going to have some teething problems.

The fact that Simon and the AU have looked at ways to reduce the queues is a positive step and something that the AU can look at before next year. Anyone that has not joined can go to the AU office and get some information about joining any of the clubs or find a sport that they will enjoy doing.

This week the only confirmed BUSA fixtures are the Mens 1st and 2nd Rugby teams at home to UWE and Cardiff but many teams will be playing friendlys or training in the build up to next week's round of fixtures.

The intramural football begins on the 17th of October and teams are still looking for players to compete in this tournament. There are plenty of sports to choose from that have a range of fitness levels so there is no excuse to not get involved on a Wednesday afternoon.

Next week most sports start their season, with the Men's first Hockey team playing Welsh rivals Glamorgan, Women's lacrosse facing Cardiff and the netball team away at Glamorgan University just some of the early season important games. Last season there were some good performances from the Swansea University teams as the University finished 24th in the overall BUSA league. This was a great performance as Swansea is a small university and outperformed many of the larger universities who have a lot more students to get teams from, the good performances of last year will hope to be built on in the lead up to varsity next April.

Last year there were impressive results in many sports including the Rugby Union team finished 2nd in their league, the Rugby League team had a complete reversal of fortunes moving from last place to 3rd.

The Women's hockey team finished first in their league and the men's team came third.

Fencing was very successful with the women's team winning their league and the Gents coming a creditable third.

All of these results can be built on and with membership of the Athletic Union on the increase all captains and coaches will look to continue Swanseas success in both the league and cup competitions.

Waterfront will be looking to come and see all the university sports over the next year so if you have a big fixture or someone in your team has put in a good (or shocking!) performance get in contact with us at sport@waterfrontonline.co.uk and we will try to get your sport in the Waterfront spotlight don't hesitate to get in contact with us.

Carl Day