Student story: Football Sabbatical Officer

"I am Jaydon Coombs-Goodfellow and this year I am the Football Sabbatical Officer! I read PPE at Wadham college during my studies.

Prior to Oxford I lived in Acton, West London where I played football across many levels from my local Sunday league side to representing Middlesex in the FA leagues and playing in the FA youth cup. In short, Football has consumed a fair amount of my life.

It is then natural that outside of studies in Oxford I made a lot of time to play football at both the university and college level where I had a great time in both feeling as if I had stricken a good balance between studies and extracurricular activities. I always found football to be a nice way to make friends, stay fit and have a nice ‘switch-off’ period in what can be otherwise be a very hectic life in Oxford and I would heavily encourage it to anyone as regardless of level there is a place for you at Oxford to play football and connect with others through the beautiful game.

My role as Sabbatical Officer this year consists mainly of ensuring the college leagues and the ‘cuppers’ tournaments are running smoothly and to work with the football club (OUAFC) where possible to ensure people are aware of the opportunities across the university for people to play football. Essentially, I am here to ensure you are able to have the best, hassle free time you can whilst playing football here!

For myself, I am quite passionate about football and hope to stay working in the realm of sports using meaningful statistics to further boost athlete performance. Outside of career goals, I quite enjoy Taekwondo and hope to reach a fairly high grade by the end of the year.

As I have alluded to earlier, there are many chances for everyone in the university to get involved in across all levels. We have the college football leagues which span across JCR (1’s and Reserves), MCR and Women’s competitions as well as a cuppers tournament for each. We then have the university wide football teams who will be holding trials for incoming students (more details on the OUAFC Instagram and Facebook) and compete in the BUCS leagues across the Midlands. We also have a university wide Women’s Development squad for those who are looking to get into football more casually and more frequently than college football. Finally, we also run Active at Oxford football sessions every Friday from 15:30 to 17:00 for all levels to develop skills and footballing instincts mainly aimed for those with little to no experience hoping to have a taste into the sport."