Hugo Batten reflects in Oxford’s  Cherwell on his experience 0f playing rugby as an undergraduate, and how his perspective changed when he joined the Oxford University team as a postgrad:

There’s a pile of things that undergrads don’t appreciate about being undergrads: how easy it is to impress girls in their late teens, hangovers that only last a morning, and embarrassingly tolerant junior deans.

Another of those underappreciated things is getting to play team sports with a group of people you know and, usually, like. When I was working full-time, I missed the camaraderie and banter of a sports team more than almost anything else about uni life. Cracking jokes with colleagues about how you dominated that half-three meeting with a well-timed jest about fourth quarter earnings is far less entertaining than recounting your devastating right-foot step or sparkling footwork at the batting crease.

If you’re working a real job (i.e. not HR, advertising etc) it’s nigh on impossible to slink out of the office early enough to train with a team. Bosses, in my experience, rarely respond well to being told that your goal-kicking is sub-par but that you have been watching Carter YouTube clips all day and feel that you can iron out some technical shortcomings if you could just leave the office at 5.02pm to work on them…

Full article here.