The cringe cardboard signs I made for the Varsity football matches are the objects that have defined my week.

I have never been a fan of football. I grew up in an arty, outdoorsy, Radio 4 household which didn’t have a TV. The only sports we watched (huddled around a laptop) were the Olympics, and even then it was usually just the opening ceremony and the equestrian events. My own lack of athletic ability did not help to foster an appreciation of team sports. While my Grandpa was somewhat of a sporting legend, my mother inherited none of his skills and passed on to me a severe lack of any hand-eye coordination. My inability to catch, throw, or even see a moving ball was apparent from a young age, and so I was encouraged to pursue other hobbies. Instead of watching matches every weekend, my parents sat by the side of pools, and graciously footed the vast expense of riding horses. I was sent to drawing and sewing classes, almost culminating in an art foundation course instead of an academic degree.

My boyfriend, however, is a football fanatic. Brought up by a sports journalist father, he’s turned out to be a die-hard Southampton supporter (at least he’s loyal) and a pretty good footballer (or so I’ve been told). Captain of his college football team and a player for the Uni 2’s, I accepted early on that there would always be three of us in the relationship. I was left to lie in on Sunday mornings while he went to football training at the crack of dawn, to be awoken on his return by sunrise pictures and tales of the epic highs and lows of Uni (not high school) football. After a while I was allowed to come and watch him play, accompanied by one of my best friends in college who is incidentally dating their goalkeeper. I had accidentally become a football WAG.

My limited football knowledge (I still don’t understand the offside rule) means that I am a highly supportive spectator. There are no utterances of ‘shit kick’ or exclamations that he could totally have stopped that goal. Ignorance is indeed bliss. After all, I can’t even catch or throw, so who am I to judge?

My WAG status met its most important test with the Reserves Varsity match. Cycling to uni parks is one thing, but travelling to Cambridge is a whole other ball game – pun intended. Distracted by the usual chaos of Oxford terms, I awoke the day before the match realising that I had completely forgotten to make any supporter signs. I couldn’t fail as a WAG at the first hurdle! After frantically ripping up some cardboard and rushing to WHSmith’s to buy blue paint and glitter pens, the goalkeeper’s girlfriend and I sat on the floor of my room and got to work.

For three hours we drew, painted, and coloured in. Gilmore Girls playing in the background, we were spread across the floor, glitter pens in hand, completely consumed by our task. The contented silence was only broken with exclamations of annoyance at Rory Gilmore or questions about which slogans would have the best effect. It was utterly therapeutic. The simple movements of pushing a pen across the cardboard, of working out which colour combinations to use, and badly drawing some footballs, were enough to silence my brain and place me firmly in the present moment.

I have never felt closer to my eight-year-old self as I did in those few hours. It has been years since I have dedicated time to simply colouring in, to creating something solely for fun. I was transported back to my old kitchen table c. 2012, where I would experiment with charcoal, watercolour, textiles, or clay – utterly absorbed, unaware of anything else around me. The simple act of creating was enough. The idea of taking a whole afternoon to do something which has no real purpose and no grade at the end feels so foreign as an adult. In a world of deadlines and academic pressure, art for art’s sake has no place. 

I never thought that football would remind me of my childhood passions, or what I gave up to be here. And yet that afternoon spent spread across my floor, glitter pens and paint in hand, reopened a world I had completely forgotten. Not only that, but I’m pretty sure my cringe (but fantastically decorated) signs must have played a part in the Centaurs winning this year’s Varsity.