Rocket man Sam

13 April 2012

Oxford will have the full backing of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for their attempted lift-off to a Varsity match hat-trick at Twickenham this afternoon.

Sam Adlen, one of eight survivors from last year's winning team, takes his place against Cambridge only because his transatlantic sponsors have released him from building a module designed for Mars to concentrate on the comparatively mundane matter of winning a strictly terrestrial assignment. Welcome to the last great amateur show on the rugby planet.

The Varsity match, supposedly doomed as a non-event almost 30 years ago and dismissed more recently by the nouveaux riches of professionalism as a minor irrelevance, will continue to defy all box-office logic. The RFU predicts another 50,000 crowd - more than the aggregate attendance for last weekend's six Premiership matches.

Despite a cast largely anonymous by Twickenham standards, the crowd will roll up for the perennial enactment of The City's big day out to watch players who could barely be considered names in their own households, let alone anyone else's. These fellows really are different and the NASA- sponsored Adlen is a classic case in point.

The holders of what used to be the Bowring Bowl had to ask his space agency backers in Washington for permission to release the centre from his studies.

Oxford's rugby director Steve Hill said: 'Sam is designing a module which is to be sent to search for water on Mars. The project is funded by NASA and it meant him missing a few weeks earlier in the season until they cleared the way for him to do his rugby.

'We were very keen to pick as many experienced players as possible and having him out there again will be very important. We have a lot of guys who know how to win big rugby matches.'

As well as the extra-terrestrial knowledge which the Derbyshire-educated Adlen brings to their midfield, the Dark Blues also have left wing Will Rubie, whose ornithological nickname reflects an unusual recent visit to Venice.

He said: 'I was in St Mark's Square and we did a little prank where I covered myself from head to toe in pigeon seed. I just lay there, whereupon a couple of hundred birds descended on me to feed. My face was completely scratched and I've been 'The Pigeon Boy' ever since.'

Part of Oxford's strategy today will be to give Rubie the chance to show he has the pace to catch pigeons, as well as feed them. Hill said: 'He has developed enormously this season. We are hoping we can put him into space.' Rubie, from Reigate in Surrey, is studying biochemistry but knows exactly what he will be doing once he leaves university - teaching the bible. 'I am going to be one of the people who tells the world about Jesus,' he said. 'That is the most important thing in life.

'I love rugby, I enjoy biochemistry but, ultimately, we are all going to die and on that day my rugby is not going to mean anything to me. Even so, winning a Blue is very exciting, something which I am desperate to do.

'I realise that, eternally, it is of very little, if any, value. But right now it is something which is very worthwhile. It really is a great occasion, a special day for rugby - and for world rugby, if you take into account all the different nationalities of the players involved.'

While English players account for almost two thirds of both squads, the rest come from America, Asia, Africa, Australasia and Europe. While there will not be a solitary Welshman in sight, two youngsters with a fine rugby pedigree will be waiting on the Oxford bench - Ed Hallett, son of former RFU secretary Tony Hallett, and Fraser Gemmell, whose father, Bruce, was a Test All Black in the mid-Seventies.

Cambridge have a fully-fledged Super Twelve New Zealander of their own, flanker Duncan Blaikie from the Otago Highlanders. Oxford, marginal favourites to make it three-in-a-row for the first time since 1971, have former Wallaby flanker Brett Robinson, American prop Ray Lehner and use of the England dressing room rather than the spartan, breezeblock one reserved for the away team.

OXFORD - N Marsh (Magdalen); W Rubie (Brasenose), L Sherriff (St Anne's), S Adlen (Jesus), W Ellerby (St Hugh's); S FitzGerald (Balliol), D Taberner (Worcester); K Tkachuk (Kellogg), P Nicholas (Brasenose), R Lehner (Kellogg), A Russell (Magdalen), C Edwards (Balliol), S Miall (Pembroke), J Bolger (St Peter's), B Robinson (Wadham, capt).

CAMBRIDGE - A Newmarch (St Edmund's); S Moffat (St Edmund's), S Adams (Fitzwilliam), M Rivaro (Hughes Hall), J Baker (Hughes Hall); S Howard (St Edmund's), M Chapman-Smith (Hughes Hall); A O'Brien (St Edmund's), C Collins (Wolfson), D Brett (Trinity Hall), A Innes (Hughes Hall), E Mallett (St Edmund's), M Graham (King's), D Blaikie (Hughes Hall), M Count (Jesus, capt). Referee: Steve Lander.

MORE ABOUT

Biochemistry

Rocket man Sam

Read More