Last year York were far closer to winning Roses away than they have been for quite a few years and Salman Rukhsar, VP (Activities), made it clear to SCAN that LUSU and the University are both doing everything that they can to ensure the best possible outcome in Roses this year.
Rukhsar told SCAN earlier in the week the “the general problems for an away Roses is the lack of support you can get because it’s quite easy to get the supporters to a home Roses, exams are always a big issue, with it being in exam season and it’s also quite hectic for a lot of the players so we are looking into all of these problems and trying to resolve them as soon as possible”.
Increasing the funding to a number of clubs, particularly those competing in Roses, is something that the university is doing in order to try to gain an advantage over York in the run up to Roses. This funding which has been spread amongst a variation of clubs has been used to benefit clubs in training and to help them develop greater fitness overall.
In a statement, the University said that the funding was also to “promote a strong sporting culture within the University and to enhance our performances at the British Universities and Colleges Sports events throughout the academic year”. The University also noted that it was currently giving extra funding to 23 sports clubs in order to fund additional coaching and fitness sessions.
Rukhsar also commented in detail on the increase in funding that sport has received over the past year saying that “we were quite lucky this year we’ve had quite a lot of money invested in sport” especially those who are competing at Roses.
The weekend itself isn’t what is costing the most money according to Rukhsar who told SCAN that “we don’t cover many of the costs when it’s away, the home institution pays for all of the facility hire, lecture theatres, flat floor space for people to sleep but we do cover the costs of transport to get people over there”.
Rukhsar mentioned that there had been previous talks which took place in the summer between the Univeristy and LUSU that would have meant that the University would be able to further increase spending on the Roses weekend by paying for more luxury accommodation. However, he also said that he was doubtful of whether this plan would go ahead, as great as it would be, “if the university did give us any money for accommodation that would go into subsidising that for student groups but we wouldn’t be able to do it for everyone and we certainly don’t have that money yet”.
One thing that Rukhsar was certain of was that the date of Roses has now been changed to the weekend before the Bank Holiday weekend, and this is due to the availability of York’s facilities and was something that was “out of our control”.
Rukhsar told SCAN that there are a lot of plans that are currently being made to hopefully increase the chance of a win at York this year but these plans will not be made public until the end of next week or shortly afterwards, after a meeting has taken place between Lancaster and York Universities.
