Talk:Cambridge University Hare and Hounds

Reliable sources? notability issues

Lets look at some of the unnotable stuff from the first draft:

"while not as well known as its sister athletics club, made famous by the history of Harold Abrahams in the film Chariots of Fire, CUH&H encourages people of all abilities to participate in its training sessions, social events and races, and has one of the largest membership bases of Cambridge’s sports clubs."

Sister club is not relevant, and Harold Abrhams is not relevant. the fact thee club encourages people to particpate in said events in unnotable. "One of the largest memberships bases" is so vague as to be useless, and even if correct why is it notable?

"For a club which frequently includes international level athletes it maintains an unusually relaxed and busy social schedule,"

Says who? The CUHH web site? Get a quote from a reliable source otherwise this is pretty hollow claim. Since when have university clubs with international athletes not had busy social schedules?

'but nevertheless recent years have seen the emergence of marathoner Huw Lobb, and middle distance athlete Andy Baddeley, who captained the club in 2003 to team victories against Oxford. This was next repeated two months ago at the 116th running of the Varsity Match, where the club achieved their best results for twenty-three years"

In the context of the clubs long history this seems quite trivial. This page should not read like a bulletin board for the club. David D. (Talk) 23:17, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

That's all fair enough. The first draft was lifted directly from a national periodical, and I presume was never intended to stay in that form for long. The likely subject experts had not even been informed of its existence before your first substantial edit, in order to make changes, and will likely do so over much longer timescales. The benefit of that article was that it contained a lot of good pointers from which to start, therefore rather than deleting passages wholesale to purge unencyclopedic content, I tried to leave these pointers in place for people to modify over time. For instance, the sister club most likely will become relevant, its foundation being closely linked with that of British athletics, and hence modern track and field competition. Should other historic athletics clubs start to create articles, CUH&H's link with CUAC will become relevant, hence I left it to be added to. Likewise, globally Harold Abrahams is one of the most famous people to have run for CUH&H, as the only fomer member to feature in a Hollwood film! Not mentioned so explicitly above, but please give us time! Huw Lobb is famous in the UK for being the first runner to beat a horse in an annual 22 mile run, and Andy Baddeley competes for England and Great Britain, most notably recently in the Commonwealth games, were his fall helped bring down an Australian star and make front page headlines there. So, while the article as t'was may not be great, it's much easier to modify existing text, than forever write it from scratch, so please have some patience, and express concerns here without always culling the text. These people are not 'wikipedians', and will take a little time to learn the expected style. We've been around for over a century, I'm sure we'll have the patience to develop a wikipedia article over more than 10 minutes!131.111.8.98 23:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Changed "from the 19th" century to the founding date 7 February 1880, its more discriptive RichardMathie (talk) 08:52, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Logo positioning

and thanks for getting the logo aligned - we'll get catch up!131.111.8.98 23:48, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The logo got deleted again !! can they stop doing that RichardMathie (talk) 08:50, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Pointers

A Club history posted below for local reference while editing. Can be removed once elements used:

The first ever run by Cambridge University Hare & Hounds took place on Saturday 7 February 1880. It was followed by a meeting at which C. J. Johnstone was elected president, T. L. Shaun was elected Captain, W. W. Hough was elected Secretary and there was a committee of J. G. Bradshaw and R. Hall. It would seem likely that a running race against Oxford was already uppermost in the minds of those who formed the club and December was chosen so that athletes could rest and recuperate before beginning track running the following summer. That, at least, was the explanation given in the sporting newspaper Pastime in 1894. The first ever match against Oxford was accordingly held at Oxford on 2 December 1880. It covered road, grass fields, and plough in the Cherwell Canal - Woodstock Road area of Oxford. A. F. Hernaman of Oxford was first home and Oxford won the team event 23-32. Thereafter the venue alternated between Oxford and Cambridge. The Cambridge races began by the Hills Road railway bridge. Oxford's success in the first race was followed by a run of seven successive Cambridge victories. In the second race one of the Oxford runners fell heavily and everyone stopped ‘to see what had happened', which may suggest a certain lack of concentration. However in succeeding years the race began to attract attention and for the sixth race in 1885 a ‘large number of spectators' gathered, and for the 1891 race this was put at ‘several hundred'. All the early matches featured teams of five, with all five runners scoring. The procedure was for ‘hares' to go off leaving a paper trail which the race then followed. The trail was not always as obvious as the runners might wish it to be, and in many races some runners would loose the course to a greater or lesser extent. It is not clear at this early date whether spying out the paper course was a skill expected of runners - analogous to that of map-reading in orienteering - or whether it was simply the way in which the correct course was indicated. It would seem to be a method which would give considerable advantage to the home team. Nevertheless, one of the most chaotic races for runners going off course, the 1886 race at Oxford, was won by Cambridge. However there was some concern that home advantage counted for too much and in 1890 it was decided to switch the race to Roehampton, where the teams ran at the invitation of Thames Hare & Hounds. The result was a catastrophe when the entire race went off course and was unable to get back on it. The race was declared void and re-run over Shotover the following February. The race then continued to alternate venues until 1896, when it was decided to return to Roehampton. Thus the first valid Roehampton race was run on 4 December 1896. The teams arrived, as was to become traditional, at the King's Head. It was a morning of cold, driving rain, but it cleared by the time the race started. The runners had to plunge through two now-swollen streams, some up to their shoulders and some up to their waists, which presumably relates to differences in technique for getting across rather than an extraordinary disparity in heights. The race was won by W. W. Gibberd for Cambridge, and Cambridge also won the team event. Some runners had temporally ‘lost the scent', but there had been no repeat of 1890. After the race the teams were entertained to dinner at the Railway Hotel in Putney. Gibberd won again the following year, 1897. It was also the first race to end in a ‘whitewash', with all the Cambridge runners coming home nearly a minute ahead of the first Oxford runner. Fourth home on that occasion was Charles Wood, who 63 years later would be pictured as president next to Mike Turner in the 1960 team photograph. In 1897 Oxford won a close race. They were helped in that one Cambridge runner, E. Balgarmie, became lost several times ‘and having studied a large part of Surrey, came home last'. Cambridge whitewashed Oxford for the second time in three years in 1899, when they were led home by the freshman C. E. Pumphrey. As one newspaper commented: The supporters of the Cantabs were sure of victory, whilst the sympathisers with Oxford were of the opinion that the Dark Blues, who were a level lot, would create just as big a surprise as last year. As it turned out, both Universities had a level lot, but one side was first and the other nowhere. The account added that ‘such a crushing defeat for the Oxonians no sane person would have predicted'. Step forward E. Balgarmie, explorer of Surrey the year before, and not selected for this year's match. According to the Hare & Hounds log, ‘to E. Balgarmie alone belongs the credit of having prophesied what actually came to pass'. The log also says that some attributed Oxford's failure to the folly of wearing rubber-soled shoes. Two years on Oxford had their revenge inflicting the same defeat on Cambridge. Oxford also whitewashed Cambridge in 1910, 1926, and 1932. The 1926 defeat seems to have been so traumatic that the page in the Hare & Hounds log which should bear the result is blank. Like so many sporting events, the race was suspended during the First World War, and it did not resume until 1919. In the later 1920s the race moved to Horton Kirby in North-West Kent. Five victories in six years for Cambridge at the end of the 1920s was followed by a period in the early 1930s when Oxford had a particularly strong team. Their 1932 team was led home by the New Zealand Rhodes Scholar Jack Lovelock. The following year Lovelock, running for a combined Oxford and Cambridge team against Princeton and Cornell, broke the world mile record. The race was again officially suspended between 1939 and 1944. Although Cambridge won two close races in 1945 and 1946, in the late 1940s and early 1950s Oxford were able to field some exceptional teams. Roger Bannister won the 1949 race, and from 1950 to 1952 (the last of these a legendary race held in impenetrable fog) Chris Chataway became the first athlete to win three successive races. The Oxford victory of 1955 meant they nosed ahead in the series for the first time since their initial victory in 1880. However the Cambridge victory of 1956 ushered in a particularly golden period for Cambridge. Mike Palmer won the 1956 race and went on to equal Chataway's record by winning the 1957 and 1958 races. In the late 1950s and early 1960s Cambridge was able to field teams packed with present or future internationals including Bruce Tulloh, Tim Briault, Herb Elliott, Mike Turner, and Tim Johnston. The late 1960s saw some solid Oxford victories, with the exception of the close-fought and snowy 1967 race. In the years that followed Cambridge had some team successes, particularly in the early 1970s and the early 1980s, but Chris Garforth's 1972 victory was Cambridge's only individual win between A. I. C. Heron's in 1964 and N. Thin's in 1981. Thin repeated his victory in 1982, and the following three races were won by J. D. Barton. Oxford individual dominance returned the following year however with a victory for Richard Nerurker, and four successive victories (the first athlete to achieve this) for Simon Mugglestone. In 1987 Oxford took the lead in the series for the first time since 1955. In the 1990s Cambridge began to get back on terms winning eight of the eleven contests between 1990 and 2000, and with individual victories for Donald Naylor, Dan Leggate and Alex Hutchinson. Cambridge won again in 2003, but victories for Oxford in the hard-fought contests of 2004 and 2005 meant they edged ahead in the series with 58 victories against Cambridge’s 57. In the early 1970s a number of previously all-male colleges in both Oxford and Cambridge began to admit women, and there was co-incidentally a growth in the popularity of running as a leisure activity. The result was inevitable. At a Hare & Hounds committee meeting on 11 February 1974, the captain Martin Dell pointed out the necessity to revise the constitution to admit women as members. A sub-committee consisting of Martin Dell, Chris Garforth, Mike Turner and G. Sellens was appointed to look at the issue. The following month they reported back, recommending that the word “male” be deleted from the constitution, and that the Women’s Amalgamated Clubs be informed of the change. In November there was discussion of a Ladies match on Lammas Land and of possible future fixtures, but no races appear in the club records. Progress was being made however. The following February it was decided that that there would be a Ladies secretary (Karen Morten) who would be a committee member, and that active steps should be taken to recruit women members at the next Freshers’ Fair. There were plans for a Varsity Match to be held at Oxford on 29th November 1975 along with the IInd-5th matches, but it did not take place.

There was some discussion the following year about where and when the match should be held. The competition for places was not great and there were those who felt it should not be held on the same day as the men’s race. However, what seems to have been Oxford’s view won the day, and the first Ladies’ Cross-Country Varsity Match was held at Roehampton on 4th December 1976. The result was a 10-30 clean sweep for Oxford, with A. English the first Cambridge runner home in 7th. The race was much closer the following year with Kim Tuffnell becoming Cambridge’s first individual winner, although Oxford won 17-19. Cambridge improvement continued the following year when Cambridge not only again had the individual winner in Susan Parker but won the match 13-26. Joan Lewtas (now the Club president, Joan Lasenby) won the 1979 match for Cambridge but the team result was decided in favour of Oxford whose team closed in first with the scores equal.

Cambridge then won every match both individually (Joan Lewtas again, S. A. Hales, E. C. Hand, H. L. Shaw, B. A. O’Neill, and C. J. Shelley) and as a team from 1980 to 1985. The 1982 race demonstrated how important victory had become for both sides. Oxford complained that Cambridge supporters had paced their side’s runners and impeded those of Oxford. The complaints were upheld, but it was deemed that the interference was not sufficient to have affected the outcome of the race, which was awarded to Cambridge.

Women’s running was becoming established within the University at this time too. Half-blues or, for exceptional achievement, full-blues, could be awarded from 1978. The first women’s Cuppers was in 1980, by which time women were also competing in college leagues.

Oxford tended to dominate the race in the late 1980s with Cambridge’s only success being the victory of M.C. Lavers in the 1988 race. Cambridge won the races of 1991 and 1992 both individually (E. Coleman, C. Fothergill) and as a team, but there then followed another period of Oxford success. This was ended by fine performances from Ellen Leggate in 2001 and 2002, and Julia Bleasdale – with a course record - in 2003, leading Cambridge to team victories in 2002 and 2003. The series count, however, stands at Oxford 18, Cambridge 12.131.111.8.98 23:54, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit clash, I see you are looking at the same pages] With respect to pointers the following pages have some good stuff. What were the sources for these two pages?

http://www.srcf.ucam.org/cuhh/aboutus/history.php

http://www.srcf.ucam.org/cuhh/competition/chrisbrasher.php

I'd suggest start with a solid core and build the article up from there rather than trying to adapt the national periodical article. David D. (Talk) 23:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Even as this has been edited better starting points (eg the above and the 2 links) have been suggested on the club list. Anyway, they'll have to wait as I'm off to bed. Thanks for your help, and please do pop by from time to time to check up on us, but I suspect it'll be edited later rather than sooner. I guess you can scrub this once you've read it (couldn't fathom the talk section at this time of night).131.111.8.102 00:20, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

What about Achilles

Also, shouldn't you mention the achilles club? David D. (Talk) 00:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Example club page

Check out this page: Ranelagh_Harriers , for a style guide. i'm not saying its perfect but it is a start. David D. (Talk) 00:11, 7 February 2007 (UTC)