It will not have escaped the attention of many of our new first years that Cambridge’s communal sports facilities are severely lacking compared with many of its contemporaries. The burden of sports provision is almost solely the responsibility of the individual colleges. This is a barrier to participation and improvement in more niche sports, as colleges struggle to provide facilities for sports other than football, rugby and cricket.

Richer colleges such as Trinity and St John’s are able to cope with this demand. St John’s in particular has an excellent gym and colleges such as Gonville and Caius have superb cricket and football facilities. However, smaller and poorer colleges are unable to maintain top quality  sporting facilities.

The University’s communal facilities at Fenner’s are designed to fill this gap, but with the indoor cricket school, for instance, being rented out to local schools throughout term, colleges are being forced  to fill the gap.

Incredibly, this is not a new concern. As far back as 1892, The Cambridge Review identified the necessity of centralised university facilities. The ‘800 Years with No Sports Centre’ campaign, backed by CUSU, the Hawks’ club and the Ospreys, has taken up the baton in recent years. It has repeatedly petitioned the University to commit to a project that would satisfy the needs of its student body, thousands of whom are weekly participants in at least one sport.

At the very least, plans are in place for a development in West Cambridge to address many of these needs. Incorporating a 50m swimming pool, a multi-purpose sports hall, ten tennis courts, other racket courts and sports science facilities, this sports centre would fulfil the requirements for Cambridge sports facilities to come into line with its academic equivalent.

However, we must temper our excitement, given the University’s seemingly reticent attitude. Despite securing close to £1 billion in a recent fund-raising campaign, the University has not been able to commit the £50 million required to build the centre. Meanwhile, there has been no specific fund-raising drive to collect the money needed, even though similar campaigns have been launched for other academic ventures. Indeed, in April, rumours arose that the University was scrapping its initial plans in favour for a cheaper and smaller centre. It dismissed the allegations, but very little has been heard since to back up their denials.

The University should be more open about its commitment  to the new sporting facilities, currently it seems unfair that poorer colleges have to compensate for the lack of progress in this area.