Toftevaag, who is completing a doctorate in advanced nanoscale engineering, says an Australian friend at his college dragged him along.
“I’d never really heard about footy. Never even been to Australia... but then I gave it a try and I think I like the sport, but I think the people,” he says. “I don’t know if all Australians in Australia are nice, but the Australians in Oxford ... I love the people and I just stayed around … now I’m president.”
The roll call of notable Australians who have taken part in the match is stunning. Bob Hawke, a future prime minister, kicked around a Sherrin while he was at Oxford. So did Howard Florey, the pharmacologist from Adelaide who shared the Nobel Prize for his role in the making of penicillin.
The historic first Oxford v Cambridge women’s Australian rules football match in 2018 ended in a draw.
The historic first Oxford v Cambridge women’s Australian rules football match in 2018 ended in a draw.
Dr Mitch Robertson, a former Oxford player who has now returned to Melbourne as Dean of Studies at Newman College, says runner Herb Elliot played for Cambridge while he was there studying natural sciences in the early 1960s.
“I used to give a speech to my team, saying imagine turning up and looking to your left, and you have Herb Elliot, the reigning Olympic gold medallist, looking back at you? You’d be in for a long day running, wouldn’t you?” he says.
Robertson, a historian who is planning a book on the annual clash, says another tale, but difficult to pin down as fact, is that Rupert Murdoch even umpired a game while studying at Oxford in the early 1950s. Around that time, a game was played under heavy snow, forcing visiting prime minister Robert Menzies to stay away. In 1955, a six-minute long film of the match was shown on BBC, thought to be the first time Aussie rules was broadcast on television.
Oxford v Cambridge annual inter-varsity Australian rules match in 2005.
Oxford v Cambridge annual inter-varsity Australian rules match in 2005.
As a Rhodes Scholar in the 1970s, a young Mike Fitzpatrick played three matches before returning and playing in three Carlton premierships, captaining two. He would also later be chairman of the AFL for a decade. Among his teammates were now retired Supreme Court of Victoria judge Chris Maxwell and businessmen Sir Rod Eddington.
Henry Marshall, a John Monash scholar from Adelaide and Cambridge’s club president, is quick to point out that ties between his university and Australian Rules football go back further, dating to the 1850s when Tom Wills, one of the code’s founding fathers, played cricket for the university.
Marshall, undertaking his PhD in molecular cancer biology at the renowned Wellcome Sanger centre, says his former professors in Adelaide – both Oxford alumni – had told him to sign up for a game before boarding his flight.
“I had basically stopped playing footy while I did med school, a six-year degree and then another two years working. So it’d been eight years without playing any footy,” he says. “Then I just kind of fell in love with the community, with the club.”
Among Cambridge’s recent home-grown stars are Joe Lillis, undertaking a PhD in nutritional physiology, who has captained the GB national team. Erin Hoare, a former Geelong AFLW player and professional netballer, was also previously among the women’s team’s ranks while studying at Cambridge. Like Oxford, both men’s and women’s play in a national universities league and head to Europe to play tournaments.
The inclusion of the women’s teams has transformed the game at both universities, Marshall says, and has made the inter-varsity clash one of the big annual sporting days out.
Sam Kentwell, a marine biologist at the British Antarctic Survey, who grew up in North Sydney and studied in north Queensland, says coaching Cambridge women has not only made her footy-loving dad proud back home but given her a sense of belonging.
“I didn’t expect it in England, you know, I couldn’t have imagined it. I grew up around footy and then to find it here of all places. I just fell into this group, like, we’re all best mates out of the club as well now.”
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