Bright spring sunshine was a very welcome background to OB Spring Matches this year held on Saturday 21 March 2026.

Cross Country Run

Adam Robinson (G 11-16), Secretary of the OB Running Club, organised a group of Bradfieldian runners to return to college for the traditional Bostelmann Club Run over the 5-mile woodland course. The race is run each year in memory of Bradfieldian Michael Bostelmann (A 61-66). This year’s runners included Michael’s two sons David (A 94-99) and Richard (Dicky) (A 92-97) along with Dicky’s contemporary Jon Welland (A 92-97), Jeremy Winter (F 67-72) and Tom Fortune (F 91-96) who ran with his two children Ned and Clemmie. Clemmie at 7 years of age was by far the youngest ever runner over the course running it slowly with her dad, however, both children are demonstrating a talent at running from their Bradfieldian parents. Two college runners joined the group – Elliot (A 2027) and Pakka (D 2027) with Elliot finishing first. The first of the OB Runners home was David Bostelmann this year.

Football

While the runners were on the cross-country course the OB Footballers lead by Dan Hodgkinson (H 10-15) brought two teams of Bradfieldian footballers to play against the college First XI and an Under 17 team. This event is organised each year to bring the OB teams (which sometimes include the OB Women’s Football team) back to Bradfield to meet and play against the current Bradfield football squads. The games as always were played in good spirits in beautiful sunshine and the OBs came away 3-1 winners over the College First XI, with goals scored by Josh Buchan E 17-22), Justin Foord (C 99-04) and Samuel Raphael (H 15-20).

For the first time the OB men's footballers managed to raise a second team, mostly made up of the team from the Class of 2019 who loved being back at Bradfield again, but sadly lost 2-1 against the college Under 17 team. The OB footballers included: Sam Probert (C 14-19), Billy Bolt (D 14-19), Hugh Murray (D 14-19), Tom Wynne (F 15-19), Johannes Jansen (C 17-19), Jeevan Singh (C 16-18), Tom-Eric Mullikas (H 15-19), Miles Atkins (H 14-19), Matt Graves (H 14-19), Felix Lapidus (H 14-19) and Finn Brabham (A 13-18).

Thank you to everyone for joining us back at Bradfield for such a wonderful day of competitive, but friendly sport and to Bradfieldian James Fox (G 97-02) and Jack Surgay from the College staff along with Sarah Thompson (M 12-14) for organising the football fixture from the college side and in the case of James for playing for a short time for the Bradfieldians as well!

See match reports Spring Matches 2026: OBFC v College