Exeter City captain Bow Jackson is experimenting with a very different kind of ice bath this month – all for a good cause.
She is supporting the charity Surfers Against Sewage in their fundraising Dip a Day throughout October, but rather than splashing in the sea every single day, she’s mixing it up a little bit.
She’s submerged herself in a trough full of rainwater – and last weekend she also enlisted the help of her team-mates to throw a bucket of ice water over her.
It was already a cause Jackson supported, and she wanted to do something offbeat to help raise awareness of the problems of water pollution in the UK.
“If I were to do a marathon, people would be like, ‘Oh, yeah, but you’re a footballer, you should be able to do that.’ Everyone knows I don’t like the cold, so it’s actually a challenge.
“I’m in the south-west, I care about my waters, I surf, I go and use the water a ridiculous amount of time.”
And although she isn’t keen on being cold, she’s looking on the positive side: “It’s great for my recovery!”
Jackson – whose day job is in the fire service, as a fitness advisor and on-call firefighter – says that she always prefers being outdoors to inside, and particularly in the sea: “You get in there, you sit in there for 10 minutes and you just go, ‘Oh, what was I worried about?’
“I’m definitely an eco bunny. I love nature, I love getting out there and just enjoying what the earth has to offer – which sounds really corny, I know, but it’s nice to have!”
Bow Jackson: This team is remarkable
On the pitch, she says this season so far has been “a challenge – in a good way.”
Having enjoyed plenty of success in recent years, including a fourth place finish in the FA Women’s National League Southern Premier last season, the Grecians are now a known quantity – which means, Jackson thinks, that teams are doing their homework before playing them.
And in an area of the country where there are limited local players to call on, and without a big playing budget to spend, Jackson wants the club to feel like a community – including fans and sponsors.
However, she says, sometimes the connection the players feel with the club community can have a down side: “Once you have a bad result, you really take it to heart, because you think, ‘Oh, I’ve let everyone down.’ And it’s not like you can just brush it off.”
She goes on: “The team is remarkable. I cannot speak a bad word about them.
“They’ve all got their little quirks, and that’s what makes it really good to be around. We’ve not just got one system of play. We’ve completely adapted how we play this year to last year, which has taken time, but it shows how much people care about it and where we’re able to adapt and overcome the challenges.”
Bow Jackson: We care about our fans
And she also looks at the bigger picture.
“As long as we stay safe and we keep coming up that table, we’ll be in a happy position – and then in time, we do the groundwork, we get the foundations right, so we have a sustainable club that we can push on to those higher levels.
“But there’s no point talking about that until the club is sustainable and we’re able to keep going in the right direction. Like we’ve seen in the women’s game where the plug is pulled, and then the club completely decimates. That goes right down to the leagues, and we don’t want to be that club. We’d rather take our time, get to where we need to be, and enjoy it and just take the moments as they come.
“Exeter care about the people and the players; it’s not just a case of you’re a football player and you turn up, you do a job. It’s everything about it.
“We care about our fans, and we care about the next step, and the sponsors that come in, we want to help them – what can we do for you in return for you helping us? It’s a really close-knit community around Exeter, and people want to get involved because they’re seeing it’s not just, ‘Sign a cheque and go’ or ‘Come to a game and see you later’ – they’re a part of it. That’s our ambition, and that’s our aim – to make a community team.
“And you are part of our team. Not just coming to support us – you are part of our team.”
