Back on the march at Crawley

Ten men in touching distance at home to Barrow

A light gleams an instant at the New Lawn

Winter grind drawing in at home to Barrow

Defeat at Kidderminster played to a stormy backdrop once again

(But clouds pass, and there's always a new day)

Remnants of another time at home to Yeovil in the Cup

(On the outside and looking in, but working on it)

Sammy dans la Stade

"'Don't give a damn, what I wanted was to go in the Metro.'"

- Zazie in the Metro

‘Howcanitstinkso?’ wondered Sammy. The bus doors open and Sammy skipped from the steps onto the pavement. He looked around: nothing was happening. Spotting the fludlites between the towerblock and rooftop, he weeves across the road and into the estate opposite. Here, likewise, there seemed to be nothing happening. A man across the street unloaded shopping bags from his car; Sammy skims round the corner. A path and a bridge across a dribble of a river, and Sammy discovers the objective of his excursion: the stadium rises up in front of him.

Sammy scuffs his heels as he starts to walk round the ground, glancing through the mesh doors and pondering. Unzipping the holdall on his shoulder, he scoops a football out and up into the air, before starting to gently kick it from foot to foot as he ambulls along. Lost in the pleasure of this, he rounds the corner and heads towards the glass eddyfizz before him.

It was then that Sammy noticed the white piece of paper taped above a window in a wall, inscribed in inkjet: ‘OXFORD vs. THURROCK FA CUP EAST STAND TICKETS £12’. The ball dropped to the flaw, and rolled away. Approaching the sign, throat dry with emotion, Sammy stood, re-reading.

His study of the paper was interrupted as a man approached.

‘Alright Sam.’ says the man.
‘Alright.’
‘Back then, are you?’ asks the man. ‘How was Nooport?’
‘(gesture)’
‘There’s a training ball here.’ says the man, bending down to pick up Sam’s football.
‘Znot a training ball, zmine.’ says Sam.
‘You know we’ve got plenty of footballs here.’ Laughs the man.
‘I like having one to kick.’ shrugs Sam.
‘(gesture)’
‘Home cup game then,’ says Sam. ‘when’s the team anownsed?’
‘Already is. Sheet sup.’

Sam grabs his ball, stuffs it in his bag, and barrels into the stadium through the glass doors. Round the corner through the corridor past the office round another corner to the office on the right, flies to a stop in front of the notisbored and the printed sheet. Starting from the top, he reads down, and further down, past the heading ‘Subs’, until his eyes finally alight on ‘Deering, S.’. He stares. And stares. Before finally he turns back the way he came, ball at his feet, playing one-twos with the wall, lost in a daze. Finally back.

A door slams.

‘Nofuckingfootballsinthefuckingcorridors!’

‘Sorryboss’, calls Sammy over his shoulder, feet still attached to the ball, thoughts deflected, passing over cross-field balls and shots from outside the box.

[Picture credits: Top photo cropped from a photo by Jean-Alexis Aufauvre, courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons; Images of Sam Deering courtesy of Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission.]

Oxford 1 - 0 Altrincham

Reading photographs: The geometry of a photo

The emotion of this photo is immediate: Green runs arms outstretched, Creighton bellows defiance, and Oxford's supporters rise as one to acclaim the unlikely. But the photographer's decision to keep the players and the pitch to the bottom third of his photo leaves a geometry to this photo: a plane provides the meeting point for three vectors.

Scattered over the pitch, York defenders have collapsed, defeated, sunk into the background. Mark Creighton has just scored the winning goal late in the game, and leads a line of Oxford players. Danny Bulman and Matt Green follow their own lines to this point. There seems an implicit knowledge of where they are heading, they meet at a point on the plane in front of them. That plane rises in front of them, dwarfing them: the supporters rising from their seats, arms aloft, mouths open mirroring the roar of Creighton.

A plane can be unlimited in its extension: this picture doesn't show whether or where it stops. Vectors, however, meet at a point. The players are individual representatives on the pitch of this bank of supporters, a plane which might continue indefinitely: the discrete part and the whole. In this picture we see the size of the players dwarfed by the supporters, but emotionally there is a mirroring; and geometrically, a union.

[The above photo is © Lewis Outing LRPS CPAGB, and reproduced here with his kind permission. See more of his photography here: http://www.mainlyfax.fotopic.net]

The FA Cup prompts comparisons with this time last year

(A sense of calm prevails)