Sunday, August 31

Defying the Furies at Ebbsfleet

Image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons (detail).

(Next canto: Nemesis in the form of Lee Steele).

Monday, August 25

Thursday, August 21

Defeat at the Racecourse: Half-positive thinking from Wales?

(Well, you weren't expecting us to win a game played at Wrexham and shown on Setanta, were you?)

Tuesday, August 5

Pre-season

A blog of pictures and few words, but here are some before we go:

So, this first picture: Court Place Farm, a summer's evening, the hopes of a new season have been gently warmed by the sun that now starts to sink behind the trees sheltering the ground from the city around it. The world of Oxford United Football Club is again, delivered for us anew.

Physically we’re closer to the players, but somehow they seem small, as something bigger takes place around us. The course of the game is secondary to the fact that we’re here. The novelty of unfamiliar faces playing in familiar shirts. We try to discern which of these faces will become well-known to us on the back pages of papers, captured in moments of triumph, and which will be a small mugshot at the bottom of the page next to the story of their loan deal to Brackley.

A regular fixture in our pre-season, it’s as the moment after waking, opening your eyes with the world pleasantly out of focus and dreamlike. Worries about what the season will bring, what tension may be in store, are too far away and unreal. How can cold February away days in Kettering exist when the world is like this? We turn the radio back off for five minutes more so that we can doze and enjoy imagining possibilities a little longer.

So, this first picture: Court Place Farm, pre-season, where we can come each year to rediscover our faith, before reality rudely reimposes itself.