Reflections

Not to repeat.

Not to continue to try whatever psychic channel or vibes we seem to have tuned into (The celebration of The Prodigal Son foreseen in September; the future role of York foreseen in October; A voice crying out that the soul of Oxford needed The Beast to return in February... we shouldn't meddle in forces we don't understand).

Not to continue if the flame isn't there. We're there at a rebirth in yellow: Burton-on-Trent bathed in sunshine, our colour around all four sides of the ground. We're there for a Collosseum performance against Bristol. But is the drive there, without the sense of injustice? The planets realigned at Burton. The wrongs were righted that day in May. We look round and see the world is right again. Perhaps this blog was born of that earlier rage, a howl that had to come out somewhere - and now that they've perhaps mellowed?.. well...

We can feel ourselves moving from that Beckettian injunction to eschew the uselessness of words that we wanted to live by. We try again too many times. So of course we continue, but we'll become more sporadic than before... probably more of the Occasional Pen Portraits, the odd Reading Photographs... an image for a match if we feel we've not done it before. We promised not to repeat. Better this way.

Soundtrack to a season

We started this website to celebrate the images and feelings entwined with them that stay with us from games; but as much could be said about the songs that become inextricably linked with particular moments for whatever reason. And music is something that can catch us at unexpected moments, evoking a time on a terrace in a land long since lost.

So here's the soundtrack to the season we've just lived. Looking at it now, for someone who knew nothing of those months to stumble on this post, it's a rather motley collection. But if you were there, with us, then you'll know. And when these songs catch you unexpectedly, on the radio, on a television advert, or at a friend's, the hair will stand up on you, or you'll smile and shake your head. And you might catch someone else doing the same: and you'll know.


#1: Saturday 8th August 2009, and before every home game. Begin at the beginning. Not the most stirring or memorable song for an Oxford side to come out to, but given the season it will be linked with, we'll remember it.

#2: Saturday 5th December 2009, Ebbsfleet at home. Turned out we were more 'Livin' on a prayer' than 'half way there'...

#3: 2009/10, Most games, home and away. It was always there, lurking on our terrace, waiting to burst into life. Sometimes hopeful, sometimes chest-out cocky, sometimes defiant (the loudest rendition was at Kenilworth Road after Matt Green scored), and, finally, tearful and disbelieving. We sang it that final time in case those victory celebrations would stop being real if we stopped singing it.

#4: Tuesday 9th February 2010, Luton away/Sunday 16th May 2010 York at Wembley. The counterpoint to a hollow feeling following the final whistle at Kenilworth Road. It would haunt you on the radio, out shopping, in bars, taunting you: remember this?

We stole it back after the final whistle at Wembley.

#5: 7am, Monday 17th May, 2010, kitchens around Oxfordshire. Tears for the first time as Radio Oxford plays a montage of commentary from the play off final, backed by this song.

[All songs/videos taken from youtube. Video #3 of the London Road in full voice after the second leg of our play off semi final against Rushden courtesy of TimOUFCWalker]

Time's arrow

'And I within, who came at the wrong time - either too soon, or after it was all too late.'

- Time's Arrow

'...fuck you and fuck this stupid club…’

*********************************

Dear Mr. Smith,

I’m writing to you to tell you about my son, Luke.

He is currently playing for Stalybridge Celtic in the Conference North, but I truly believe that he has the ability to play at a higher level, having played for Lincoln in the football league and York in the Conference. Luke was a trainee at Sheffield Wednesday, and I’m sure you can talk to some people there who will tell you about him, but if you were to offer him a trial, you’d see a strong central defender who will give his all for Oxford, but also knows how to play a ball.

*********************************

‘…I am so proud. It's great to get the award from the lads, but to receive the supporters’ award as well is fantastic and I'd like to thank them for that. I wasn't in the team at the start of the season but was determined to do everything I could when I got my chance, and that seems to have paid off. I'll be taking the trophies home in the summer to show my family, and they will take pride of place…’

*********************************

Luke is desperate to play for Oxford under you, and should he get a chance to show what he can do, you will be getting a fully-committed professional footballer. All Luke wants to do is be the best footballer he can be, and playing for a manager of your experience would enable him to do this.

*********************************

‘…Fozzie has been disappointing in his attitude, which has affected why he's not involved. Lifestyle is very important for a footballer and he maybe needs to look at changing his…’

*********************************

Yours sincerely,

Mr. Foster

*********************************

‘…He's played for Lincoln and York and I got a letter from his dad - it's probably because he's a Sheffield lad that I took a bit of interest in him. And I spoke to Marvin Robinson, who played with him at Lincoln. He said that he crunches people - so I thought that might do us well in this league!..’

[Image credits: sand adapted from a photograph by Manfred Morgner courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons; Images of Luke Foster courtesy of Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission]

Reading photographs: Release

Hope has been a recurrent theme on these pages. But hope so easily melds into expectation. It's hard to think back to August, when we realised that the hope inspired by a strong finish and the building of a convincing squad had somehow coagulated into expectation.

We realised this over the course of about an hour after Richard Brodie had scored at Minchery on a sunny day in August, and the mood on the terrace gradually turned from disappointment, to frustration, to despair. We started to realise: we had thought this was our season.

It took three minutes for the world to change.

Several times this season we've experienced that moment when you exhale so hard that it's a struggle to breathe. We did it that afternoon, and this image shows Matt Green mirroring this. Pain and pleasure in one image, as something is released from within. It's a startling image, but in fact this isn't an image of Matt Green after scoring the first of two goals - the goal scorer is behind him. Mark Creighton, 'The Beast', is locked in fierce embrace with his centre half colleague at the time. It's the sort of embrace you recognise that again shows that dual pleasure and pain: the pleasure is heightened because you realise what you only just avoided.

An unlikely goal scorer, and an unlikely reaction.

And Luke Foster: we're coming for you. What we'd written before and never published seems somehow apt at the point we find ourselves now.

There'll be some other retrospective pieces on this season over the coming weeks. Thanks for reading.

[Image credit: Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission]

Turning town yellow and blue

(A season that didn't end staring at the concrete floor at Minchery, avoiding each other's glances. It ended in the dusk on Broad Street with a hand shake. It feels like we haven't just brought Oxford back into the league, we've brought a real club back to the heart of Oxfordshire.)

In our beginning was our end

8th August 2009: 16th May 2010.

[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]

Reading Photographs: Permissible transgressions

Television pictures of pitch invasions often give the lie to any claims of spontaneity. Members of the crowd toe the hoarding area impatiently, waiting for their moment. The last day of last season: Quod est demonstrandum.

The invasion at the end of the Rushden game was similarly impatient: we knew it would happen. Yet; this time... smiles on the faces. In this picture, the London Road forms a backdrop to the scene assembling in front of it. A Rushden player strides away, looking back: this is not his act. Still, you have to scrutinise for a moment to pick player from fan. The two intermingle, and any initial hesitation the players may have had is swept away in the delirium of the moment. The gestures of celebration imitate... well, which was first? We are there. We are on the pitch. We are Oxford United.

[Image credit: Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission]

Seems like... old times

Yellow in Headington again.

Journey to our heart of darkness

'There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream...'

- Heart of Darkness

Going to the ground that day was like travelling back to seasons past, when supporters crowded the bars and clustered round the stadium. Yet, like a visit to the past, a silence seemed to lie over the area. An as-yet-empty terrace, a great silence, and impenetrable crowd of people. The air turned cold, time slowed. When the clouds occasionally parted, there was no joy in the brilliance of the sudden sunshine. The meandering groups of supporters who had stayed with us for the whole journey wandered into the gloom of over-shadowed distances, eyes cast down, avoiding the excited glances of others who had just joined us now.

You lost your way that day as you would in a desert, and batted all day long against shoulders, trying to find your way through, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once – somewhere – far away – in another existence perhaps.

There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of faces, and grey, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it after a while; I did not see it any more; I had no time. The game started and I had to keep guessing at our course; I had to discern the dangers that lay ahead, the signs of mistakes; I watched for a moment of inspiration to visit the players in yellow in front of me; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out when a speculative shot would stray towards our goal, only to be gathered safely in. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality – the reality, I tell you – fades. The purpose for our journey, the inner truth, is hidden – luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching us after we’d paid the entrance fee, not to forget the heartache which makes up the rest of the price.

But what, indeed, does the price matter, if the trick is well done?

[Image credits: Image from Apocolypse Now courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons; match image courtesy of Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission]

Play off semi final, first leg: A call to the colours at Rushden

Defeat away at Eastbourne on the last day of the regular season

(The result passes Us by, fixed as we are into the dark of the night on other thoughts)

Wrexham at home

Sunshine brings Us back to where we were at home to Mansfield

Goalless at home to Cambridge

1-0 away at Altrincham

Victory over Salisbury at home

A chill wind blowing across the terraces at Hayes

Blank staring terraces of Stevenage

'Just a game': Gateshead at home

(The thoughts in James Constable and Paul Farman's heads as far apart as could be: their reaction, identical)

Away at Rushden

Out of the blue and into the black at Tamworth

"...there's more to the picture than meets the eye."

Kettering at home: Picking over the bones of a season still alive

Feeling empty after Hayes and Yeading at home

Subdued away at Cambridge

Our dark material

'This strange hulking presence gnawing its meat was like nothing she had ever imagined, and she felt a profound admiration and pity for the lonely creature.'

- Northern Lights

‘Beast. May I speak to you?

My heart was thumping hard, because something in the Beast’s present made me feel close to coldness, danger, brutal power, but a power controlled by intelligence; and not a human intelligence, nothing like a human. The tattoos that snaked down his arms seemed to wreath his limbs with some organic design. This strange hulking presence pounding the touchline of the pitch was like nothing I had ever imagined, and I felt a profound admiration and pity for the lonely creature.

He ceased his pounding and crouched. Steam rose from his close-cropped head, and his stubble-lined jaw tightened. Then he stood up massively, six feet and more high, as if to show how mighty he was, to remind me of how useless the advertising hoardings would be as a barrier, and he spoke to me from that height.

‘Well? Who are you?’

His voice was so deep it seemed to shake the earth.

‘I’m a supporter of Oxford United.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to see you employed.’

‘I am employed.’

It was very hard to detect any expressive tones in his voice, whether of irony or anger, because it was so deep and flat.

‘Employed at what?’

‘I train with the team.’

‘What kind of work is that for a player such as you?’

‘Paid work.’

The beast knelt and began to stretch his mighty legs, heedless of me, it seemed; but then he spoke again.

‘What work are you suggesting?’

‘Fighting, in all probability,’ I said. ‘Soon we have to play Wimbledon at home, and Stevenage away. When that happens, we’ll have to fight to win.’

‘And what will you pay?’

‘I don’t know what to offer you Beast. If honour and glory are desirable to you, I can offer that.’

He was silent.

‘Forgive me for asking, Beast, but you could live a free proud life on the pitch. What ties you to the touchline and the bench?’

I felt my skin shiver all over. The question, which was almost an insult, may have enraged the great creature beyond reason, and I wondered how I’d had the courage to ask it. The Beast stopped his stretch, and came close to the terrace where I stood to peer at my face.

‘I know Stevenage and I know Wimbledon. Now I don’t like these teams, so I shall answer you politely. I stay here and pace this touchline and sit on that bench because they took away my yellow shirt. Without the yellow shirt I can train, but I can’t go to war in matches such as you speak of. I came to Oxford to escape from this league with you, and battles such as these are the air I breathe and the food I eat. They took my shirt from me, and if I knew how to get it back, I should tear that bench from its fixings and hurl it into the stands. If you want my service, I must have this shirt. With that, and I shall serve you in your campaign, either until I am dead or until you have victory.’

With that, I watched the mighty beast turn and resume his ceaseless patrol of the touchline, his eyes focused on something in the distance that before I had not been able to discern. But now I knew that it was a yellow shirt with the Ox's head above the ford on its chest.

[A post in honour of Mark Creighton's service to Oxford this season. Rhys Day and Jake Wright have formed a formidable centre back pairing, and one couldn't argue with that. But in the same way that we wouldn't contest the fox hunting ban, nevertheless the sight of Mark Creighton playing for his place in an FA trophy game seems as sad a sight as a pack of hunting dogs chasing a bag of sand.

Image credits: Image of polar bear adapted from a photograph by douglasperkins courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons; images of Mark Creighton courtesy of Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission]

Desire brings results at home to Rushden

(Performances are one thing, but it's all about a mindset now)

Victory at home to Histon beneath constantly shifting skies

What we lost in the storm

(A moment: but there are more to come, and they're not to be let slip so easily when we've come this far)

Top again at home to Kidderminster

(But the only celebrations visible are pictures from a week ago)

Grays 0 - 4 Oxford

After the snow, defeat at home to Tamworth

(Oxfordshire had started to look familiarly unfamiliar under its sheet of snow, but the world hasn't changed. There's a campaign to fight.)

Romulus and Remus

'To antiquity we grant the indulgence of making the origins of cities more impressive by commingling the human with the divine, and if any people should be permitted to sanctify its inception and reckon the gods as its founders, surely the glory of the Roman people in war is such that, when it boasts Mars in particular as its parent and the parent of its founders, the nations of the world would as easily acquiesce in this claim as they do in our rule.'

- The Rise of Rome

1. How this new age of Oxford was founded is not agreed amongst observers: for while many great players were present for some time before the dawning of this age, yet they could not then acquit themselves with true honour on the field of play. 2. Perhaps the reason which should be given the widest credence is the meeting of the brothers-in-arms; Clist and Bulman.

3. Some are suspicious of the fictitious and fabulous qualities of this story: how the brothers were found cast out in the wilderness of forests green or reduced to crawling on their belly for scraps. 4. Yet we should not be incredulous when we see what a poet fortune sometimes is, and when we reflect that this new age of Oxford would not have attained to its present power, had it not been of a divine origin, and one which was attended by great marvels. 5. That they were suckled by a she-wolf in the shade of a wild fig tree would scarce be believed, until we reflect on their qualities: the ferocity of Bulman, or the cunning of Clist. For the noble size and beauty of their bodies betokened their natural disposition, and when they achieved adolescence, they were both of them courageous and manly, with spirits which courted apparent danger, and a daring which nothing could terrify. 6. But Clist seemed to exercise his judgement more, and to have political sagacity, while Bulman’s strength and ferocity ruled his nature.

7. Historians have long debated the greater of the two.

8. To the observer first sighting the pair in battle, it is Bulman whose demeanour draws the eye. Tenacious and ferocious in his tackling, harrying his opponents wheresoever they are to be found, his fearsome prowess in the centre of the fight is seared into the mind for friend and foe alike, as when he fought all comers from Stevenage. 9. Yet where Bulman clears the way, it is Clist who prepares the attack for Oxford, his passing drawing his fellow men into the fray, and occasionally joining the raid himself, penetrating his opponents’ defences with his cutting runs, and unleashing volleys from distance to their dismay.

10. Were they to clash, as Romulus and Remus once did to decide the direction of the people they led, who would prevail to lead our new empire? 11. According to one account, Bulman is destined to embody the spirit of the club, the Bull of his name answering to the Ox of ours. 12. But it is impossible to say. Whereas it is known the world over what glory accrued to Rome once Romulus prevailed in his quarrel with Remus over the founding of Rome following his mendacity, the truth is that Clist and Bulman’s glory is entwined in their very partnership in the heat of battle; and to separate the two is to sow the seeds of turmoil for Oxford. To remove Clist would be to lose our guile that undoes the enemy; to remove Bulman would to see this guile smothered by the barbaric hordes of those who would oppose this new age of civilisation.

[Image credits: Images of Romulus and Remus by Giovanni Dall'Orto (photograph of the Fountain in Piazza del Campidoglio (Rome) and Rubens courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons; images of Danny Bulman and Simon Clist courtesy of Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission]