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)

Reading photographs/Away at York

Posts have been a bit sporadic of late, for which we're sorry; it's not been for want of things to think about at Oxford, more a lack of time. We hope to be back up and running again shortly, but in the meantime, we've been mulling over a new idea.

We were interested to read OUFC's chairman write at some length in the Stevenage programme about a particular photo from the season's opening game. It was, of course, a game that was potent in symbolism, narrative, and ultimately drama, and Kelvin Thomas' words related that photo to what he saw as the club's aims. We were interested that he spent some time talking about an image, which of course has been a core focus of this site, but we also see a burgeoning interest in images and imagery around the club as banners and standards spring up with increasing frequency and imagination, and away games seem to prompt new visual celebrations of our club.

We Are Oxford United has always been interested in these images and symbols, and tried to steer away from photos of what takes place on the pitch. However, we thought we might start publishing a series of occasional posts that look at images of this Oxford side, but try to understand them as symbols rather than simple records of a moment in time. We thought we might as well start with that fantastic image that Kelvin Thomas wrote about - it'll follow next week.

p.s. if you're interested in what we thought of York: it feels strange that our scheduled league games with this club are out of the way already, particularly given how hard and closely fought they've been. Perhaps it's just that, but something tells us that that York side will yet have an important role to play in the eventual outcome of our season.

[Portrait of Man Ray and Salvador Dali, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42535 DLC (b&w film copy neg.), courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons. The image's integrity has been retained.]

Oxford 5 - 0 Grays

(Is it possible to talk at the moment about this Oxford United squad without sounding messianic?)

Barrow away: a distant end and an uncertain road

(Awkward opponents provide a salutary reminder that we have still much to come before we reach the end of the season)