Reading photographs: Moments in time

A photograph is a moment in time. From the second it is taken it is history. When we look at these images, we read them with the wisdom that comes with the knowledge of what was to come next.

This moment is in the seconds before kick off for the final game of Oxford's 2008-09 season, against Northwich Victoria. Billy Turley hugs his two daughters closer to him as the noise in the ground builds to its crescendo. One tucks her head into his shoulder to hide, the other looks tentatively towards the London Road in full voice. A moment of privacy as Turley kisses the head of one, but his gaze is already turned towards the site of the very public moments to come. He eyes the goal in which he is soon to concede the first goal of the afternoon, puncturing the pressure that has built over the last six months.

Turley's body attempts to trace a sphere of protection, of reassurance, or of privacy around his daughters as he brings them into this very public arena. One of them looks with trepidation around her: it contrasts with Turley's look of grim determination to ensure there is only one result that afternoon. But our knowledge of what is to come is the knowledge of two goals he conceded, that what was always only ever at our fingertips finally slipped from our grasp, and that his opposite number would oust him from his position in the team.

We dwell on moments such as these as tendrils seem to flow from them; they seem somehow more pregnant than other moments. That sense in your stomach as you watched Turley take his daughters out onto the Minchery Farm pitch was the knowledge that the narrative of a season was more obviously in the balance than perhaps it had been all season. On one side lay everything you wanted: everything Billy Turley wanted too, probably.

On another lay a fourth season in the Conference, and an FA trophy first round game for which 1,663 people would turn up to see Billy Turley finally be allowed to return to the Oxford side: a sole remnant of the days when we were a League club.

[The above picture is courtesy of Steve Daniels/Rage Online, and reproduced here with kind permission.]

Dark night of the soul at Barrow

[Fuego de Noche by Goya, courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The sublime followed by the ridiculous at home to Ebbsfleet

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.]