The Desire of James Clarke

‘It’s time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It’s time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time.

Here’s to them.'

- American Tabloid

When I think about James Clarke, a series of vignettes cross my mind - a flicker of cinefilm story. We’ve watched James Clarke change in front of our eyes.

Click.

March 2007. Stafford at home. A buoyant Oxford crowd watched the ceremony of end of season awards. Optimism in the late spring air. A play-off semi-final around the corner. After a long season in this league it felt like a return to The League would happen after all. The youth team all-conquering - and when the young player of the season was announced, it was a name unfamiliar to most of the crowd.

‘Don’t look so shocked Jamie!’ Peter Rhodes-Brown laughed over the P.A.

What can put this defender ahead of the rest of a talented team? A shy smile. Gentle applause from the crowd. A passing thought as to whether we’ll ever see the boy on this pitch again. And then thoughts returned to the play-offs.

Click.

A cold Aggborough, away to Kidderminster - seven months and a season later. It could have been a lifetime. Still in this league. Still not in The League. A snarling Oxford crowd shut up in one end of the ground - the season spiralling away from them. On the pitch the team clinging on. In the stands men climbing a gantry to bang metal against metal. Willing a campaigning spirit to materialise. The sense of something primal in the air.

And in this atmosphere, James Clarke made his first-team debut.

Oxford defending for their lives. Oxford undeservedly two goals up. The game turns on a contentious sending off. Clarke the player on the ground. The referee adjudged an elbow to have knocked him down. James Constable sent off. Kidderminster incensed. Fingers point. Accusations made. Clarke has feigned the incident. Clarke’s to blame. Cheat. Oxford indignant. The boy’s a young debutant. He’s too young to do that. Too inexperienced. Ranks close. The match a fractious quarrel. Clarke's team mates did what they could to help him through the alley of taunts and studs, spittle and spite.

The final whistle brought relief and victory. The players taking the applause of the fans in the away end - Billy Turley knowing that the acclaim is as much for Clarke’s debut as the team performance. He pushed the young man towards the Oxford supporters behind the goal. Clarke reluctant - shoulder blades shoot back under the pressure of Turley’s shove towards the wall of sound from the terrace.

‘CLARKEY! CLARKEY! CLARKEY!’.

A slight smile. Hands raised briefly to return the applause - then quickly turned and jogged after the rest of the squad. Uneasy in isolation.

‘CLARKEY! CLARKEY! CLARKEY!’.

Click.

The campaigning spirit arrived too late.

Games passed with little purpose. Still in this league. Still not in The League. But amongst this a young defender’s reputation growing. A tackler. A confidence with the ball. But most of all the look in the eye.

And a new aspect to the way he plays?

Burton at home. The winger goes past Clarke. The balled fist goes out - grabbing. The man goes down and Clarke’s game is over.

Innocence and experience?

Click. Click.

July 2008. Court Place Farm. A pre-season game with no edge. But Clarke fighting. Fighting for a place on the team. An unfamiliar left back - but exuded seniority in a second-half team of youth teamers and trialists. And the scales falling from my eyes. His game all pushes and pulls. Shirts. Shorts. Get the man. Stop him. Eyes squinting to see the play. Fingers pointing. Sort them out. No one gets past. Was this always there? Did I choose not to see it? Innocence and experience. Experience from innocence.

Click. Click. Click.

Barrow, away. Oxford kick off another season - still in this league. Still not in The League.

Clarke's fought for and won his place on the team. No innocence. Just experience.

Chest out.

No one. Gets. Past.

The ball falls loose. Get there. The tackle goes in.

Clarke’s game is over.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

A new scene. Hayes in the cup. The game won. No one got past.

The tackle goes in.

Clarke’s game is over.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click...

Desire drives a boy to become a man. Desire takes him from innocence to experience. Desire makes him who he becomes.

Here’s to the desire of James Clarke.


[Ed.: This piece has been planned for a little while, but it seems appropriate to post it now. Get well soon Clarkey: I see in you the ability, but more importantly the character, to become the sort of man who could define the spirit of an Oxford squad.

All images in this post courtesy of Steve Daniels/Rage Online, reproduced here with kind permission.]

The magic of the cup at home against Hayes and Yeading

(This was what we wanted to say about the game before the 90th minute. There will be a piece on James Clarke coming next week.)

Victory at home against Burton Albion

Image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons.

(Oxford sides are formed in the furnace of passion, they are proved in the heat and light of this forge as passion assumes the form of pride or anger)

A discarded plastic training cone, on top of some piping, next to the pitch away at Altrincham

(Take this as metaphor, or muse on it to distract your mind from seeing Yemi Odubade flying through the air to send the ball high over the houses behind the goal, again, and again, and again.)

Attempting to read the signs at Plainmoor

Image from 'Darwin and after Darwin' by John Romanes, courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons.

Augury is the attempt to interpret the signs of nature to determine the will of the gods, usually as it is conveyed to mortal man by the flight and call of birds. Evermore confused about this Oxford squad, We Are Oxford United sent Oxford University's finest expert on religion in the ancient world (or at least the first one we found spending too much time at the Kings Arms) to Plainmoor to attempt to divine what signs he could of Oxford's seasons in their performance against 'The Gulls'. A number of academic papers are apparently planned based on these 'research findings', and, as a result, due to copyright restrictions we can only reproduce the abstract to the first of these. Which frankly, given the amount of beer we seem to have paid for under the auspices of 'research funding', we're pretty hacked off about.

This study aims to apply the analytical framework of classical theology's sociological reading of divination to the modern ritual of 'non-league football'. It draws close comparison between Roman augurs of bird flight and spectators of a non-league game of football as both attempt to divine pattern and meaning to seemingly random movement. After a theoretical comparison of the two meaning systems, the analysis is applied to a recent game of non-league football between Torquay United and Oxford United. Themes considered include faith, foresight (and the lack thereof), betrayal, inevitability, intoxication, and madness. The article goes on to consider why the attendees of both rituals thought seemingly unconnected factors to be affected by one another (birds and the future; non-league footballers and the outcome of their game), particularly given the seemingly overwhelming evidence of the past (the inaccuracy of augurs; Oxford looking the business against Cambridge and Rushden but still getting done at Lewes). Following Cicero's De Divinatione, a critical analysis is provided of the arguments for connecting augury and football to such sources as God, nature, or fate. Finally, it is concluded that Torquay and Oxford need to work on their set pieces, both the taking of and the defending of, as frankly, it bordered on pathos.

The dying of the light?

(We could certainly have done with a bit more rage away at Lewes)

Dark day ends with victory at home against Cambridge

(Oxford, United,..)

Defeat at home to Crawley

Image courtesy of Image*After.

(A wounded London Road bellows defiance: We ARE the London Road)

As I walked out one matchday morning

‘It becomes increasingly easy in urban life to ignore their extreme humours, but in those days winter and summer dominated our every action, broke into our homes, conscripted our thoughts, ruled our games, and ordered our lives.’

- Cider With Rosie

It was a clear morning in September, and the sun was establishing the little grip on the day it would hope to exercise. As I walked along the streets with their close houses toeing the pavement, I scented the sharp cut in the air that comes when Summer finally surrenders the struggle to Autumn, its waste and indifference giving way to acute attention, undercut with the promise of cold.

It becomes easy to ignore, but for those who tramp through this ritual, the seasons have always ruled The Season, with their own marks and measures for these followers. High sulky summer marks the beginning and the end, the early days when you bask in the pleasure of a return to a habit given up, lolling in the activities of matchday, with the luxury of games ahead to make up for points carelessly mislaid in these drowsy days. Winter is the season of anxiety, a sense of something slipping, or something slippery, a just-melting icicle held in mittens, sliding through your grasp before you press your hands together and it flies up almost uncontrollably. Spring is the season when we start to see the signs of growth, the things we will reap according to that which has been sown, before the final few days when we briefly see summer again, and surprise is all too rare.

And autumn: autumn is the season that reminds us that this is to come, that these summer days are over, and we are here again; but that this is not enough, and that there is purpose at hand.

On the way to the ground I paused to take a drink. The pub was a murmur of other football supporters, their folded newspapers, their beer, their darting eyes, and sudden shouts. The pool table was covered, and a pair of policemen completed a circuit of the bar, gloved hands tucked into belts. Laughter came from where the crowd closed again behind them. A solemn-faced man watched his boy scuffle with a friend, before haring between the legs of tables and drinkers. As kick-off time neared, and the bar queue adopted a quiet new urgency, the talk was of games gone and the game to come.

‘Should’ve taken three points last time out.’

‘We’ll do it today, just you see.’

Autumn had arrived, and this talk had assumed a seriousness.

Waiting in vain for the Us to go steaming in at Kidderminster

(I still want to be in that number)