Summer, the earth stirs

(This summer the breeze rifles through the leaves of trees; its seeming impatience growing it buffets their branches. The earth stirs from its somnolence with the haste of a child suddenly free to leave his last schoolclass of the day: snatching his bag up, pens fly as he wheels round his chair. Day-dreaming is over: The Season is fast upon us.)

What can we say about Oxford United? Part III: Blogs, the group, and the self

In one sense a blog is simply a piece of webspace where one can store and display various bits of text, images, and sound. Yet a blog invites the use of the first-person narrator, it calls for the expression of feeling, opinion, emotion, in a way that a news site is not. The self is always there; the self is at once the subject and the object. One could then ask of what value is this kind of expression? Is Manuel Castells right when he says that ‘…a significant share of this form of mass self-communication is closer to “electronic autism” than to actual communication.’?

One answer is that to the extent that others identify with this subjective view, there’s value. And in this search for identification and difference, we see a parallel in a football crowd. At any moment one finds people of different backgrounds, different views, different values, and yet what attracts so many people to follow a football club is a sense of unity. Vociferous disagreements are held about the talents of a particular player, the merits of a particular manager, the wisdom of a particular tactic, and yet, for the most part, we can be as one on the terrace. We are the Left Side/We are the Right side: but, We are The London Road.

We Are Oxford United: This title was intended at once to be a claim of possession, but also a nod to this sense of universality. We wanted anyone who follows Oxford United to look at the things we present here, and recognise in them something they know, something they are a part of. Where can this universality come from?

As we talked about in our last post, one important factor is the context in which these games of football we watch take place in. Without supporters, without a league, without desire, you just have 22 men moving a ball round a pitch.

But perhaps the most important piece of context is the past. This is something we saw in what Oxblogger was doing in his favourite posts of ours, the ones we found ourselves identifying with most strongly (such as this, this, this, but especially, this). For the experience of the Oxford United supporter watching the team, as I would guess for all supporters, the past is always present. The players, team, manager, ground, club: they all change, but these are only so many pieces of tracing paper layered over whatever it is that lies at the bottom of this all. It’s this that we glimpse on occasion through these pieces of paper: it portrays a new scene, but visible through it is something we recognise, something we find all-too familiar.

And in the end, that’s what we tried to do last season: to find whatever it is that lies at the bottom of all this. Or not to find it, but to try and allow us, and anyone following this, to glimpse it. Because we’ve become started to realise that what we want to convey can’t be looked at directly, and it can’t be written down. It’s there at the back of your mind: it’s there in the corner of your eye. That’s how we’d like you to look at this blog: subconsciously, with the corner of your eye. If you find that you can see what we’re getting at, then we’ll have managed to say something about Oxford United.

The return of Matt Green

('I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.'

- King James Bible, Luke 15: 18-19)

('The Lost Son' by Max Slevogt, courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons.)

What can we say about Oxford United? Part II: Content and context, seeming and meaning

What do we talk about when we talk about football? The ball. A player. A coach. A ground. We could answer the question not just by saying that we talk about a range of subjects, but by saying that we talk about football on a range of levels. In our last post, we wrote about the intense focus of media on matches, the action of football. In that sense, we focus on a single moment of action, or ninety minutes of these continual actions.

On another level we can move back from the action slightly, and take a longer-term view, talking about qualities and their significance for a team or a club’s strategy. The short time of a match, or a period of the match, can mislead our judgement. A player can put in a terrible performance. A manager can stumble upon the right tactic, despite his strategic shortcomings. Talking about a series of matches reduces the role of fortune. Here we see that supporters tend to supply most of the analysis, whether we talk amongst ourselves, write on a message board, or post on a blog. We try to identify the essence of a player or a manager: what we can say holds true of them when the outlying instances of individual pieces of action are taken away, and we can view their performances from a more distanced perspective.

And we can talk about the context in which this action takes place: the surroundings, the supporters, hope, anxiety, and despair. These are subjects can be hard to talk about in a way that feels adequate, and the retreat to stock footballing phrases is all too easy. When so many games are ‘must wins’, when players and supporters are always ‘desperate’ for success, when we’re ‘gutted’ once again following defeat, these words become mundane as we move further and further away from any real awareness of what it was we felt, and why it was we felt so strongly.

But we think they’re perhaps the most important things to say about football, to explain it. The literal truth that football is just 22 men chasing a ball around is belied by this context. The collective emotion of a club provides the meaning to games, provides them with a purpose, explains why we can walk away from a defeat to Leyton Orient shrugging your shoulders and wondering where to go for a drink, and six months later walk away from the same result against the same side with a gnawing canker at the bottom of your stomach that you can't shake.

There is a mysterious alchemy that takes place at a football match.

To understand why football supporters find the game so important, you need to be within this context. There’s a paradox here at its heart: that football becomes overpoweringly meaningful to us because we allow it to; because we choose for it to. It derives its power over us from us. An entirely circular logic, absurd from without but inexorable from within: we could break the spell at any moment, but we don’t.

As the internet has facilitated and fed our need to talk about football, we’ve focused on ever greater minutiae, ever more analysis. It’s always there; there’s always one more opinion to read on whether Adam Murray will fit into Oxford’s midfield next season. And with this, we think two things have also happened. On the one hand, we rarely seem to have found a concurrent means of expression of the context of all this detail beyond our worn phrases, but on the other hand, the intense focus on every facet of Oxford United has created a community where we all share a detailed knowledge about all manner of things related to Oxford. It’s this community of shared knowledge that we think presents an opportunity to talk in a new way about Oxford, in a way that might let us explore not just its seeming, but its context and its meaning.

What can we say about Oxford United? Part I: Football writing and language

What can we say about Oxford United? One response might be: a lot, apparently. Thousands of words are poured out every week by commentators on the activities of this football club in print and on the web. Within minutes of a ‘story’ being reported, you can usually go to three or four other websites that will report the self-same facts, often using pretty much the same words. But when we’re told, on the signing of two new players, that one describes himself as ‘…very energetic, I get up and down the park and I've got a never-say-die attitude.’, and the other contrasts himself as having ‘Lots of energy and a never-say-die attitude.’, what have we learnt here?

To some extent this is a problem with the language of football and football writing. Every skilled left-footed player is ‘cultured’, every struggling manager is in danger of ‘losing the dressing room’, and every striker who shows a propensity for scoring from within the six yard box is ‘a poacher’. Duncan Hamilton eloquently complains about the limited language deployed in the description of football in the first chapter in his book on Brian Clough (even if he then doesn’t live up to this weighty gauntlet he throws down for himself). But for the supporter, in the internet age, looking for this kind of news on Oxford United becomes like a dirty habit – the fix we secure is all too often too weak, and we’re driven back to scrabbling round for more. And that’s before we even start considering message boards.

It’s in this context that we’d like to spend a couple of posts considering what it is possible to say about Oxford United, and what we can say. Forgive the self indulgence. The close season provides a time to step back, and try and take an overview of what has passed before, and what we hope to achieve in the next season. We’ve found ourselves doing just that. We wrote before that this blog had originally intended as a one-season experiment, and had ended up doing things that hadn’t been originally envisaged. One of those things was to try to write in a more creative way, when we’re more used to a ‘critical’ tone. So this will be a brief return to some critical writing.

At the end of the season, we look around and find ourselves as one of a number of blogs on the subject of Oxford United. If we’re seeing the start of a growth of blogs about Oxford United, we think that these thousand electronic flowers should be encouraged to bloom. Blogs are by their nature of the moment, but momentary too. More importantly, we think they allow the potential to say something different, and differently, about Oxford United. The demise of an Oxford United fanzine has left a hole that blogs could fill, but in turn these blogs could open up new possibilities. That's what we'd like to consider over the next couple of weeks.

Last night I dreamt I went to Minchery again

‘We can never go back, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us.’

- Rebecca

Last night I dreamt I went to Minchery again. It seemed to me, as I stood in front of the locked gates to the ground, that I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me.

The passage closed around me, cloistering me from the moonlight as it once had the sunlight, the air inside cooler and still. The blotched and stained concrete echoed slightly to my soft steps as I followed the way round to the left, past the shelves now empty of wrappers and bottles. Darkened doorways to booths and toilets and shuttered refreshment bars bore silent witness to my passage. The breeze blocks and sandy cement felt rough to the touch as ever, cold under my fingers. Signs that once guided now seemed to loom over me, their intentions redundant and unclear. I hurried through the shadows toward the pool of moonlight in front of me.

And then I turned to my right, and there was the pitch - our pitch - silent and suggestive as it had always been. A torn square of blue paper, missed by the groundstaff, scuttled past my feet, blown by a sudden breath of wind, and made for the darkened grass.

Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, even upon a dreamer’s fancy. As I stood there, hushed and still, I could swear that the ground was not empty, but lived and breathed as it had lived before. A slight sigh of wind ruffled the grass, and I saw the forms so familiar to me, in formation to take a free kick from the corner. The wind seemed to collect as a voice that cried out to them. A figure drove the ball low across the box, a foot connected with it, and it flew through a crowd and into the back of the goal. Figures wheeled away, seeming to revel in a sense of invincibility, others rushed to collect the ball, and from the privileged position of the dreamer, I saw the inexorable momentum of inevitable victory, certain as it had been many times before.

A cloud, hitherto unseen, came upon the moon, and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face. The illusion went with it, and the figures disappeared. I looked upon a desolate shell, soulless at last, unhaunted, with no whisper of the past about its staring terraces.

[Some editorialisation that we usually try to avoid too much of:

For this piece we borrowed from our ‘inspiration’ even more so than usual, so if you liked some of that, you can probably be sure it was lifted pretty much straight from Rebecca, and we should make the debt to Daphne du Maurier even more explicit than we usually do for writers we use. It’s the close season: why not read or watch her story? It’s a dark, thrilling, some might even argue modernist, take on the romantic novel. And it seems appropriate to end our coverage for this season on a dark note for a romantic story, because that’s what we just witnessed. There is one more thing we might post here, but to be honest, the ending of the above piece reflects the way we feel right now: those of us who have followed this unlikely story through the season have been robbed of the chance to see if the most romantic of endings might yet have come about.

And the past is too close to us.

So, we’ll see you all at Court Place Farm again in a few months no doubt. The blog was intended as a one-season experiment. What was planned isn’t quite what we ended up doing, but we’ve enjoyed it, and so long as we feel we’re not repeating ourselves, there’ll be more. In the meantime, we’ll be making a few cosmetic changes over the summer, but mainly spending our time hoping to read and see interesting things. If you fancy doing the same and would like some ideas, then anything you’ve read on here and liked over the season was inspired by/pilfered from somewhere – search for the title after the quote at the start of the piece, or follow the links to our sources for the art.]

Pondering self-inflicted defeat at home to Northwich

[Reflections on the season and a couple of other bits we would like to post will follow in the coming weeks.]

The world has moved and shifted around us

(Our journey's end is obscured in the darkening distance, but the direction is now clear, and there are textures of light behind the clouds)

Head down, James Constable charges

‘It was to this workman that the strong barytone belonged which was heard above the sound of plane and hammer singing –

‘Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth ...’’

- Adam Bede

The afternoon was cold, the cut of freezing air bit as James Constable looked round the pitch, dappled in dying afternoon sun, the Altrincham players preparing to face the goal kick. Close-cropped hair suggested a man for whom labour came before appearance, his face lean to his bones. While his brow was somewhat furrowed, the intent gaze betrayed concentration, not puzzlement.

A release of breathy steam formed in front of him as he paused: a moment of measurement required. For James Constable, a football match was not a work of art, but one of labour. It was to be worked at, the defence tested, gradually worn down. The defence was to be respected - its nature must guide the craftsman, direct his efforts; but, unstinting, he must bend the material at hand to his will.

It is only by working at the opposition that the craftsman starts to feel its knots and grains; where it will hold, where it is weak; where to apply the plane, and where the chisel. The ball must be chased to the corners, the goalkeeper’s claims contested, the centre halves' strength tested, the full back’s resolve checked. Gradually the shape of the task in hand becomes clear, and the finishing touches can be applied, before the craftsman can stand back to survey his work, wipe the sweat from his brow and the dirt from his body, and leave for his evening’s rest.

Perhaps there is such a thing as an artist; perhaps instinct can create something beautiful in a moment; perhaps inspiration can see what no one has seen before. Perhaps. But for the vast bulk of mankind, we are told one from the other by our endeavour, honesty, and toil.

James Constable stood back to survey the progress of his work so far. Great drops of sweat fell like blood from his shaved head as he shifted his weight back slightly. Heaving the fierce-sharpening air into his lungs once more, he watched the ball begin its driven flight forward to the opposition defence one more time. He picks the point at which to work, and dropping his head, pushes himself into a run once more. Head down, James Constable charges.

[Picture credits: Millet's L'homme à la houe and The Wood Sawyers courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons; Images of James Constable from Steve Daniels/Rage Online, reproduced here with permission; Youtube video courtesy of 'Deddington Steve'.]

A force of nature at Burton

(How else to explain what has happened to this football club? Now all we can do is watch and wait, witness to things beyond our control and comprehension.)