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]

Salisbury 1 - 1 Oxford

(A glimpse of a way through the woods; snow clinging to the ground.)

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